The Theatrical Sherlock Holmes

By Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette

EPUB Version - Sherlock Holmes takes to the stage in four entertaining play scripts written between 1899 and 1921 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette. Even though Sherlock Holmes had fallen to his supposed death at the culmination of 'The Final Problem' in December 1893, it proved very difficult to keep the great detective down as this collection of theatrical play scripts proves. Presented are: SHERLOCK HOLMES - A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS (1899, by William Gillette and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle); THE PAINFUL PREDICAMENT OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1905, attributed to William Gillette); THE SPECKLED BAND - AN ADVENTURE OF MISTER SHERLOCK HOLMES (1910, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and THE CROWN DIAMOND - AN EVENING WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES (1921, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). This collection also contains an introduction written by Paul Stuart Hayes, the author of REQUIEM FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES, which sets the scene for Sherlock Holmes’ stage debut and focuses on each of the four productions presented in this volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291731828

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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The Theatrical Sherlock Holmes

THE THEATRICAL SHERLOCK HOLMES

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

and WILLIAM GILLETTE

A collection of four vintage Sherlock Holmes play scripts

introduced by Paul Stuart Hayes

Copyright Information

THE THEATRICAL SHERLOCK HOLMES

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Gillette

Original works published in 1899, 1905, 1910 and 1921

First published in hardcover and paperback August 2012 by Hidden Tiger

Digital edition published in February 2014

ISBN 978-1-291-73182-8

© Hidden Tiger 2014

All rights reserved

Introduction by Paul Stuart Hayes © 2012

Cover Illustration by Sidney Paget (public domain image)

Typeset in Minion Pro and Birch Std

The works contained within this collection were published prior to 1923 and are in the public domain. For countries in which the ‘life + 70 years’ copyright rule applies, these plays entered the public domain on 31st December 2000 (for the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and 31st December 2007 (for the works of William Gillette).

This publication is unofficial and is not endorsed by the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No link to the Estate or other such organisations is claimed..

Quote

This Holmes is rather a talented man, but there isn’t a street in London that’ll be safe for him if I whisper his name to Craigin. I might even make him a little call myself - just for the satisfaction of it!

PROFESSOR MORIARTY

About the Authors

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1859-1930) was a Scottish physician and author, most famous for his stories about ‘the great detective’, Sherlock Holmes. His creation has enjoyed remarkable longevity and his stories are lauded as landmarks in the history of crime fiction. He was a prolific writer whose other works include supernatural stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

WILLIAM GILLETTE (1853-1937) was an American actor, playwright and stage-manager in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered today for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage but also made significant contributions to the theatre by devising realistic stage settings and special sound and lighting effects. His portrayal of Holmes helped create the modern image of the detective.

INTRODUCTION

Even though Sherlock Holmes had fallen to his supposed death at the culmination of ‘The Final Problem’, a short story published in December 1893, the general public persistently campaigned for his return. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had grown tired of the character and regarded his Sherlock Holmes stories as being weaker and lower in stature when compared to his more favoured works, resisted the growing clamour for several years. During this time he wrote novels and short stories on subjects that he found more compelling than detective fiction, whilst at the same time caring for his wife Louisa who had been diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. He finally softened in his resolve and acquiesced to the wishes of the public when he began to serialise Sherlock Holmes’ most celebrated adventure, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, in August 1901. However, the sleuth had actually made his return shortly before the turn of the century as a result of Conan Doyle’s determination to bring Holmes to a new medium, namely the stage. The idea appears to have formed as a result of his annoyance stemming from the initial, unlicensed theatrical appearances of Sherlock Holmes.

The character had made two appearances predating Doyle’s own venture, the first of which opened in November 1893 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. ‘Under the Clock’ was a one-act musical parody written by Charles Brookfield and Seymour Hicks (who also took the rôles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson and in so doing became the first actors ever to portray these characters) and reportedly the tone of the piece greatly angered Conan Doyle. In May of the following year, playwright Charles Rogers presented a gruesome melodrama entitled simply ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (sometimes referred to as ‘Sherlock Holmes, Private Detective’). This was staged at the Royal Theatre in Glasgow and starred John Webb as the eponymous sleuth. It was given even shorter shrift by Conan Doyle than ‘Under the Clock’ had been. Rogers had taken advantage of the weak copyright laws of the time and, by ensuring that his play did not source the Sherlock Holmes canon for anything other than its characters, he was free to stage his lurid work and it ran for ten years to some notable success with Doyle powerless to put a stop to it.

Although he did not wish to revive the Holmes character in print, Conan Doyle knew that there were opportunities afforded by theatrical adaptation of his existing works and that, if at all possible, all subsequent enterprises of this type should be from his own hand. He was in need of considerable funds for the construction of his new home, ‘Undershaw’, in Hindhead, Surrey, and bringing his famous creation to the stage would generate the sort of revenue that his post-Holmes fiction had proved incapable of matching. However, his plans were not to proceed in a straightforward manner and there was a lengthy and somewhat torrid journey ahead of him before an official Sherlock Holmes play would appear beneath the proscenium arch. Despite this, its eventual success would lead to a series of similar plays that were staged to enthusiastic audiences the world over. This collection presents the play scripts for four of these productions, including that landmark first official theatrical appearance by the great detective.

SHERLOCK HOLMES - A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS

‘Sherlock Holmes’, or ‘The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner’ as it was originally known, began its life some time in 1897. Its author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, devised it as a five-act play which purportedly featured Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson as young men at the beginning of their association. In search of a suitable performer to portray his creation on the stage, Doyle initially approached the English actor and theatre manager, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, a much lauded if somewhat mannered actor of the old school. Tree was interested but insisted upon the character of Holmes being adapted to his own personal style and this proved to be something of a sticking point between the two men. Tree also demanded that he play both Holmes and Moriarty, an innovation which Doyle insisted would not be possible as it was vital that both characters should share the stage in some scenes. The discussions between author and actor broke down with Doyle fearing that Tree’s conditions would serve only to debase his creation. Undeterred, Doyle approached the recently knighted Sir Henry Irving (the first actor ever to receive the accolade), with whom he had collaborated on the Lyceum Theatre production of ‘Waterloo’ in 1894, but Irving declined to be involved in the project. Finally, a visit to the literary agent, A.P. Watt, led to the realisation that the script needed some attention. Watt introduced Doyle to the American theatrical producer, Charles Frohman, who travelled to London to meet with the author. He suggested that the play should be adapted for the stage by the respected and accomplished American actor and playwright, William Gillette, who would also portray the central character and, as with Tree before him, wished to fashion the character to suit his own style. Doyle, frustrated at the unexpectedly long germination period involved in his bringing Sherlock Holmes to the stage, readily agreed and granted Frohman the staging copyright on the sole condition that there was no love interest for the great detective. Frohman accepted this limitation and consequently, Gillette was free to adapt the existing play more or less as he saw fit.

William Gillette commenced work on his adaptation in October 1898 and quickly came to the conclusion that, for the most part, Doyle’s script was unusable. As a result, he decided to write a new script afresh and obtained by wire Doyle’s permission to do so. He took only five characters from the original script - Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, Mrs Hudson and Holmes’ unnamed page boy, whom he christened Billy - and devised a completely new scenario, completing the script within a month. Unfortunately, neither this version nor Doyle’s original script ever saw the light of day due to a tragic incident that occurred on the 23rd of November. At the time, Frohman and Gillette’s touring company was in San Francisco working on another production, ‘Secret Service’, at the fashionable Baldwin Hotel and Theater complex. At three in the morning a fire broke out in the east wing of the building and whilst the great majority of the hotel staff and three hundred guests managed to escape the inferno unharmed, the only existing copies of the two scripts - Doyle’s original and Gillette’s first revision - were destroyed in the flames along with the complete holdings of scenery, props and costumes belonging to Frohman’s theatrical concern. The scripts themselves had been in the possession of William Postance, secretary to Gillette, in his hotel room. Postance escaped with his life, but the manuscripts were lost forever.

Unperturbed by this most monumental of setbacks, Gillette took it upon himself to rewrite the entire play from scratch. During the process he utilised elements from a number of Conan Doyle’s original stories, and as a consequence, Doyle was credited as co-author despite the fact that Gillette wrote the play solely. It is unclear whether he had retained notes to which he could refer, but remarkably Gillette completed work on the new script within a week of the fire. However, the production remained troubled and it would be nearly a year before the play would finally be staged.

An initial source of discord between Doyle and Gillette concerned the inclusion, against the terms of the agreement between the interested parties, of a romantic ending involving the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Alice Faulkner. This led to Gillette being invited in May 1899 to Undershaw for a meeting with Doyle. As has now passed into folklore, Gillette stepped from the train onto the platform in full Holmes garb and proceeded to make a close study of the dumbstruck Conan Doyle through a magnifying glass before declaring that the gentleman before him was Unquestionably an author! They quickly struck up a rapport, realised they were kindred spirits with a love of adventure and the outdoors, and their friendship blossomed. It endured until Doyle’s death in 1930.

After a one-off ‘copyright performance’ in England, the play, now renamed ‘Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts’, made its Broadway debut at the Garrick Theater on Monday 6th November 1899 and ran until the following June, before the company took it on a nationwide tour. Any remaining doubts harboured by Conan Doyle regarding the romantic theme were soon quelled when the financial success of the play became apparent.

Eventually, the British fans were given their chance to see Holmes in the flesh when the company came to the Lyceum Theatre, London, in September 1901. As had been the case in America, the show proved to be a huge hit with West End audiences, and resulted in a tour that took in the major cities of England and Scotland. The play is feted in some circles due to the young actor who played the part of Sherlock Holmes’ page, Billy, from 1903 to 1906, one Charles Spencer Chaplin.

The public appetite for Gillette’s adaptation was so great that the play was revived many times, even traversing onto the silver screen in the 1916 Essanay silent feature film ‘Sherlock Holmes’, directed by Arthur Berthelet. Sadly, no copy is known to exist. In 1932, after a run that comprised more than 1,300 performances by its lead actor, who was at this point nearing eighty years of age, the production took its final curtain call.

The depiction of Sherlock Holmes that Gillette presented has since passed into the folklore of the character, with many of the mannerisms and devices he introduced, such as the use of the curved briar pipe, still appearing to this day in theatrical, film and television adaptations. Furthermore, he has also been credited as the first person to coin the phrase, ‘elementary, my dear Watson’, regardless of the fact that the idiom, in its complete form, does not appear in any published version of the play.

THE PAINFUL PREDICAMENT OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

In 1905, Sherlock Holmes returned to the London stage, albeit in the most unconventional of surroundings – a one-act comedic play, wherein the great detective solves the mystery without uttering a single word.

On Wednesday 13th September, William Gillette was in the English capital for the opening night of his new play ‘Clarice’ at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Unfortunately, the play was not a particular success and it enjoyed only a short run. In an attempt to entice theatre goers, Gillette struck upon the idea of staging a one- act play as a curtain raiser to his troubled production and naturally he turned to the character he was best known for – Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunately for Gillette, the piece was already written. On Friday 24th March 1905, he had performed a short skit for the Joseph Jefferson Holland Benefit at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Holland was an actor who had been forced into retirement as a result of illness in 1904. At the time, the piece went by the name ‘The Frightful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes’ with its cast comprising a mere five players, including Ethel Barrymore as Gwendolyn Cobb and Henry McArdle as Billy.

The authorship of the playlet is up for debate, although the likely candidates are believed to be limited to Messrs Doyle and Gillette. There is no documentary evidence that directly links either one to the prose, but popular opinion weighs heavily towards Gillette being the author. That being said, it is almost certain that Doyle was aware of the parody. However, due to the copyright laws of the time, there is the possibility that it may have been unendorsed in a similar fashion to Charles Rogers’ notorious ‘pirate’ production of 1894. This is thought to be unlikely though, considering Gillette’s close association with Conan Doyle; he would not have wished to upset his friend.

The play was performed for a second time three weeks later on Friday 14th April, this time under the name of ‘The Harrowing Predicament of Sherlock Holmes’ at a benefit for The Actors Society of America at the Criterion Theatre, New York. McArdle returned as Billy, but the part of Gwendolyn was now taken by Jessie Busley, a popular actress and comedienne.

The playlet, now bearing its more familiar title, was inserted into the ‘Clarice’ production on Tuesday 3rd October 1905. The part of the talkative Miss Gwendolyn Cobb was played by Irene Vanbrugh, who would become a favoured actress to the likes of Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham and Noёl Coward, among others. The mute Sherlock Holmes was played by Gillette and the part of Billy, the only other vocal role in the play, was again played by the young Charlie Chaplin.

Sadly, the curtain raiser did little to change the financial difficulties that ‘Clarice’ found itself in and on Tuesday 17th October, the play was replaced with a revival of Gillette’s acclaimed production of ‘Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts’, which ran at the theatre until Saturday 2nd December 1905, with Chaplin continuing in the rôle of Billy.

THE SPECKLED BAND - AN ADVENTURE OF MISTER SHERLOCK HOLMES

In February 1910, Conan Doyle took on a six month lease on the Adelphi Theatre, London, with the venue being the intended setting for his latest play, ‘The House of Temperley’, a boxing drama adapted from his 1896 novel ‘Rodney Stone’.

Despite Doyle’s best efforts, the play was not the financial success that he had anticipated at the time of writing. A contributing factor in the play’s failure was believed to be its pugilistic theme, which did little to attract the fairer sex, who reportedly feared it to be far more barbaric than it was in actuality.

Whatever the reason, its fate was sealed on Friday 6th May 1910, by the passing of King Edward VII. In line with the decision taken by the other playhouses in the area, the Adelphi closed to the public on Monday 9th May as a mark of respect and, bar the occasional one-off performance, its doors remained shut until early June. With a contract tying the company to the Adelphi and having no viable production to hand, Doyle was faced with the dilemma of either sub-letting the theatre for the remainder of the season, or attempt to recoup his losses by presenting a new play. Fortunately for the fans of the great detective, he chose the latter.

No doubt the financial success of William Gillette’s production, ‘Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts’, was a factor in his decision and as Conan Doyle himself later related, it was a frenetic period of activity: I shut myself up and devoted my whole mind to making a sensational Sherlock Holmes drama. I wrote it in a week and called it ‘The Speckled Band’ after the short story of that name. I do not think I exaggerate if I say that within a fortnight of the one play shutting down I had a company working upon the rehearsals of a second one, which had been written in the interval. The play in itself was a reworking of an earlier theatrical work of Doyle’s called ‘The Stonor Case’, which had been written at some point in 1902, but was never performed. The new play did not rigidly stick to that of the short story, with the plot expanded slightly and a number of character names altered along the way. One curious addition in the play is the part of Milverton, who appears as a client of Holmes. It is doubtful though that the character is connected to his namesake in the story, ‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’, as the individual also appears in ‘The Stonor Case’ version, which predates the publication of the Milverton story by two years.

Most members of the cast of ‘The House of Temperley’ were given roles in the new play, whilst the parts of Sherlock Holmes and his antagonist Dr Grimesby Rylott were brought in from outside the company. The casting of Holmes was decided with the minimum of fuss and the established actor H.A. Saintsbury was engaged for the rôle. Saintsbury was a natural choice as he was already familiar to the public as Sherlock Holmes, having played the character hundreds of times while heading up the British stage version of Gillette’s production. The part of Dr Rylott (a name which was altered from the ‘Roylott’ of the original short story) was awarded to Lyn Harding, a busy character actor well known for his Shakespearean roles.

During rehearsals, Harding and Doyle frequently clashed on how the rôle of Rylott should be portrayed. With neither willing to back down, J.M. Barrie, a personal friend of Doyle’s and a fellow dramatist, was brought in to arbitrate on the matter. On hearing the arguments of both sides, Barrie soon convinced Doyle to allow Harding free reign regarding how he should play the part. In time, this decision was proved to be inspired as Harding’s depiction garnered rave reviews, so much so, that when the story was adapted for the 1931 British motion picture of the same name, he was the obvious choice to reprise his role for the silver screen.

‘The Speckled Band’ opened at the Adelphi Theatre on Saturday 4th June 1910 and earned appreciation from audience members and critics alike. The play ran at the theatre until the end of the season before transferring to the Globe Theatre on Monday 8th August. By this point, two touring companies were in operation and plans were being made to transfer the play across the Atlantic.

The American version duly opened in New York on Monday 21st November 1910 at the Garrick Theater, where it enjoyed a short run. ‘The Speckled Band’ was revived twice, once in 1911 and again in 1921. Although the second revival enjoyed a healthy run, the play was by then barely breaking even. On hearing this, Doyle forwent the royalties that were due to him as a show of appreciation to the actors and the play that had turned his fortunes around in his darkest hour.

THE CROWN DIAMOND - AN EVENING WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES

‘The Crown Diamond’ marked the final time that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle turned to Sherlock Holmes when staging a production. There is some doubt as to when the story was penned, with most historians deeming early 1921 as the time most likely. However, some are of the opinion that the piece formed a part of Doyle’s original version of the play ‘Sherlock Holmes’, or ‘The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner’, which was lost to fire in San Francisco in late November 1898. Whichever theory is correct, it almost certainly