ABSTRACT
Bram Stoker notes in his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving that Irving had long wanted to produce a play based on the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The explorer Sir Richard Burton had been among the first to suggest an ‘Eastern’ topic to Irving; at a supper party in London in September 1886 he told his friend how much might be done with a play taken from some story, or group of stories, in the Arabian Nights, an unexpurgated translation of which Burton had published the year before. ‘Burton had a most vivid way of putting things – especially of the East,’ Stoker recalled. ‘Burton knew the East … its romances; its beauty; its horrors. Irving grew fired as the night wore on, and it became evident that he had it in his mind from that time to produce some such play as [Burton] suggested, should occasion serve.’ 1
