July 31 Tuesday – The play Ah Sin was presented by Augustin Daly and opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, NYC. The cast of main characters included: Miss Dora Goldthwaite as SHIREY TEMPEST, Miss Mary Wells as MRS. TEMPEST, Mrs. G.H. Gilbert as MRS. PLUNKETT, Miss Edith Blande as CAROLINE ANASTASIA PLUNKETT, and Mr. Henry Crisp as HENRY YORK [Duckett 151].
Bret Harte was unable to attend, and Sam made remarks at the conclusion of the third act that would cause a permanent split between himself and Harte, that is, if it had not already taken place.
This is a very remarkable play. You may not have noticed it, but I assure you that it is so. The construction of this play was a work of great labor and research—and plagiarism.
When this play was originally completed, it was so long, and so wide, and so deep (in places), and so comprehensive, that it would have taken two weeks to play it…. the manager said no, that wouldn’t do; to play a play two weeks long would be sure to get us in trouble with the government because the Constitution of the United States says you shan’t inflict cruel and inhuman punishments. So he set to work to cut it down, and cart the refuse to the paper mill…The more he cut out of it, the better it got, right along. He cut out, and cut out, and cut out, and I do believe this would be one of the best plays in the world today if his strength had held out, and he could have gone on and cut out the rest of it [Fatout, MT Speaking 104-5].
Harte reacted heatedly to Sam’s statements, putting them to a personal animus and jealousy, since Harte felt he’d done the lion’s share of the work. The critics, however, were more in line with Sam’s opinion than Bret’s [Walker, P. 188].
After the first performance, The New York Times wrote:
The representation of the play called “Ah Sin” at the Fifth Avenue Theatre yesterday evening afforded frequent gratification to a very large audience. The fact that a good many spectators grew perceptibly weary as the performance approached an end, and the still more significant fact that the audience left the house without making the slightest demonstration of pleasure when the curtain fell upon the last scene, may imply that the piece, as a whole, is scarcely likely to secure a really strong hold upon the favor of the public…Humorists, romance writers, and poets are never born and seldom become dramatists, and both authors of “Ah Sin”, are now truing their ’prentice hand in seeking fame and fortune through the medium of the stage [Railton].
Sam wrote to the night editor of the New York World, asking if they’d be so kind to forward a copy of his curtain speech to the Boston Post [MTLE 2: 113]. The play ran five weeks in New York and then went on the road [Willis 106].