There has been so much discussion about the play entitled “Mr. and Mrs. Daventry,” and Oscar Wilde’s share in it, that I had better set forth¹ here briefly² what happened.

When I returned to London in the summer of 1899 after buying, as I thought, all rights in the sketch³ of the scenario⁴ from Oscar, I wrote at once the second, third and fourth acts of the play, as I had told Oscar I would. I sent him what I had written and asked him to write the first act as he had promised for the ￡50.

Some time before this I had seen Mr. Forbes Robertson and Mrs. Patrick Campbell in “Hamlet,” and Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s Ophelia had made a deeper impression on me than even the Hamlet of Forbes Robertson. I wished her to take my play, and as luck would have it, she had just gone into management on her own account and leased the Royalty⁵ Theatre.

I read her my play one afternoon, and at once she told me she would take it; but I must write a first act. I told her that I was no good at preliminary scenes and that Oscar Wilde had promised to write a first act, which would, of course, enhance the value of the play enormously.

To my surprise Mrs. Patrick Campbell would not hear of it: “Quite impossible,” she said, “a play’s not a patchwork⁶ quilt; you must write the first act yourself.”

“I must write to Oscar then,” I replied, “and see whether he has finished it already or not.”

Mrs. Campbell insisted that the play, if she was to accept it, must be the work of one hand. I wrote to Oscar at once, asking him whether he had written the first act, adding that if he had not written it and would send me his idea of the scenario, I would write it. I was overjoyed to tell him that Mrs. Patrick Campbell had provisionally accepted the play.

To my astonishment⁷ Oscar replied in evident ill-temper to say that he could not write the first act, or the scenario, but at the same time he hoped I would now send him some money for having helped to make my début on the stage.

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