The Master (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Master

Dear Arnold Daly:

No publication of this play would be complete that failed to acknowledge its debt to you. And that debt, strangely enough, does not consist in the fact that you acted the play so admirably, but that you acted it at all.

Looking backward, it may not seem to the casual observer that there was any especial merit in having sponsored a play which won a critical reception as overwhelmingly favorable as that accorded "The Master." But the casual observer is not a competent witness of theatrical affairs. He does not realize how utterly the American stage is given over to the broad, the sentimental, the commonplace. He cannot know, as you know, how scrupulously the average American "star" actor shrinks from a rle that savors of the intellectual.

The adventures of this play in manuscript - and I daresay many meritorious play-manuscripts have fared worse - may elucidate the point. I finished the adaptation at St. Ives in Cornwall during the Summer of 1912. On my return to this country, in October of the same year, it was offered to a very prominent New York manager, and immediately accepted for production. This manager was most enthusiastic about the play until someone - I think it was the third assistant publicity manager - whispered the fatal word "Highbrow!" and his enthusiasm forthwith subsided.

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