Representative American Plays/Secret Service

by William Gillette

Layout 2

SECRET SERVICE
A DRAMA OF "THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY"
IN FOUR ACTS
BY
William Gillette

Copyright, 1898, by William Gillette
All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved under the International Copyright Act. Performance forbidden and right of representation reserved. Applications for the right of performing this piece with amateurs must he made to the publisher, Samuel French, New York. Applications for professional performances must be made to Messrs. Sanger and Jordan, 1432 Broadway, New York.

Reprinted by permission of Mr. William Gillette, and by special arrangement with Samuel French.

 

SECRET SERVICE

Secret Service represents another phase of the Civil War from that portrayed in Shenandoah. It is also the most representative play of its author. William Gillette was born at Hartford, Connecticut, July 24, 1855, the son of Francis Gillette, at one time Senator of the United States. At the beginning of his stage career, he took special courses at Harvard and Boston Universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as early as 1875, acted in Across the Continent at New Orleans. His first professional appearance was at the Globe Theatre, Boston, as "Guzman" in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady, September 15, 1875. After a number of stage successes, he produced his first play The Professor at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, June 1, 1881, in which he played "Professor Hopkins," and at the same theatre, on October 29, 1881, his play Esmeralda, founded on a story of Mrs. Francis Hodgson Burnett, was first performed. On September 29, 1884, he appeared at the Comedy Theatre, New York, in Digby's Secretary, adapted by him from Von Moser's Der Bibliothekar. The same night, Mr. A. M. Palmer brought out Mr. Charles Hawtrey's version of the same play, called The Private Secretary and a contest ensued. As Mr. Gillette had made the proper arrangements with the German playwright, while Mr. Hawtrey had not, a compromise resulted in his continuing his version, somewhat modified, under Mr. Palmer's management, under the title of The Private Secretary.

His first Civil War play, Held by the Enemy, was produced at the Criterion Theatre, Brooklyn on February 22, 1886, the part of "Thomas Henry Beene" being taken by Mr. Gillette. It was afterward produced at the Madison Square Theatre, New York City, in August, 1886. The play is laid in the South, and has as its main interest the love of a Southern girl for a Northern soldier. It was acted at the Princess Theatre, London, April 2, 1887. A Legal Wreck, a play dealing with the life in a sea coast town in New England, was first played at the Madison Square Theatre, New York, August 14, 1888. All the Comforts of Home, an amusing farce comedy, adapted from the German, was produced at the Boston Museum, March 3, 1890, and next came Mr. Wilkinson's Widows, a similar type of play, depicting the complications consequent upon a man marrying two women, supposedly on the same day. Its first New York production was at Proctor's Theatre, March 30, 1891. Too Much Johnson, his next important play, a clever farce, was first produced in Holyoke, Massachusetts, October 25, 1894, and was put on at the Standard Theatre, New York City, November 26, 1894. For this play he borrowed from La Plantation Thomasin, by Maurice Ordonneau, the idea of the trip to a tropical island, but the main plot and the central characters were original. After a successful career in this country, Mr. Gillette appeared as "Augustus Billings" in this play in London, at the Garrick Theatre, April 18, 1898. In the meantime he had produced Secret Service, and a very successful farce comedy, Because She Loved Him So, from the French play, Jalousie, of Bisson and Leclerq, played first in New Haven, October 28, 1898. After a "tryout" at Wilkes-Barre and Buffalo, Sherlock Holmes was first put on in New York City at the Garrick Theatre, November 6, 1899, and after touring this country, Mr. Gillette began a long run in the title role at the Lyceum Theatre in London, on September 9, 1901. He next appeared in a one-act play. The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, on March 23, 1905, at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, and on September 13, 1905, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, he played for the first time the character of "Dr. Carrington" in his comedy of Clarice. Returning to this country he toured in Clarice and then appeared at the Criterion Theatre, New York, October 19, 1908, in the character of "Maurice Brachard" in Samson, adapted by him from the French of Henri Bernstein. His last play, Electricity, produced first at the Park Theatre, Boston, September 26, 1910, was an attempt to make use of modern electrical devices in a farcical situation but was not successful. Other plays of Mr. Gillette of less significance are She (1887), Settled Out of Court (1892), Ninety Days (1893), The Red Owl (1907), That Little Affair of Boyd's (1908), Ticey (1908), The Robber (1909), Among Thieves (1909). Mr. Gillette has continued his career on the stage, taking part in the all-star revival of Diplomacy in 1914-15 and appearing in his own plays in 1915-16.

Secret Service was first performed at the Broad Street Theatre, Philadelphia, as The Secret Service, May 13, 1895. It was at first only moderately successful, but when it was put on at the Garrick Theatre, New York, October 5, 1896, Mr. Gillette appearing in the character of "Lewis Dumont" for the first time, it was a pronounced success. The play ran until March 6, 1897, when it was taken to Boston and afterward on tour. On May 15, 1897, Mr. Gillette made his first appearance on the London stage at the Adelphi Theatre in this play, at the beginning of a run which lasted till August 4. The play was acted by English companies afterward and a French version by Pierre Decourcelle was played at the Theatre de la Renaissance in Paris on October 2, 1897. During the season of 1915-16 Secret Service was revived with Mr. Gillette in the part of "Lewis Dumont." The exact number of performances up to the present day is 1791.

In Secret Service, Mr. Gillette carried to its highest point the conception of a cool, resourceful man of action. This same character appears in serious situations in Held by the Enemy and Sherlock Holmes, and in farcical situations in All the Comforts of Home and Too Much Johnson. It is the unifying quality in Mr. Gillette's work, and the form of realism which he has contributed to the stage in America is distinctly important and distinctly American.

Esmeralda, Held by the Enemy, Too Much Johnson, and Secret Service have been published by Samuel French and All the Comforts of Home by Dick and Fitzgerald. Electricity appeared in The Drama, for December, 1913, and will be reprinted shortly by Samuel French. A Legal Wreck has been published in novel form. For a lecture by Mr. Gillette "On the Illusion of the First Time in Acting" see the publications of the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, Series 2, Vol. 1, New York, 1915.

For biographical details see Who's Who in the Theatre (1912), and for information concerning the plays, Plays of the Present, by J. B. Clapp and E. F. Edgett, New York, 1902, to which the present editor acknowledges his indebtedness, as also to the courtesy of Mr. Francis E. Reid, of the Empire Theatre. The editor, however, is indebted in the largest measure to Mr. Gillette himself who has furnished him accurate information concerning the dates and circumstances of production of the plays, much of which has hitherto been unavailable in print.

For criticism see Norman Hapgood, The Stage in America, 1901, Chap. 3, pp. 61-79.

The text has been revised with the greatest care by Mr. Gillette, and the alterations have been so marked that this edition of Secret Service may almost be looked upon as a new creation. It represents, so far as is possible in print, the actual stage production as Mr. Gillette directs it. For this reason, although its form is different from that of the other plays in the volume, the editor has reprinted the manuscript exactly as Mr. Gillette prepared it, feeling sure that readers of the book will be interested in seeing the interpretation of his own work by a dramatist who is also an actor and stage director.

For permission to use the text the editor is indebted to Mr. Gillette and to Samuel French.