Page:Representative American plays.pdf/592



Secret Service represents another phase of the Civil War from that portrayed in Shenandoah. It is also the most representative play of its author. William Gillette was born at Hartford, Connecticut, July 24, 1855, the son of Francis Gillette, at one time Senator of the United States. At the beginning of his stage career, he took special courses at Harvard and Boston Universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as early as 1875, acted in Across the Continent at New Orleans. His first professional appearance was at the Globe Theatre, Boston, as "Guzman" in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, September 15, 1875. After a number of stage successes, he produced his first play The Professor at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, June 1, 1881, in which he played "Professor Hopkins," and at the same theatre, on October 29, 1881, his play Esmeralda, founded on a story of Mrs. Francis Hodgson Burnett, was first performed. On September 29, 1884, he appeared at the Comedy Theatre, New York, in Digby's Secretary, adapted by him from Von Moser's Der Bibliothekar. The same night, Mr. A. M. Palmer brought out Mr. Charles Hawtrey's version of the same play, called The Private Secretary and a contest ensued. As Mr. Gillette had made the proper arrangements with the German playwright, while Mr. Hawtrey had not, a compromise resulted in his continuing his version, somewhat modified, under Mr. Palmer's management, under the title of The Private Secretary.

His first Civil War play, Held by the Enemy, was produced at the Criterion Theatre, Brooklyn on February 22, 1886, the part of "Thomas Henry Beene" being taken by Mr. Gillette. It was afterward produced at the Madison Square Theatre, New York City, in August, 1886. The play is laid in the South, and has as its main interest the love of a Southern girl for a Northern soldier. It was acted at the Princess Theatre, London, April 2, 1887. A Legal Wreck, a play dealing with the life in a sea coast town in New England, was first played at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, August 14, 1888. All the Comforts of Home, an amusing farce comedy, adapted from the German, was produced at the Boston Museum, March 3, 1890, and next came Mr. Wilkinson's Widows, a similar type of play, depicting the complications consequent upon a man marrying two women, supposedly on the same day. Its first New York production was at Proctor's Theatre, March 30, 1891. Too Much Johnson, his next important play, a clever farce, was first produced in Holyoke, Massachusetts, October 25, 1894, and was put on at the Standard Theatre, New York City, November 26, 1894.