The prosperity of “May Blossom” much facilitated the progress of Belasco toward the attainment of his ambitious object, which was the control of a high-class theatre in New York; but he was yet to meet with disappointments and hardships and to undergo many trials. The venomous practice of stigmatizing him as a plagiarist, which has long prevailed, began almost coincidentally with the success of “May Blossom.” It should here be mentioned again that this play was transformed by him from an earlier play of his, called “Sylvia’s Lovers,” written about 187(5?), and first produced, in that year, at Piper’s Opera House, in Virginia City. When he had prepared it in a new and definitive form for presentment at the Madison Square Theatre he showed the manuscript to Howard P. Taylor, a writer for “The New York Dramatic Mirror,” at that time edited by Harrison Grey Fiske, and consulted him as a reputed expert relative to historical details of the Civil War. That person had offered to the managers of the Madison Square Theatre a play called “Caprice” (produced August 11, 1884, at the New Park Theatre, New York, by John A. Stevens and the author, in partnership--Minnie Maddern, now Mrs. Fiske, being the star), which those managers rejected. After “May Blossom” had been successfully presented, Taylor accused Belasco of having caused the Mallory brothers to reject “Caprice,” and also with having stolen ideas from that play,--which, as stage manager and adviser of the Madison Square Theatre, he had seen,--and used them in “May Blossom.” Belasco urgently requested him to make the accusation in court, but Taylor, though he long and maliciously persisted in publishing his defamatory charge, would never bring the matter to a legal test. On the occasion of the 1000th performance of “May Blossom,” at a dinner given by Daniel Frohman and “Harry” Miner, in celebration of the event, Harrison Grey Fiske, who, at his own request, had been included among the speakers, stated that he felt he had a duty to perform in tendering an apology for the unfounded accusations repeatedly made by Taylor, in “The Dramatic Mirror,” impugning the integrity of Belasco as an author and a man.
This was the original cast of “May Blossom,” at the Madison Square: