Finally the sextet which in the first sketch was very inferior to the rest has now been discarded in favour of six lines which are worthy of the octave. The published sonnet is assuredly superior to the first sketch, superb though that was.
THE STORY OF "MR. AND MRS. DAVENTRY"
(See page [534])
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 forth here briefly what happened.
When I returned to London in the summer of 1899 after buying, as I thought, all rights in the sketch of the scenario 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 Royalty 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 patchwork quilt; you must write the first act yourself."