Volume 1 — BELASCO AND HIS “THE CURSE OF CAIN.”

Sheridan’s season terminated on March 5, and, on the 7th, occurred the first performance of a new play constructed, while that season lasted, by Belasco in collaboration with the excellent and much respected Peter Robertson (1847-1911), long dramatic critic of “The San Francisco Chronicle.” It was called “The Curse of Cain,” and its more active author has written of it as follows:

“Strange as it may appear, Cain was my hero. Abel had never appealed to me, any more than his forebears, in the garden of the bright flaming sword, whence the apple-eating Eve had been so forcibly, ejected. ’The Curse of Cain’ in embryo was a simple trifle of an allegory, which afterwards developed into a four-act drama with prologue and epilogue. And now that I look back upon it I think it was somewhat remarkable for strange innovations to the stage of that day. For the first time realistic thunderstorms and lightning effects were introduced, more naturally than anything that had gone before. I do not wish to pooh-pooh modern inventions, double stages, and all the paraphernalia of the latter-day drama, but I do contend that we could not have been outdone.”

It will not, I think, appear “strange” to most persons that to Belasco, as a dramatist, the character of Cain should be more attractive than that of Abel. It is, I know, sometimes asserted that evil is merely the absence of good and a passive state. But that assertion is untrue. Why evil should exist at all is a mystery. But that it does exist and that, existing, it is a positive, active force which supplies the propulsive dramatic movement of most great representative plays,—of “Othello,” “Hamlet,” “King Richard III.,” and “Macbeth,” for example,—is obvious. Many of the great poets have felt this and exhibited it in their poetry. Mephistopheles is the dominant figure and the animating impulse of Goethe’s “Faust” and of Bailey’s “Festus,” and that is true, likewise, of Satan, in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Cain is the exponent of evil in the Bible narrative, the active, dramatic figure—and Cain, not Abel, accordingly engaged the attention of Byron, in one of his greatest poems, and of Coleridge, in a fragment on the same subject. Belasco’s declared preference, as a dramatist, seems to me to be an inevitable one. There is not, however, much relevancy in the expression of it as regards his play of “The Curse of Cain.” That fabric does not relate to the Bible narrative: it is a melodrama, of the period in which it was written, which tells, in an artificial but momentarily effective and diverting manner, a conventional tale of good and evil in conflict,—of crime long unpunished and honor much abused; of prosperous villainy and persecuted innocence borne down under a false accusation of murder; of harsh suffering in gypsy camps and prison cells, and, finally, of the vindication of virtue and retributive justice overtaking the transgressor. It was avowedly fashioned on the model of such earlier plays as “The World” (which Belasco had successfully set upon the stage fourteen months before), “The Lights o’ London,” “Mankind” and “Youth,” and it was devised for the purpose of making lavish scenic display and startling theatrical effects, in the hope of winning back public support for the Baldwin. That purpose though not that hope was fulfilled, all contemporary commentators, in effect, agreeing with the published declaration that “never before in San Francisco has there been such a liberal and beautiful display of scenery as that provided for this play.” “The Curse of Cain” was divided into seven acts, all of which were richly framed, and four of which,—Waterloo Bridge, London, during a snowstorm; a Gypsy Camp, in rural England; a Ruined Abbey, and “the Whirlpool Lighthouse,”—were affirmed “marvels of stage painting and effect.” In the scene of the Gypsy Camp Belasco indulged to the full his liking for literalism,—providing for the public edification a braying donkey, neighing horses, cackling hens, crowing cocks, quacking ducks, and a rooting, grunting pig. In the Lighthouse Scene, as one account relates, having assembled his dramatis personæ for the final curtain by the novel yet simple expedient of “washing them all up from the ocean,” after a shipwreck, like flotsam, he introduced a frantic struggle between the villain and the hero, beginning on the wave-beaten rocks, conducted up a spiral stairway within the lighthouse and intermittently visible through the windows thereof, and terminating in the fall of the villain from the pinnacle of that edifice to a watery grave,—with which fitting demise, and the union of lovers, the spectacle drew sweetly to a close. “The critics,” writes Belasco, “had plenty of fun with the absurdities of the piece (which hardly needed to be pointed out), and I had many a good laugh at it myself; but, for all that, it was the most elaborate scenic production of the kind ever made in the West, and the people who came to see it went wild over it. The only trouble was not enough of ’em could be induced to come!”

“The Curse of Cain” was acted from March 7 to 18, except on the evenings of the 8th and 15th, when Frederick Haase acted at the Baldwin. J. B. Dickson, of Brooks & Dickson, who saw the play there, purchased the right to produce it in the East, in English, and Gustav Amberg (then in San Francisco as manager of the Geistinger Opera Company) arranged to bring out a German version of it at the Thalia Theater, New York,—but I have not found that either of those managers ever presented it. A fragmentary record of the original cast, which is all that diligent research has discovered, shows Mrs. Saunders and Ada D’Aves as members of the company and signifies that the chief characters were allotted thus:

Sir Rupert TreloarJoseph R. Grismer.

AshcroftHarry Colton.

Tom Gray, “The Idiot”George Osborne.

Joan GrayJean Clara Walters.

Alice GrayPhœbe Davis.

On March 15 Osborne superseded Colton as Ashcroft,—his place, as Tom Gray, being taken by Joseph W. Francœur.