The Admirable Crichton

J. M. Barrie wrote the humorous theater drama The Admirable Crichton in 1902. James Crichton, a polymath, and athlete who lived in the 16th century, was a fellow Scot who earned the nickname. Barrie adopted it as his own. The epigram-loving Ernest is presumably a parody of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde's main character. The plot may have been inspired by Ludwig Fulda's Robinson's Eiland, a German play written in 1896. A group of Berlin officials—including a capitalist, a pr...