ntment through the fact that at the moment some Chicago
anarchists had been on trial, and were condemned to death. Writing of
the incident, William Dean Howells recalls that:

At the house of Judge Pryor, in 1887, several of us came
together in sympathy with your father, who was trying--or had
vainly tried--to get the United States Supreme Court to
grant the Chicago anarchists a new trial. With your father I
believed that the men had been convicted on an unjust ruling,
and condemned for their opinions, not for a proven crime. I
remember your father's wrathful fervour, and the instances he
alledged of police brutality. [Letter to Mr. Percy Mackaye.]

In a published interview, Mackaye expressed his concern for the case;
but he likewise was reticent about making theatre capital out of it.
He is reported to have said:

The play was first called "Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy." Then I
thought "Anarchy" would be the best title, and under that
I produced it in Buffalo. After its production, the Chicago
anarchists were hanged, and, to avoid a possible charge of
trading on that event, I went back to my first title. Later,
however, the subtitle, "Anarchy," was gradually reduced to
smaller lettering and finally dropped.

The success of the play on its first night was a double triumph, for
twelve hundred leading citizens had signed an invitation to have it
given in Mackaye's native city, and the evening was a kind of public
testimony to his position. This was one of the rare instances of an
American dramatist receiving such recognition. Mackaye assumed the
title-role, and, supporting him were Frederick de Belleville, Eben
Plympton, Sidney Drew, Julian Mitchell, May Irwin, and Genevieve
Lytton. Commenting on the occasion, the Buffalo _Courier_ said:

It was not as a playwright alone that his friends honour Mr.
Mackaye. It may be said of him with strict justice that he
is one of the few men of our day who have brought to the
much-abused theatre the intelligence, the skill, the learning
and the genius that it so much needs in an era of speculators
and buffoons. He has always been able and willing to take the
pen or the rostrum, whether at Harvard or at Steinway Hall, to
expound the principles upon which he has so assiduously worked
for the past fifteen years.

Mackaye had chosen his theme in the same spirit that Judge Conrad had
selected