real. This explanation, however, does not satisfy me. I am sure that
I did see her. Other experiences of a kindred nature served to
strengthen my belief in the naturalness of what we call the
supernatural. I decided to write a play dealing with the return of
the dead: so it followed that when I was in need of a new play for
David Warfield, I chose this subject. Slight of figure, unworldly,
simple in all his ways, Warfield was the very man to bring a message
back from the other world. Warfield has always appeared to me as a
character out of one of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was, to my mind, the
one man to impersonate a spirit and make it seem real. So my desire
to write a play of the dead, and my belief in Warfield's artistry
culminated in "The Return of Peter Grimm." The subject was very
difficult, and the greatest problem confronting me was to preserve
the illusion of a spirit while actually using a living person. The
apparition of the ghost in "Hamlet" and in "Macbeth," the spirits
who return to haunt _Richard III_, and other ghosts of the theatre
convinced me that green lights and dark stages with spot-lights
would not give the illusion necessary to this play. All other
spirits have been visible to someone on the stage, but_ PETER _was
visible to none, save the dog (who wagged his tail as his master
returned from the next world) and to _Frederik_, the nephew, who was
to see him but for a second._ PETER _was to be in the same room with
the members of the household, and to come into close contact with
them. They were to feel his influence without seeing him. He was to
move among them, even appear to touch them, but they were to look
past him or above him--never into his face. He must, of course, be
visible to the audience. My problem, then, was to reveal a dead man
worrying about his earthly home, trying to enlist the aid of
anybody--everybody--to take his message. Certainly no writer ever
chose a more difficult task; I must say that I was often very much