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, by the ease and naturalness with which he slipped past objects, looked through people, and was unheeded by those whom he most wanted to influence.  The remarkable unity of idea sustained by Mr. Belasco as manager, and by Mr. Warfield as actor, was largely instrumental in making the play a triumph.  The playwright did not attempt to create supernatural mood; he did not resort to natural tricks such as Maeterlinck used in “L’Intruse,” or as Mansfield employed in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”  He reduced what to us seems, at the present moment, a complicated explanation of a psychic condition to its simple terms, and there was nothing strange to the eye or unusual in the situation.  One cannot approach the theme of the psychic without a personal concern.  Sardou’s “Spiritisme” was the culmination of years of investigation; the subject was one with which Belasco likewise has had much to do during the past years.

It is a privilege to be able to publish “Peter Grimm.”  Thus far not many of the Belasco plays are available in reading form.  “May Blossom” and “Madame Butterfly” are the only ones.  “Peter Grimm” has been novelized—­in the day, now fortunately past, when a play was novelized in preference to perpetuating its legitimate form.  And excerpts from the dialogue have been used.  But this is the first time the complete text has appeared and it has been carefully edited by the author himself.  In addition to which Mr. Belasco has written the following account of “Peter’s” evolution, to be used in this edition.