Peter Pan Read Online Free

and the other he gave to the boys’ father, Arthur, who pointedly left the book in a train. However, despite this “literary” loss, Barrie was not yet done with the Davies boys and Peter Pan.
    Their next appearance would occur in several chapters that he had already begun writing for
The Little White Bird
(1902), a novel published for adults, in which the narrator muses about his encounters in Kensington Gardens with a little boy named David. It was also during this time, at Christmas to be exact, that Barrie took Jack, George, and Peter Davies to see a musical play for children in London—
Bluebell in Fairyland.
One of the first commercial plays performed explicitly for children, it concerned a little flower girl who wanders off to fairyland, where she has exciting adventures, only to learn at the end of the play that she has been dreaming. The charming plot influenced Barrie’s own imagination. More important, it prompted him to consider writing a fairy-tale play for children and adults in which he could incorporate the many notes that he had been writing about Peter Pan.
    Due to his involvement in other projects, Barrie could not fully turn his attention to the figure of Peter Pan, who haunted his imagination, until October of 1903. Then, as his private notebooks reveal, he worked feverishly on the play and completeda first draft on March 1, 1904. He intended to offer the play to his American friend and producer, Charles Frohman, who was due to arrive in London at Easter. In the meantime, he tried to interest the great English actor Beerbohm Tree in the role of Mr. Darling, and gave him a private reading. Tree was disappointed—perhaps shocked—by this spectacular fairy-tale play, a genre in which Barrie had not written prior to that time. Tree wrote to Frohman to alert him that “Barrie has gone out of his mind…. I’m sorry to say it, but you ought to know it. He’s just read me his new play. He is going to read it to you. I know I have not gone woozy in my mind, because I have tested myself since hearing the play; but Barrie must be mad.”
    However, the play had just the opposite effect on Frohman, who became so enthusiastic about it that he scheduled it for production at the Duke of York’s Theatre in time for the Christmas season on December 27, 1904. With such encouragement, Barrie began an intense period of preparing Peter Pan for performance, rewriting the script six times. Afraid that the audience—largely adults—would not respond as he wished to the fantastic story, he instructed the members of the orchestra to put down their instruments and clap when Peter appealed for help to save Tinker Bell’s life and cried out, “If you believe in fairies, clap your hands.” However, there had been no need for these instructions, for the audience clapped thunderously, causing Nina Boucicault, the actress playing Peter, to burst into tears. The play was such a success that the first run lasted until April of 1905, went on tour, and was successfully produced in New York. Indeed,
Peter Pan
continued to be performed in London every Christmas during Barrie’s lifetime and beyond. However, he did not publish the final revised script until 1928, the same year in which he bequeathed all royalties from the play to the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street.
    Even if
Peter Pan
had not been such a success, Barrie had achieved fame as a dramatist. The play served only to make him extraordinarily famous and wealthy. Yet fame and money never went to his head; he lived for his projects. Barrie carried a notebook with him at all times and was constantly jotting down ideas for stories or plays. He was the consummate workaholic,who neglected his wife and felt more at home in his study than anywhere else. Perhaps, one could argue, he felt more at home in another realm—his imagination. If Barrie had spare time, it was spent mainly with the Llewelyn Davies family, but a series of tragedies was soon to disrupt the