The play of “The Wife” is in five acts and it involves fourteen persons. Its scenes are laid in Newport, New York, and Washington, D. C., about 1887. Its dialogue is written in that strain of commonplace colloquy which is assumed, with justice, to be generally characteristic of “fashionable society” in its superficial mood and ordinary habit. The influence of Bronson Howard’s example is obvious in it,—that writer’s plan, which had been successful, of catching and reflecting the general tone and manner of “everyday life” and often of distressingly “everyday persons”; persons who, nevertheless, are at times constrained to behave in a manner not easily credible, if, indeed, possible, whether in everyday or any other kind of life. To copy commonplaces in a commonplace manner is by some judges deemed the right and sure way to please the public. That method does often succeed, since, generally, people like to see themselves. This, however, was not the method of the great masters of comedy, such as MoliÈre, Congreve, and Sheridan, who taught, by example and with results of great value, that a comedy, while it should be a true reflection of life and a faithful picture of manners, should also be made potent over the mind, the heart, and the imagination, by delicate, judicious exaggeration, should be made entertaining by equivoque, and should be made impressive by the fibre of strong thought, and sympathetic by trenchant, sparkling dialogue. That old method of writing comedy, although it has been exemplified by the best writers and is still attempted, has, to a great extent, been superseded by the far inferior and much easier method of conventional colloquialism and chatter.

The ground plan of “The Wife,” though Belasco may have thought it a novelty, was, even in 1887, mossy with antiquity. A girl, Helen Freeman, parts from her lover, Robert Grey, in a moment of pique, and weds with another man, to whom she gives her hand, but not at first her heart; she subsequently meets her old flame and finds that she is still fond of him; causes social tattle by being seen

too much in his company; admits to her husband that her juvenile partiality for this early suitor still lingers in her feelings, and so causes that worthy man some uneasiness; but she ends by casting her girlish fancy to the winds and avowing herself a fond as well as a faithful wife. “The guests think they have seen him before.” They have! And also they have heard, rather more than twice before, two of the speeches which are uttered: “As a soldier it is my business to make widows,” and “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”

This is the story: Helen Freeman loved Robert Grey and by him was beloved. Robert Grey had jilted Lucile Ferrant, of New Orleans. Lucile informed Helen of this fact, and Helen therefore repudiated Robert Grey and wedded with John Rutherford, of the United States Senate. Matthew Culver, a politician, hostile to Robert Grey in politics and at the bar, and wishful to defeat Robert’s attempt to obtain an office, persuaded Lucile to apprise Rutherford that Robert and Helen had been lovers, and by many persons were thought to be so still. Rutherford, investigating this tale, discovered that Culver had maliciously and meanly schemed to make mischief and that the attachment of Robert and Helen was probably one of the sentimental “flames” which are customary in youth; whereupon he rebuked Culver, talked frankly with Robert Grey, advising him to stick to his legal business, and presently procured his appointment to a lucrative office, at the same time assuring Helen of his delicate consideration for her feelings and his intention to take good care of her. Culver then went to South America and stayed there, while Miss Ferrant repaired to the South of France, and Robert Grey greatly distinguished himself by laborious diligence in the public service. This adjustment might have been expected to content all parties concerned, but it did not content Rutherford. His wife actually had “loved another” before she loved him, and on that fact he brooded, stating that his heart contained nothing but “bloodless ashes.” Perhaps Helen’s sentimental fancy had lasted. Juvenile flame was only a phrase. As sagaciously remarked by Emilia in “Othello,”

The distressed Senator, therefore, sat up till a late hour every night, grieving for his wife’s “lost love,” until at last Helen, observing his dejection, was moved to discover and avouch that her juvenile fancy for Robert Grey had been a girlish infatuation and to declare her “calm, peaceful, and eternal love” for her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford then sailed, aboard the Alaska, for Europe. It appeared, incidentally, that Jack Dexter and Kitty Ives, giddy things, though bright and good, hovering about the story, were lovers, but that Kitty’s mother did not approve of their engagement till after Jack had smirched his face with a bit of smoked glass, and also that all the persons concerned in these momentous affairs once saw an eclipse of the sun, which was visible in Washington.

Almost every person in this play is colorless and insignificant. The proceedings of the characters evince no natural sequence between motive and conduct. Given two young persons who love each other, they could not possibly be alienated by conjuring up the bugbear of a previous attachment. Nothing is so dead as the love that has died, and every lover instinctively knows it. Moreover, the ladies, practically without exception, are more pleased than disquieted by discovering that their lovers have found they could live without others but not without them. The fabric, in short, is one of elaborate trifling with serious things, for the sake of situations and effects. The play should have been called “The Husband” rather than “The Wife,” because it is Rutherford in whom the interest centres. The best scene in it is the one of explanation and reconcilement between the husband and wife, and this was the invention of Belasco, around which and for the sake of which the play was written. It contains a strain of rational, fine manliness that wins and holds attentive sympathy.

In studying the plays written by Belasco and De Mille in collaboration it is essential to bear in mind the apportionment of the labor, in order correctly to estimate Belasco’s share in them. The writing in that co-partnership was largely done by De Mille: the dramatic machinery, the story in action, was supplied almost entirely by Belasco, who acted the scenes, when the plays were in process of construction, the dialogue being beaten out between the co-workers.

This was the original cast of “The Wife”,—November 1, 1887:

“The Wife” was so beautifully set, so perfectly directed, and so well acted that, though at first the dead weight of the play oppressed its representation, the public press, even at the first, inclined to accord it an importance which it did not deserve. Georgia Cayvan’s impersonation of the wife revealed anew the deep feeling and the graceful art that had won her recognition as a favorite actress. Grace Henderson (she was the wife of David Henderson, critical writer and producer of musical extravaganza), who acted the mischief making, jilted woman, Lucile, played with discretion and sincerity,—but it was difficult for the spectator to believe that a woman with a face so beautiful and a voice so delicious would ever have been jilted by any man not blind and deaf. Henry Miller was loud and extravagant as Grey; Herbert Kelcey was dignified, manly, and fine in feeling and elegant in manner and movement as Rutherford, and LeMoyne was delightfully humorous as Major Homer.

“The Wife” received 239 consecutive performances. Yet the fate of that play hung, for some time, in the balance. “I knew, even before the production,” said Belasco to me, “that it was too long and too loosely jointed, but I felt it could make good; and Mr. Frohman had faith. De Mille was pretty well discouraged after a week or ten days, and he told me he expected he’d have to go back to school-teaching [De Mille had been a school-teacher before he joined the Madison Square Theatre, where, in 1884, Belasco first met him]. Brent Good, proprietor of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and also Stickney protested, in a directors’ meeting, that the play was a failure and was losing money and ordered it withdrawn.” The next morning Daniel Frohman instructed Belasco to put the play of “Featherbrain,” by James Albery, into rehearsal and prepare it for production as rapidly as possible. “I felt certain,” Belasco has told me, “that ’The Wife’ could be made a great money-getter, and I resolved it should have a fair trial: I held back on the preparations of ’Featherbrain’ all I could,—and, meantime, De Mille and I altered and cut, day after day, on our play. This procedure was justified by the result. Writing on this subject, Belasco declares: “It seemed to us that for every word we cut from ’The Wife’ we gained a person in the orchestra.” What a pity the necessary pruning and adjustment could not have been done before the production! Then the prosperity of a theatre and of many persons would not have been endangered. The sum of more than $50,000, owed to the Tiffany Studios, was paid in full, out of the profits of “The Wife,” and the directors of the corporation, as also Daniel Frohman, were so well satisfied with the ultimate result that Belasco and De Mille were commissioned to write the next new play required, for the following season, which was to be one constructed as a starring vehicle for Edward H. Sothern, who had been “inherited” by the Lyceum management under a contract with Helen Dauvray.