The Manuscript of Peter Pan

The discovery of the earliest known text for any major play is always an important event, establishing as it does the author's original conception of his work and allowing us to see how that conception was later developed. All the more so with the discovery in 1964 of the manuscript for Peter Pan, since its author, J. M. Barrie, had previously gone to considerable lengths to deny or at least cast doubts on its existence.

In the dedication to the play he contends, "I have no recollection of writing the play of Peter Pan" and even says, "I have not the original MS" (Plays, definitive edition 491). This dedication of course post-dates the play by at least sixteen years, and Barrie had in fact lost the manuscript by then.¹ Yet his professed ignorance of the manuscript undoubtedly served his larger aim of emphasizing the creative part played by the Llewellyn Davies boys in originating the central ideas and situations of the play.² This aim was already evident in the two earlier works centering on Peter Pan. In The Boy Castaways of Black Island (1901), a book made up almost entirely of pictures of the boys playing, the preface is attributed not to Barrie but to Peter Llewellyn Davies. In the novel The Little White Bird (1902), the narrator's art is first compared unfavorably with the true act of creation (motherhood), then condemned as an act of self-indulgence, and finally proved to be derivative, most of the best ideas having come from the mother figure herself.

The desire to conceal the power of his own art in order to glorify both the creative strength of motherhood and the free imagination of youth is, for Barrie, not a whim but an important part of the myth. At the first performance of Peter Pan the program claimed that the author was Ela C. May, the youngest actress in the cast, and she, not Barrie, appeared to make the author's speech of gratitude at the final curtain. The review in The Times, however, does make clear that there are limits to Barrie's artistic modesty. "The programme pretends that she wrote the play, but Mr. Barrie's name is not concealed. He has the large letters and stands at the top" (Times, Dec. 28).

A further sign of Barrie's efforts to downplay his creative role—this one relating to the manuscript itself—is the curious lack of any entry for the original Peter Pan in the British Library. All plays had to be presented to the Lord Chamberlain's office for censorship, and accordingly the rest of his plays found their way into the British Library. But there is no entry or typescript, under either Barrie's or Ela C. May's name, for Peter Pan. This helps perpetuate the idea that the play simply has no written origin.³

The manuscript found in the Lilly Library of the University of Indiana is incontestably in Barrie's hand and contains an inscription that dates it one year before the first production of the play. The inscription reads: "To Maude Adams. This the MS of Peter Pan from her humble servant and affectionate friend. J. M. Barrie. Nov. 23 1903."⁴ Not only was Maude Adams, the actress who took the role of Peter in America, an appropriate person for Barrie to entrust with such a literary treasure; interestingly, in the dedication, just such a gift is contemplated among the various outcomes imagined for the manuscript. "I know not whether I lost that original MS or destroyed it or happily gave it away" (Definitive edition 491). The only complicating feature is a second date—March 1 1904—at the end of the text. Probably the two dates refer to when the composition was started and concluded. Even if the later date is accepted the manuscript would antedate the first known typed version, the 1904/1905 Beinecke Production Text, especially as Barrie's earlier practice shows him working always from manuscript to typescript. A brief comparison will confirm the precedence of the manuscript.⁵

Jacqueline...