The manuscripts of Dumas fils are said to contain, as a rule, about four times as much matter as the printed play! (Parigot: Génie et Métier, p. 243). This probably means, however, that he preserved tentative and ultimately rejected scenes, which most playwrights destroy as they go along.
Lowell points out that this assertion of Heminge and Condell merely shows them to have been unfamiliar with the simple phenomenon known as a fair copy.
Since writing this I have learnt that my conjecture is correct, at any rate as regards some of M. Hervieu's plays.
See Chapters XIII and XVI.
This view is expressed with great emphasis by Dumas fils in the preface to La Princesse Georges. "You should not begin your work," he says, "until you have your concluding scene, movement and speech clear in your mind. How can you tell what road you ought to take until you know where you are going?" It is perhaps a more apparent than real contradiction of this rule that, until Iris was three parts finished, Sir Arthur Pinero intended the play to end with the throttling of Iris by Maldonado. The actual end is tantamount to a murder, though Iris is not actually killed.