Barrie J. M. - Peter Pan and Other Plays

OXFORD DRAMA LIBRARY

JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE was born at Kirriemuir in Angus, Scotland, in 1860. After attending Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh University, he joined the Nottingham Journal as leader writer in 1883. Two years later he went to London to seek a living as a freelance writer. Drawing on his mothers memories of her childhood years, he achieved early success with stories about his home town. The first such collection, Auld Licht Idylls, was published in 1888. His novel The Little Minister (1891) achieved great popularity, but from the 1890s onwards he turned most of his attention to the theatre. A succession of long-running plays brought Barrie wealth and critical acclaim. His most famous creation, Peter Pan, first appeared in the novel The Little White Bird (1902), and the play Peter Pan was first staged in 1904. Peter and Wendy followed seven years later. Barrie continued to enjoy great public recognition and success, but his private life was clouded by divorce and a series of bereavements, and he wrote less in his later years. His last play, The Boy David, was first performed in 1936, a few months before his death in 1937.

PETER HOLLINDALE is Senior Lecturer in English and Educational Studies at the University of York. He has written widely on Shakespeare and on childrens literature, and his publications include Choosing Books for Children (1974) and Ideology and the Childrens Book (1988). For Worlds Classics he has edited Barries Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy (1991) and Anna Sewells Black Beauty (1992).

MICHAEL CORDNER is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. He has edited editions of George Farquhars The Beaux Stratagem, the Complete Plays of Sir George Etherege, Four Comedies of Sir John Vanbrugh and, for the Worlds Classics series, Four Restoration Marriage Comedies. He has also co-edited English Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and is completing a book on The Comedy of Marriage 16601737.

PETER HOLLAND is Judith E. Wilson University Lecturer in Drama in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge.

MARTIN WIGGINS is a Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute and Lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.

OXFORD DRAMA LIBRARY

J. M. Barrie

Peter Pan and Other Plays

Ben Jonson

The Alchemist and Other Plays

Christopher Marlowe

Doctor Faustus and Other Plays

Arthur Wing Pinero

Trelawny of the Wells and Other Plays

J. M. Synge

The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays

Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Chapman, Kyd, Middleton, Tourneur

Four Revenge Tragedies

Dryden, Lee, Otway, Southerne

Four Restoration Marriage Plays

OXFORD DRAMA LIBRARY

J. M. BARRIE

Edited with an Introduction by
PETER HOLLINDALE

General Editor
MICHAEL CORDNER

Associate General Editors
PETER HOLLAND MARTIN WIGGINS

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Peter Hollindale 1995

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Jacket illustration by Deborah Gyan

For assistance in the preparation of this edition I am grateful to John Rowlands Pritchard, Richard Shephard, Meg Ross, Jeffrey Lewis, Martin Phillips of Samuel French Ltd., and staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The General Editor, Michael Cordner, has been generous with encouragement, suggestions, and practical help throughout. My wife, sine qua non, has driven me to distant theatres, typed the manuscript, untangled knotty research problems, and generally kept the show on the road. My thanks to them all.

P. H.

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On 22 February 1908, the last night of the fourth London season of Peter Pan, the audience was surprised by the unexpected insertion of a new scene before the closing tableau of the Tree Tops. In the pause which preceded it, as the plays historian Roger Lancelyn Green records:

a small nightgowned figure, according to a privileged reviewer present that night, appeared before the curtain and made the following announcement:

My friends, I am the Baby Mermaid. We are now going to do a new act, the first and only time on any stage. Mr Barrie told us a story one day about what happened to Peter when Wendy grew up, and we made it into an act, and it will never be done again. You are to think that a lot of years have rolled by, and that Wendy is an old married lady. You will be surprised to see what Im going to play