HAZEL KIRKE
by JAMES STEELE MACKAYE

Steele Mackaye wrote this play "expressly for" the new Madison Square Theatre which he had totally renovated and remodeled with his elevator stage. The opening was delayed for several months because of "structural problems," so the play, called the The Iron Will, toured Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington where it failed to draw a crowd despite good critical notices. The Mallory brothers, who owned the theatre became concerned at the prospect of opening their costly new edifice with a play that had done so badly, and had Mackaye prepare a production of Masks and Faces with Rose Coghlan in the part of Peg Woffington. Mackaye was determined to open the theatre with his play so he renamed it Hazel Kirke, starring the charming Effie Ellsler (below right) in the title role with C.W. Couldock as her iron-willed father, Thomas Whiffen as Pittacus Green, dashing Eban Plympton as Arthur Carringford (Lord Travers) and Mrs. Thomas Whiffen as Mercy, and on February 4, 1880, it began a run of 486 consecutive performances closing May 31, 1881. Masks and Faces was of course withdrawn, and poor Rose Coghlan remained on the payroll for the length of her thirty-five week contract in oblivion. She brought suit against the management for keeping her off the stage, but the court disallowed her claim.

After the first year of the run, the Mallorys hired Gustave Frohman to organize the first of many touring companies, and by 1883, the play had been performed more than two thousand times utilizing Steele Mackaye's revolutionary concept of multiple companies. The play proved so popular that soon the script had been pirated and word of unauthorized performances reached New York. Louisville lawyer Marc Klaw was retained to investigate prosecution of these breaches of copywright. Since there was no federal copywright law, this was rather like battling the Hydra, the pirates simply pulling up stakes and moving to another state. When it was concluded that it was not cost effective to go after the pirates, Klaw was put in charge of the Number 2 company. After the success of Hazel Kirke on the road, as many as three companies of each successive play at the Madison Square went out on tour.

The play itself is in four acts, though the custom in those days was not to leave one's seat, since as George Blumenthal pointed out, "ladies smoked no cigarettes, and gentlemen did not smoke cigars when they went to the theater." The scene changes and therefore the intermissions took a mere 55 seconds while the elevator changed positions so, the wait between the acts was minimal, and became a selling point. The experience at the Madison Square in those days was probably not unlike going to a movie today with the expectation that you won't leave your seat until the movie is over. The Madison Square even delayed its curtain time to 8:30 from the otherwise standard 8:00.

The story of the play is a melodramatic one, though Mackaye's dialogue is surprisingly real and playable. Young Hazel Kirke had promised to marry her father's benefactor, Squire Rodney, when she was too young to marry. Her kindly old father, Dunstan Kirke, who runs a mill leased from Rodney, had saved a great many people's lives by rescuing them from the river. One such was a handsome young man called Arthur Carringford who, at the rise, has been in residence at the Kirke home being nursed back to health by young Hazel. The two have, of course, fallen in love. After a complicated series of circumstances in the first act, Rodney steps aside seeing that the much younger Arthur has won Hazel's heart. But her father is adamant that his word not be broken. The sequence at the first act curtain veers heavily into old fashioned melodrama:

DUNSTAN: Begone! Thou misbegotten bairn, begone. I cast thee out adrift, adrift forever from thy feyther's (sic) love, and may my eyes no more behold thee.
HAZEL: (Extending he arms toward MERCY with a cry.) Mother! Mother!
DUNSTAN: (Waving her back.) Stand back; she's lost to thee forever!
(Hazel recoils into ARTHUR'S arms; he leans over her.)

The second act is set at the happy couple's home "Fairy Grove" and all seems idyllic though Hazel is troubled by the alienation of her father and Arthur is plagued by guilt for deceiving his mother about his marriage to Hazel and continuing to conceal the marriage from his mother because of her ill health. In short order it is learned that apparently through the good (or ill?) offices of a faithful servant, Barney, the marriage took place not in England but across the border in Scotland, and is therefore null and void. With Arthur away, Hazel learns of this from Arthur's mother and flees as "Lady Travers staggers and falls back rigid in her chair" at the curtain.

The third act is back at the Mill; Dunstan is now blind; Hazel has disappeared and financial difficulties once more face the Kirke household. The iron-willed Dunstan cannot bring himself to ask Rodney for more help and so he has resolved to leave. Meantime, Hazel returns and sees the sorry state of her family and blames herself. Rodney offers her his hand again, no questions asked and apparently no consummation required, but Hazel refuses unless her father would accept this sacrifice from her and forgive her. Rodney proposes the match to the now blind Dunstan who remains obstinate and after a while, poor Hazel rushes out to throw herself into the river.

In the fourth act, all is set right. Arthur has returned and rescued Hazel from drowning; Rodney gives her to Arthur. Dunstan forgives his daughter when she is so miraculously restored to him and even the minor characters are suitably coupled in accordance with poetic justice and we all go home bien content.