the first
act at all. He could only be talked about as Lilian's lover. John
Strebelow must be present alone in the eyes and sympathy of the
audience. If Routledge did not appear until the second act, the audience
would regard him as an interloper; it would rather resent his presence
than otherwise, and would be easily reconciled to his death in the next
act. It was taking an unfair advantage of a young lover; but there was
no help for it. Even if Harold had appeared in the first act, the
quarrel-scene would have been impossible. He might have made love to
Lilian, perhaps, or even kissed her, and the audience would have
forgiven me reluctantly for having her love another man afterward. But
if the two young people had a lover's quarrel in the presence of the
audience, no power on earth could have convinced any man or woman in the
house that they were not intended for each other by the eternal decrees
of divine Providence.

I have now given you the revised story of this play as it was produced
at the Union Square Theater in New York, under the name of the 'Banker's
Daughter.' I have said nothing about the comic scenes or characters,
because the various changes did not affect them in any way that concerns
the principles of dramatic art. They are almost identically the same in
both versions. Now, if you please, we will cross the ocean. I have had
many long discussions with English managers on the practice in London of
adapting foreign plays, not merely to the English stage, but to English
life, with English characters. The Frenchmen of a French play become, as
a rule, Englishmen; so do Italians and Spaniards and Swedes. They
usually, however, continue to express foreign ideas and to act like
foreigners. In speaking of such a transplanted character, I may be
permitted to trifle with a sacred text:

The manager has said it,
But it's hardly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
For he ought to have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps I-tali-an!
But in spite of Art's temptations,
To belong to other nations,
He becomes an Englishman!

Luckily, the American characters of the 'Banker's Daughter', with one
exception, could be twisted into very fair Englishmen, with only a faint
suspicion of our Yankee accent. Mr. James Alberry, one of the most
brilliant men in England, author of the 'Two Roses,' was engaged to make
them as nearly English as he could. The frie