The Autobiography of a Play | Page 9

look on the
face of the child's mother, standing at the side of the stage. She feared
there was something wrong about her own little darling who played the
part of Natalie. I reassured her on this point; for the fact that I was in
error was forcing itself on my mind, in spite of my desire to retain the
scene. You will hardly believe that I am speaking literally, when I tell
you that it was not until the 19th rehearsal that we yielded to the
inevitable, and decided not to have the child come on at all at that point.
The truth was this: now that Lilian saved herself in her own strength,
the child had no dramatic function to fulfill. So strongly did we all feel
the force of a dramatic law which we could not, and would not, see.
Our own natural human instinct--the instinct which the humblest
member of an audience feels, without knowing anything of dramatic
law--got the better of three men, trained in dramatic work, only by
sheer force, and against our own determined opposition. We were three
of Stephenson's cows--or shall I say three calves?--standing on the
track, and we could not succeed where Jumbo failed.
The third step, in the changes forced upon us by the laws of dramatic
construction, was a very great one; and it was made necessary by the
fact, just mentioned, that the child, Natalie, had no dramatic function to
fulfill in the protection of her mother's virtue. In other words, there is
no point in the play, now, where sexual love is, or can be, replaced by
maternal love, as the controlling passion of the play. Consequently, the
last two acts in their entirety, so far as the serious parts are concerned,
disappear; one new scene and a new act taking their place. The sad

mother, playing with a little shoe or toy, passes out of our view. The
dying woman, kissing the hand of the man she has wronged; the
husband, awe-stricken in the presence of a mother's child; the child
clasped in Lilian's arms; her last look on earth, a smile, and her last
breath, the final expression of maternal tenderness--these scenes belong
only to the original version of the play, as it lies in its author's desk.
With an author's sensitive interest in his own work, I wasted many
hours in trying to save these scenes. But I was working directly against
the laws of dramatic truth, and I gave up the impossible task.
The fourth great change--forced on us, as the others were--concerns the
character of John Strebelow. As he is now to become the object of a
wife's mature affection, he must not merely be a noble and generous
man; he must do something worthy of the love which is to be bestowed
on him. He must command a woman's love. When, therefore, he hears
his wife, kneeling over her wounded lover, use words which tell him of
their former relations, he does not what most of us would do, but what
an occasional hero among us would do. Of course, the words of Lilian
cannot be such, now, as to close the gates to all hopes of love, as they
were before. She still utters a wild cry, but her words merely show the
awakened tenderness and pity of a woman for a man she had once
loved. They are uttered, however, in the presence of others, and they
compromise her husband's honor. At that moment he takes her gently in
his arms, and becomes her protector, warning the French roué and
duellist that he will call him to account for the insults which the arm of
the dead man had failed to avenge. He afterward does this, killing the
count--not in the action of the play; this is only told. John Strebelow
thus becomes the hero of the play, and it is only necessary to follow the
workings of Lilian's heart and his a little further, until they come
together at last, loving each other truly, the early love of the wife for
another man being only a sad memory in her mind. There is a tender
scene of explanation and a parting, until Lilian's heart shall recall her
husband. This scene, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful scenes
ever written for the stage. At the risk of breaking the tenth
commandment myself, I do not hesitate to say, I wish I had written it.
As I did not, however, I can express the hope that the name of Mr. A. R.
Cazauran, who did write it, will never be forgotten in connection with

this play as long as the play itself may be remembered. I wrote the
scene myself first; but when he wrote it according to