The Life of David Belasco; Vol. 2

AN ANCIENT USAGE.

Several of Shakespeare’s plays were based by him on plays of earlier date, by other authors. Dryden borrowed freely from Spanish plays and sometimes from Corneille and MoliÈre,—a fact which caused Scott to remark (Preface to “The Assignation”) that “originality consists in the mode of treating a subject more than in the subject itself.” English dramatists, from Wycherly onward, have freely borrowed from MoliÈre. Fielding, there is reason to believe, derived an occasional hint from the great Frenchman, as also from Thomas Murphy. Goldsmith was a little indebted to Wycherly. Hoadley borrowed from Farquhar; Steele from Bickerstaff; Colman from Murphy; Sheridan from both Wycherly and Congreve, and perhaps from his mother’s play of “The Discovery” and her novel of “Sydney Biddulph”; Boucicault from many French sources and some English ones. I would not be understood as approving or defending that practice in dramatic authorship: on the contrary, in the whole course of my long service as a dramatic critic and historian I have condemned it. These words, written by me many years ago, relative to Boucicault, indicate my view of the practice:

Dramatic authorship, indeed, seems to have been regarded by him,—and by many other playwriters,—as a species by itself, exempt from obligation to moral law. The bard who should “convey” Milton’s “Lycidas” or Wordsworth’s great “Ode,” and, after making a few changes in the text and introducing a few new lines, publish it as a composition “original” with himself, would be deemed and designated a literary thief. The dramatist, taking his plots from any convenient source and rehashing incidents and speeches selected from old plays, can publish the fabric thus constructed as an “original drama,” and, so far from being discredited, can obtain reputation and profit by that proceeding. [“Old Friends,” by W. W.: 1909.]

If the large majority of dramatic authors,—Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, MoliÈre, Sheridan, and the rest, down to the present day,—be convicted of plagiarism on the ground that they have rehashed old material, that charge will stand against Belasco. But the dramatist who, with manifest truth, pleads, as Belasco can plead (and as I understand that he does plead), “a well-known, universal, recognized custom” cannot, justly, be singled out and stigmatized for plagiarism,—any more than a respectable Turk, resident in Constantinople, with four wives, can be singled out and stigmatized for bigamy. I no more approve the custom of what I call “playwrighting” than I approve or advocate polygamy,—but I speak for justice. Moreover, it is essential to be remembered that the number of basic situations, in fiction as in fact, is limited, and consideration of the method of combining and treating them must vitally affect the question of “originality.” To make an avowed adaptation of the work of another, or, with credit, to base a passage on suggestion derived from an incident in the work of another is not plagiarism.

The fair investigator of the charge of plagiarism against Belasco will find that it is twofold: it accuses him of appropriation from the works of other writers precedent to him, and of appropriation from other writers contemporary with him to whose writings he has had, or, as alleged, may have had, access.

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