As the fictional village of Thrums, Kirriemuir provided the background for a succession of popular Scottish novels:
Auld Licht Idylls (1888),
When a Man's Single (1888),
A Window in Thrums (1889),
The Little Minister (1891),
Sentimental Tommy (1896), and
Tommy and Grizel (1900). In these early works, Barrie explored many of the themes and techniques that he would later transfer successfully to the stage.
If Barrie's plays expound one consistent notion, it is that social conventions, especially those of marriage and of class distinction, are necessary to channel energies that might otherwise disrupt society. Barrie's dramas often portray characters who have not yet found, or who contemplate changing, their proper social roles. Those whose energies society needs to channel appropriately include children who are becoming adults, spinsters desperate to escape spinsterhood, bachelors reluctant to leave bachelorhood, husbands and wives contemplating affairs or divorce, and servants who would be equal to their masters. In the later plays, the shadow of World War I often influences the actions and decisions of the characters.
When he turned from newspaper work to the drama, Barrie collaborated with H. B. Marriott Watson on his first London play, Richard Savage (1891)--a four-act drama (laced with eighteenth-century dialogue) about the British satirist whose "Life" Dr.
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