‘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 realization 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 utilized 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, realized 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 harbored 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.