was the one for the second act of Eugene Walter's 'The Easiest Way'. A
boarding-house room on the top floor cannot be treated in any other way
than as a boarding-house room. And should I take liberties with what we
know for a fact exists in New York, on Seventh Avenue, just off Broadway,
then I am a bad producer and do not know my business. I do not say there
is no suggestion in realism; it is unwise to clutter the stage with
needless detail. But we cannot idealize a little sordid ice-box where a
working girl keeps her miserable supper; we cannot symbolize a broken jug
standing in a wash-basin of loud design. Those are the necessary evils of
a boarding-house, and I must be true to them'."

One will have to give Mr. Belasco this credit, that whatever he is, he is
_it_ to the bent of his powers. Had he lived in Elizabeth's day, he would
have been an Elizabethan heart and soul. But his habit is formed as a
producer, and he conforms the "new" art to this habit as completely as
Reinhardt Reinhardtized the morality play, "Everyman," or Von Hofmannsthal
Teutonized "Elektra."

"The Return of Peter Grimm" has been chosen for the present collection. It
represents a Belasco interest and conviction greater than are to be found
in any of his other plays. While there are no specific claims made for the
fact that_ PETER _materializes after his death, it is written with
plausibility and great care. The psychic phenomena are treated as though
real, and our sympathy for_ PETER _when he returns is a human sympathy for
the inability of a spirit to get his message across. The theme is not
etherealized; one does not see through a mist dimly. There was not even an
attempt, in the stage production of the piece, which occurred at the
Belasco Theatre, New York, on October 17, 1911, to use the "trick" of
gauze and queer lights; there was only one supreme thing done--to make the
audience feel that_ PETER _was on a plane far removed from the physical,