“The Phantom Rival,” adapted by Leo Ditrichstein from an Austrian original by Ferenc Molnar, postulates that a woman idealizes the man whom she first loves and never forgets him; and, by presenting her extravagant notions about him in a dream and then showing,—in an individual case,—that he turns out to be a commonplace person, implies that the ideals founded in youth and cherished by females in after life are mistakes and absurd. It may be so. It probably is true that all ideals of human perfection are unsound and even ridiculous. It certainly is true that the longer we live and the more we see of human nature the more disappointed we are, in ourselves as well as in others, till we come at last to believe, as Lockhart wrote:

The “visible dream” is an old device of the theatre and a good one. It was exceedingly well managed in this play—the only blemish, indeed, being a certain effect of monotony which, being inherent in the dramatic fabric, was ineradicable in the stage exhibition of it. The principal persons in this drama, which centres around “the dream,” are an American woman, Mrs. Marshall, and an Austrian, named Sascha Taticheff. In youth they dwelt in the same Brooklyn boarding house. Propinquity had a usual consequence. The girl, romantic, admired the youth and became fond of him. The youth was flattered and reciprocated. Then, suddenly, he went away, called back to his native land, taking a sentimental farewell and writing a letter filled with ardent vaporings. Years have passed. The girl has met and loved and married a successful American lawyer; they dwell together; they would be happy, in a staid, conventional way, were it not for the preposterous, boorish jealousy of the husband. He suspects his wife of having had an earlier lover and he tortures himself and her because of this suspicion, this paltry jealousy of “the phantom rival” of a youthful attachment. And then, by chance, in a public restaurant, Taticheff and Mrs. Marshall, who is with her husband, meet again. Scarce able to recall each other, they exchange formal bows. Having returned to their home Marshall badgers his wife about the stranger in the restaurant until, exasperated, she admits that she once knew Taticheff and was fond of him; and, finally, she surrenders to her husband, who reads it, the farewell letter of her youthful sweetheart. The sentimental folly of that screed so amuses Marshall that he declares himself cured of his jealousy, speaks of the writer with contempt, and, laughing heartily, goes out to a business conference. The wife, incensed by this cavalier attitude toward the object of her girlhood affection, rereads his perfervid protestations: then, falling asleep, she has a dream in which her Sascha returns to her, at a fashionable ball, in, successively, the different characters suggested by his letter:—first, as an all-conquering military hero; then as a world-dominating statesman; next as a peerless singer, the idol of two hemispheres; finally,—after she has been turned out of doors by an indignant hostess because of the scandal of her conduct with her multiform lover,—in the guise of a wretched, one-armed street-beggar, upon whom her husband makes a furious assault, whereupon, shrieking, she awakes. Then, her husband returning with the actual Sascha (who proves to be subordinately concerned with the business which Marshall has in hand), she is left alone with him. The interview that then occurs between them is much the cleverest passage in the play. The woman, rather forlornly, tries to discover in the man before her some trace of the romantic glamour with which she had fancifully invested him, but finds only a plebeian dullard, stupidly embarrassed, inveterately selfish and petty, and much interested in her husband’s brandy. At last, when she is relieved of his tiresome presence, she drops his long-cherished letters into the fire and joins her husband in his contemptuous amusement at her sentimental memories and the sorry figure of his “phantom rival.”—Belasco’s preservation of an unreal, dream-like atmosphere throughout the dream scenes of this play was perfect. And, of the kind, nothing so good as the acting of Miss Laura Hope Crews and Mr. Ditrichstein in the last scene of it has been visible on our Stage for many years. “The Phantom Rival” was first produced, September 28, 1914, at Ford’s Opera House, Baltimore: on October 6, it was presented at the Belasco Theatre, New York. This was the original cast: