Barrie, Sir J.M.

the annotated typescript of an act of "peter pan", revised by barrie for the highly successful first american production.

This typescript relates to the first New York production of Peter Pan, which opened at the Empire Theater on 6 November 1905 with Maude Adams in the title role. It was a sensational success with the American public, with full houses on  Broadway, a record run for the company, and extended tours throughout the country.

Barrie made only a relatively few changes to the script, to give it an American flavour, including substitute references to the Stars and Stripes, "Yankee Doodle", George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The present typescript of Act IV, the scene in which Peter and the children capture the pirate ship, is all that is known to survive of barrie's working typescript for this production. It has additional lines in Barrie's hand including the exchange:

Hook. There's none can save you now Missy

Peter (imitating Wendy) Yes, there is, there's one who never fails

Hook. Who's that?

Peter. I have perfect faith in Peter.

Hook. Peter! He's dead.

Peter. As if a pirate c[oul]d kill dear Peter Pan.

Hook. Where is he then?

Peter (unmasking) He's here!

virtually no other comparable manuscripts or typescripts for the original stage version of "peter pan" are known to remain in private hands.   The only other manuscript to appear at auction since 1976 is Captain Hook's opening speech for Act V (2 pages, 8vo, sold at Christie's,  20 July 1983 for £13,500).

[Barrie's notebooks--still unpublished--are preserved at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale. It was whilst examining these with the head librarian Marjorie Wynne in 1988 when working on a screenplay for David Putnam that Andrew Birkin discovered hundreds of pages of unrecorded notes for Peter Pan]