Morse’s play was not the fabric customarily offered at Oberammergau, nor was it in any particular an imitation. In the declared opinion of Morse, an apostate Hebrew, that concoction had been devised and performed for the purpose of arousing and stimulating hostility against the Jews, and he profoundly disapproved of it. His purpose, he avowed, was simply to present an epitome of the life of Jesus, as described in the gospels. He had taken the thrifty precaution to read his play before an assemblage of the Roman Catholic clergy of San Francisco (the Protestant ecclesiastics not accepting his liberal invitation to enjoy that luxury), and it had received their approbation. Several of the holy fathers, indeed, had evinced their approval of it by kissing him on both his cheeks, and Archbishop Allemany, of San Francisco, had not only sanctioned the precious composition but had inserted several passages into the text with his own sacerdotal hand. The play was comprised in ten acts (at least, that was its form when, in 1880, in the vestibule of the Park Theatre, Broadway and Twenty-second Street, New York, I heard half of it read by the author and was permitted to inspect the whole manuscript), and it consisted of a long series of dialogues accompanied by pictures and tableaux. I know not whether the whole ten acts were vouchsafed to the San Francisco audience, but, according to contemporaneous records, the play gave much offence to many persons and was incentive to some public disturbances and breaches of the peace: ignorant Irish who witnessed it were so distempered that, on going forth, some of them, from time to time, assaulted peaceable Jews in the public streets--much in the spirit of the irate mariner who chanced to hear first of the Crucifixion nearly 2,000 years after it occurred. Belasco records that a committee of citizens called on Maguire and “worked upon his credulous nature until he believed that he was marked by the devil for sacrifice and would meet with instant death if he did not withdraw the play,” and that “in a fever of fear he closed the theatre,”--March 11. A little later, however, Maguire’s torrid temperature appears to have abated, and the play was again brought forward, April 15, at the Grand Opera House, but this time it was met by an injunction, issued from the Fourth (Municipal) District Court, Judge Robert Francis Morrison presiding, which, being disregarded, was followed by the arrest of O’Neill (who was imprisoned), April 21, and of his professional associates, all of them, subsequently, being convicted of contempt of court and fined for that offence,--O’Neill $50 and each of the other players $5. Belasco escaped arrest through the kindly interference of the local Sheriff, a friend of his, who forcibly kept him away from the theatre when the other participants in the representation were being taken into police custody. The following notice appeared in “The Alta California,” April 22, 1879: