The importance of this play as a witness to Dickens’s intentions is shown in an article by Joseph Hatton which appeared in the _People_ on 19th November 1905. Mr. Hatton explains that about the year 1880, in a conversation, he sketched out his idea of the play up to the crucial point. Dickens had a play in his mind when he wrote the story, and it was said that he had thought of Dion Boucicault as his collaborator in his work for the stage. After the death of Dickens, Boucicault had a mind to write the play and invent his own conclusion to the story, but afterwards gave it up. Mr. Hatton, in a conversation with Mr. Luke Fildes, saw Dickens’s possible conclusion, but did not attempt to gather up the broken threads. ‘Consulting his son, Charles, to whom I offered my sketch, I found that his father had revealed to him sufficient of the plot to clearly indicate how the story was to end. We agreed to write the play. Much of the son’s version of the finale was proved by the instructions which the author had given to the illustrator in regard to certain of the unpublished and unwritten chapters. And so Dickens the younger and I fell to work and wrote the play of _Edwin Drood_ for the Princess’s Theatre.’ He goes on to explain that the piece was cast, and a great point made of the authoritative conclusion of the story, thus clearing up something of the mystery which was part of its title. But Mr. Harry Jackson, the stage manager, did not like the play, and it was left unacted. Years after, Dickens had a hope that Mr. Willard would undertake the play, but this expectation was not fulfilled. Dickens consoled himself by saying that next to the pleasure of having a good play acted was the pleasure of writing it, and for the rest he took the incident as one of the ‘little ironies’ of his life.