Persons who care to observe how disruption wrought by poverty, suffering, and weakness, in the home of an affectionate husband, wife and child, can be treated with poignant dramatic effect should study the old play of “Belphegor; or, The Mountebank,”--in which, as _Belphegor_, Charles Dillon gave one of the most beautiful and touching performances it has ever been my fortune to see. The triumphant use of such material can also be studied in the late Charles Klein’s “The Music Master,” as augmented, rectified, and produced by Belasco, with David Warfield in its central part, _Herr von Barwig_. When revived, as altered and amended by Belasco, “Rudolph” was handsomely set on the stage, but Knight’s method of dressing and acting the principal part ruined any chance of success which it might have had. Knight became infatuated with the part of the _Tramp_, and he produced “Rudolph,” for the first time, in the Fall of 1886, at the Academy of Music, Cleveland. In 1887 Howard rewrote the play--receiving, as I understood, $3,000 for doing so,--and it was then produced at Hull, England, with Knight and his wife as stars, supported by members of Wilson Barrett’s company, from the Princess’ Theatre, London. In its revised form it was called “Baron Rudolph.” Knight was still dissatisfied with the structure of it, and, returning to America, desired that Howard should again revise it, but this Howard was unable to do, being preoccupied with labor on “The Henrietta,” for Robson and Crane (that play was produced for the first time at the Union Square Theatre, September 26, 1887), but, at his request, Belasco undertook a second revision. “My object,” he said, “was to do the work as nearly as possible in Howard’s way, and I must have succeeded pretty well, because when I took the script to him he said: ’You’ve caught my style, exactly!’ And he would not allow the piece to be produced as ’By Bronson Howard’; he insisted that I should have public credit as a co-author.” In its final form it bore Howard’s second title, “Baron Rudolph,” and, under the direction of Charles Frohman, representing Knight, and the stage management of Belasco, it was produced at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, New York, on October 24, 1887. “There was the chance for an immense popular success and a fortune in the piece,” Belasco said to me, “but Knight threw it all away. He insisted on making-up’ _Rudolph_, the tramp, in such a literal, dirty, repulsive manner that, in the recognition scene where the girl learns he is her father and has to embrace and kiss him, the audience, instead of being sympathetic, was disgusted. We argued and entreated with Knight: I told him, over and over and over, what would happen. But he couldn’t, or he wouldn’t, see it--and it happened!” The play failed, utterly; it was kept on the stage for four weeks and then withdrawn. Knight, first and last, lost a modest fortune on that play, and its ultimate failure broke him down. He and