In 1889, at the Langham Hotel in London, both Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde had been commissioned to write stories for Lippincott’s Magazine, so it made perfect sense that Dr. Reveling in creating a world for characters both real and fictional to inhabit together. Best of all, as opposed to writing a book in which everything needed to be completely accurate and meticulously cited, in the play I could simply make things up.Īnd so I did. I knew the characters, the stories, the settings, the rhythm of the language-there would never be a better time to write my Sherlock Holmes play. I had always wanted to write a Sherlock Holmes play, and here I was, absolutely immersed in the world of Sherlock Holmes. The moment I asked the question, the answer came to me. Days, then weeks would pass without me having any urge to caper down the streets in giddy antics of delight. Yes, I still had to do it (I mean, someone has to, right?), but the amount of research required was beginning to slightly dampen my naturally ebullient spirit. Nevertheless, as I found myself plowing through some four thousand articles on silent Sherlock Holmes films, it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t quite as much fun as I thought it would be. Did I mention I was compulsive? There’s a fine line between persistence and being too thickheaded to know when to quit, and I fear that’s a line that I dance along far too often. Regardless, being of an optimistic and/or utterly delusional disposition, I set to work. As it turns out, that’s a chunk of material. Now then, Sherlock Holmes first appeared in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet, which meant that I needed to read and watch everything related to Sherlock Holmes for the past 130 years. Not exactly best-seller material, I know, but I thought a few people might find it interesting. So it was, for reasons now obscure to me, that one day I landed upon the bright idea of writing a nonfiction book about Sherlock Holmes, in which I would trace the evolution of the character as he has been constantly reinvented to appeal to a wide variety of different audiences. For example, I have authored official player biographies for the Society for American Baseball Research, and after learning from a publisher that the members of the Historical Society in my hometown couldn’t agree on who should compile and write a photographic history of the city, I sat down and did it myself. What’s the backstory, you ask? Well, while principally a playwright (and more recently a screenwriter), on occasion various interests and compulsions have led me a wee bit further afield. David MacGregor is the writer of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear, one of the finalists for the Fifth Annual New Works Festival.
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