The Admirable Crichton

The Admirable Crichton is a comic stage play written in 1902 by J. M. Barrie. Barrie took the title from the sobriquet of a fellow Scot, the polymath James Crichton, a 16th-century genius and athlete. The epigram-loving Ernest is probably a caricature of the title character in Oscar Wilde''s The Importance of Being Earnest. The plot may derive from Robinson''s Eiland, an 1896 German play by Ludwig Fulda. In this, a satire upon modern super-cultur in its relation to primal nature, a group of Berlin officials (including a capitalist, a professor and a journalist) are shipwrecked on an island, where a secretary, Arnold, becomes the natural leader of the group.