The Admirable Crichton/Peter Pan/When Wendy Grew Up/What Every Woman Knows/Mary Rose [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONOn 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 play's 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 I'm going to play "The scene which followed is very close in dialogue to the last chapter of Barrie's novelization of Peter Pan, Peter and Wendy, published in 191 r. This new scene was itself entitled An Afterthought. The last night of the 1908 season was indeed its only performance in Barrie's lifetime, and it remained unpublished until 1957. In 1982, however, it was revived for the Royal Shakespeare Company production, and seems likely to find favour as the standard ending for a play which has evolved through many possible conclusions. Despite its sombre emphasis away from a child audience towards an audience of adults. An Afterthought does seem an integral part of the play and one that accords with modern tastes. Leonee Ormond notes that 'this scene, with its stress on the eternal nature of Peter, makes a more satisfying ending than the briefer episode with Wendy a year later with which the play usually concludes'.^ It is included in this edition as perhaps the single most important instance of Barrie's variant endings, and in the expectation that it will become the standard one. Yet the circumstances of its first performance, which was followed by 'a glimpse of Mr Barrie'^ at the curtain-call, were clearly extraordinary.Roger Lancelyn Green, Ftfty Years of Peter Pan' iX^ondon, 1954), no.Leonee Ormond, J. M. flamV, (Edinburgh, 1987), 108.' Lancelyn Green (n. i above), 112.