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 “Jack Cade.”  He wished to measure the danger of liberty, but he did so indirectly, for the play does not abound in long philosophical flights of definition and warning.  He himself confessed that the subject was defined only once, in these words, spoken by the hero to the woman he loves, when she is pleading with him to flee from France.  He silences her by saying: 

“I must stay to war with beasts who bring disgrace upon our noble cause.  The torch of liberty, which should light mankind to progress, when left in madmen’s hands, kindles that blaze of anarchy whose only end is ashes.”

This indicates very distinctly that Mackaye’s stand for the Chicago anarchists was not due to sympathy with their political monomania, but rather championed justice which, only when rightly used, will stem the tide of overwrought minds.  With the execution of these men, he believed the cause of anarchy would be strengthened by the general impression gained of their martyrdom.  His attitude was widely discussed, and “Paul Kauvar” became a visible demonstration of anarchy gone mad.

Of the component elements in his play, Mackaye left a full record.  It is worth preserving as indication of his motive.  In an interview he said: 

For many years I have devoted myself to the mechanical, as well as the artistic side of the theatre, in the hope that by improving stage mechanism I might help to develop the artistic ensemble essential to high art results in the theatre.  To this end I have made numerous inventions, and designed and built several theatres. [The Madison Square and the Lyceum Theatres.]

In this work I have been almost daily in contact with labourers and mechanics of every kind, and this contact stirred in me a very deep and sincere sympathy with these classes of men.  I was led to realize the greatness of obligation under which the whole world is placed by the industry, ability and devotion to duty which characterizes by far the larger portion of the working classes.

At the same time, through relations intimate and confidential, I became conscious that certain foreign ideas—­the natural outgrowth of excessive poverty and despotism in the Old World—­were insinuating themselves into the hearts and minds of American labourers to an extent perilous to their own prosperity