BELASCO AS A DRAMATIST:—A FRAGMENT.
Careful study of the plays of Belasco has convinced me that, much as he has accomplished, he has not yet fully developed his powers or fully expressed himself as a dramatist. There is ample evidence in his writings that he abundantly possesses the natural faculty of dramatic expression. That faculty is born—not made. The dramatic mind comprehends a story not in narrative but in action, sees the characters which are involved, each as a distinctive individual, perceives their relations to one another, notes their movements and hears them speak. To the dramatic mind the spectacle of human life is, essentially, one of movement. But that spectacle is vast, tumultuous, bewildering, not to be comprehended at once, perhaps not ever to be comprehended fully, and certainly not to be comprehended without the reinforcement of large experience and a profound, peaceful meditation. The reader of Shakespeare feels that the fully developed intellect of that great dramatist calmly brooded on the world: but there is no Shakespeare now, and there has been no such thing as tranquillity in the world for many long years.
Belasco, when he began to write, was a poor boy, imperfectly educated, in a disorderly environment, subject to all sorts of distractions and impediments, and throughout the whole of his career he has struggled onward under the sharp spur of necessity, without leisure or peace. In scarcely one of his many dramas is it possible to discern an unforced dramatic impulse, spontaneously creative of an exposition of diversified characters, acting and reacting upon circumstances, in dramatic situations, and constituting an authentic picture of human nature and life. In many of those dramas the existence of that impulse is perceptible, but almost invariably the growth of it is checked and the sway of it is impeded by the necessity of haste, or of conformity to the demand of some arbitrary occasion or of deference to the requirement of some individual actor, or to weariness and dejection. Fine bits of characterization appear; flashes of fancy frequently irradiate dialogue; imagination imparts a splendid glow to striking situations,—as in “The Darling of the Gods” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me,”—and pathos is often elicited by simple means; but sometimes probability is wrested from its rightful place, and extravagance of embellishment mingles with verbosity to cause prolixity and embarrass movement. In a word, a sense of effort, a strenuous urgency for the attainment of violent effect, is largely perceptible in Belasco’s plays,—as, indeed, it is in nearly the entire bulk of modern American Drama. How could it be otherwise?
“Like children bathing on the shore,
Buried a wave beneath,
Another wave succeeds before
We have had time to breathe.”
Belasco, a good son, affectionate and faithful, ever solicitous to contribute to the support of his parents and their family, began labor in childhood, and he has never ceased to labor. At an early age he married, assuming the duties and incurring the responsibilities of a husband and a father in harsh surroundings. In about twenty-five years, working as factotum, secretary, teacher, agent, mechanical inventor, actor, stage manager, theatre manager, and playwriter, and battling against a powerful, unscrupulous, malignantly hostile commercial antagonism, he raised himself from poverty-ridden obscurity to independence, general public esteem, and international celebrity as a theatrical leader. Throughout the ensuing fifteen years he increased his eminence, becoming at last the representative theatrical manager of our day [meaning, here, about 1902 to the present, 1917] in America. He has adapted or rewritten more than 200-odd plays, has collaborated with other writers in making twenty-odd new ones, and is himself the sole author of about thirty more, most of which have been acted but several of which have not. The wonder is not that his writings exhibit some defects, but that, at their best, they contain so much truthful portrayal of character, pictorial reflection of life, fine dramatic situation, and compelling power to thrill the imagination and touch the heart. The time, it seems to me, has not yet come for attempting a comprehensive and final estimate of his faculty and achievement as a dramatist. Whether as an author or a character, he presents a singular, elusive, and perplexing study. The constitution of his mind, I have often thought, shows a striking resemblance to that of the romantic and copiously inventive old English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. The same prodigal vitality, the same intensity of interest, the same audacious recklessness of probability, the same facility of graphic characterization, the same exuberance of detail, and above all the same wild romanticism peculiar to Ainsworth’s novels are perceptible in Belasco’s plays. The imagination that conceived “Adrea” might well have conceived “The Lancashire Witches” or the first book of “Jack Sheppard.” But Belasco is not merely an imitator. He has pursued a course natural to himself, and he has created much in Drama that is both original and beautiful. If he had written nothing but “The Girl of the Golden West” and “The Return of Peter Grimm” his name would live as that of one of the best dramatists who have arisen in America.
[Written May 18, 1917. Given to me by my father with instruction to mark it, when setting it for him:
ADD, AND REVISE.
The last phase of his illness began on May 24, and he never saw this passage after he wrote it as it stands.—J. W.]
THE GOLDKNOPF TRIAL—A UNIQUE DEMONSTRATION.
The trial of the Goldknopf action against Belasco, based on the pretence that “The Woman” was plagiarized from “Tainted Philanthropy; or, The Spirit of the Time,” was begun, July 31, 1912, with a hearing before Commissioner Gilchrist, at