THE PLAY OF “MEN AND WOMEN.”
This play would have been called by Boucicault a “comedy-drama”: he was fond of classifying plays and he invented that designation (as well as various others) meaning thereby to denote a “sensation drama,” illustrated with comedy. The pervasive defect of the play, like that which mars some other plays written by Belasco, in association with De Mille, is an excess of extraneous details. Nevertheless it tells an interesting story, well devised to absorb attention, and it possesses vital dramatic movement. The comedy element in it is trivial. The story, though somewhat confused, is stronger than that in any other of the several plays written by Belasco and De Mille.
The main theme is the desperate situation of a man named William Prescott, cashier of a bank, who is guilty of peculation and who is striving to escape the consequences of his crime. An accomplice in the robbery is a broker, who has committed suicide. The assistant cashier of the bank, Edwin Seabury by name, Prescott’s close friend and the betrothed lover of his sister, is suspected of the theft. At first, perceiving that for his personal security he need only remain silent and permit his innocent comrade to be ruined, Prescott, though drawn as a man essentially virtuous, yields to the temptation to hold his peace and let Seabury be condemned; but on discovering that his sweetheart, Agnes Rodman, is aware of his guilt and, out of devotion to him, is willing to condone his crime and his additional iniquity, Prescott is shocked into remorse and repentance and he determines that Seabury shall be saved, at whatever sacrifice of himself. The portrayal of the strife in the minds of Prescott and of Agnes Rodman is remarkably expert, vivid, and effective, the element of suspense being most adroitly sustained.
Seabury’s peril is heightened by the implacable enmity of the attorney for the bank, Calvin Stedman, who is Seabury’s unsuccessful rival in love, and who, honestly believing the young man guilty, exults in the opportunity to ruin him, and opposes every effort made by the president of the bank, Israel Cohen, to weather the storm and save the institution from ruin. The vital scene of the play occurs in the Third Act, when, late at night, in the library of the president’s home, the directors of the bank assemble to consult with a National Bank Examiner and seek to contrive means to avert publicity, forestall a destructive “run,” and restore the stolen funds. One of those directors, Stephen Rodman, father of the girl to whom Prescott is betrothed, opposes the purpose of Stedman to force public avowal of the situation, regardless of consequences to the institution, and is suddenly denounced by Stedman as being himself a former peculator whom he, Stedman, years earlier, has prosecuted, who was convicted, and has served a term in prison, and therefore should be deemed an unfit person to suggest such a composition of the trouble. The incidents and the language used in depicting that meeting of the directors of the tottering bank are skilfully and impressively used, and Belasco’s extraordinary facility of dramatic expression, once his desired situation has been obtained, is finely exemplified. At the last, Prescott assuming his responsibility, the way out of the dilemma is provided by Mr. Pendleton, one of the directors, a half-deaf, crusty, apparently fussy, muddled old man, who is, in fact, clear-headed and practical and who provides the necessary money to save the bank. Condonement of a felony is a dubious expedient, but in a fiction it is often convenient, especially when, as in “Men and Women,” justice is seen to be done, all round.
One singular “effect” in the central scene of this play was caused by a glimmer of simulated moonlight through a stained glass window, showing a representation of the Christ (rather a surprising object of art to occur in the private library of a Jew, however liberal), after a fervid expression, by Israel Cohen, of the need of charity and forbearance. The wise counsel of the old Oxford Professor (cited and approved by Belasco’s mentor, Boucicault, and sometimes attributed to him), that when you particularly admire any special passage in anything you have written you had better cut it out, might well have been mentioned by Belasco for the benefit of his collaborator. There are several passages of “fine writing” in “Men and Women,” which show De Mille to disadvantage. The play will not bear close analysis: it was artificially constructed around the situation at the crisis of the bank’s affairs; but it admirably answered the purpose for which it was written, and it had 203 consecutive performances, at the Twenty-third Street Theatre. This was the cast:
| Israel Cohen | Frederic de Belleville. |
| William Prescott | William Morris. |
| Edwin Seabury | Orrin Johnson. |
| Mr. Pendleton | Charles Leslie Allen. |
| Mr. Reynolds | W. H. Tilliard. |
| Mr. Bergman | Arthur Hayden. |
| Mr. Wayne | Edgar Mackey. |
| Calvin Stedman | R. A. Roberts. |
| Lyman H. Webb | Henry Talbot. |
| Stephen Rodman | Frank Mordaunt. |
| Col. Zachary T. Kip | M. A. Kennedy. |
| Dr. “Dick” Armstrong | T. C. Valentine. |
| Sam Delafield | J. C. Buckstone. |
| Arnold Kirke | Emmett Corrigan. |
| Crawford | E. J. McCullough. |
| District Messenger No. 81 | Master Louis Haines. |
| Roberts | A. R. Newtown. |
| John | Richard Marlow. |
| Agnes Rodman | Sydney Armstrong. |
| Dora | Maude Adams. |
| Mrs. Kate Delafield | Odette Tyler. |
| Margery Knox | Etta Hawkins. |
| Mrs. Jane Preston | Annie Adams. |
| Mrs. Kirke | Lillian Chantore. |
| Lucy | Winona Shannon. |
| Julia | Gladys Eurelle. |
The stage setting of “Men and Women” was uncommonly fine and much of the acting was excellent,—notably the performances of Israel Cohen by Frederic de Belleville, William Prescott by William Morris, Calvin Stedman by R. A. Roberts, Stephen Rodman by Frank Mordaunt, and Mr. Pendleton by Charles Leslie Allen. Roberts was specially admirable for the manner with which he suffused his impersonation of the savagely implacable attorney with an antipathetic but wholly veritable air of saturated self-approbation in his cruel assumption of righteousness.
The whole moral doctrine of Belasco, not only in this play but in several others of the same class,—a doctrine upon which he dwells with what, considering the existing way of the world, seems rather a superfluous insistence,—is comprised in four well-known lines by Robert Burns which, on the programme, were used as an epigraph for this play:
“Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman,
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human.”