The Washington herald., 1910-12-25
HIS LIFE BLOOD IN THE CITY
wished To Finish His Last Play Be-
fore He Died,


III were TO die before I finished The
City / would never rest in my grave
With this fateful utterance. clyde Fitch,
the late satirist. cast his comedies out Of
his heart and bent all his energy TO the
completion of an ibsea tragedy. a grisly.
posthumous play, whose destiny he should
never know
Perhaps he tempted fate when he tried
TO live paradox, or perhaps the effort 10
turn comedy into tragedy killed him, but
aside from the grewsome story the terri
| BILE traffic in situations and abnormal
characters, the play is a tragedy within a
tragedy, which only one man knows and
appreciates. and that man is FULLY Mar
shall. Nightly he receives the applause
and Ovations the dead author might have
/ been accorded had he lived.
Mr.. Fitch" says Mr. Marshall start
ed The City as a satire He thought the
old-fashioned country people and some Of
the situations furnished material for a
! brilliant comedy; il was not until he had
! begun the second act that he changed his
| plans and evolved the tragedy. He had
always wanted to do something worth
understanding that would live. he
was a man who worked on as many as
I 1EANu ulLtitllA pay at DliIt nuA AiAClA
| he became fired with the ambition TO COM
| plete The City he let them all drop and
worked feverishly, taking the best of his
! half-begun comedies to rear this tragedy.
| Once ne said Iaughingly, If / were to die
| before / finished The City / could not
rest in my grave.
Mr. Fitch liked this role of the half
crazed dope fiend which l am playing.
| He read me the play and asked me what
l thought OF it,
Il told him / thought it would live. AT
| the time I realized that he had deviated
! from his usual custom in attempting to
handle such a ponderous theme. Usually
| his plays are a series of epigrams strung
/ on a thread; The City was a heavy
| theme, but Mr. Fitch provided a rope
! for IT, Before he went to Paris he asked
me if / would stage it for him. I de-
clined at the time, but later consented.
"Once again Fate seemed to have an
eye on the destiny of the tragedy, for,
| contrary to a time-honored rule, the
| play was absolutely finished before it was
read This was rare in Mr.. Fitch, who
| was notorious for the way he sent his
/ plays 10 be read
"Often a rehearsal would be called with
/ the last act of the play unwritten, not
! even bcSun, ana Only lew NpIAS pl
| dialogue sprinkled through the sketch.
/ But The City the predestined chef
| d'oeuvre, was neatly finished TO the end
of the final page.
THE playwright respected the tragedy,
and intended that nothing should ever
/ arise whereby il would suffer from its
completion at the hands of strangers He
! spent his summer in Europe carefully
planning its future as a man plans the
/ future of his children. He realized he
/ had bitten off more than a playwright
twice as daring would have attempted.
/ Il shall never forget how seriously he
| took it. nor how much of his own life he
! put into it,
THE audience can see that themselves
| The actors. too. have worked harder for
| the dead author. even. than for the living
man; we have ali tried to contribute to
/ the success of The City, although ]
think that Fitch had his convictions about
it before he read it 70 his company.