The Return of A. J. Raffles, first produced and published in 1975, is an Edwardian comedy play in three acts, written by Graham Greene and based somewhat loosely on E. W. Hornung's characters in The Amateur Cracksman.
[1] Set in the late summer of the year 1900, the story revolves around the infamous burglar and cricketer, A. J. Raffles—presumed dead in the Boer War—who returns to Albany where, with his friends Bunny and Lord Alfred Douglas, he plots to rob the Marquess of Queensberry, partly for the money and partly for revenge against the Marquess for his treatment of their friend Oscar Wilde.
Lord Alfred Douglas comes to see his friend Bunny Manders, who served a prison sentence for burglary and met Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol.
Bunny is wearing a black armband in memory of Raffles, who was reportedly killed in the Boer War six months prior.
Raffles asks Lord Alfred for a list of the guests and a floor plan of the house.
The second act takes place a few nights later, in the Marquess of Queensberry's bedroom in his country house in Hertfordshire.
Raffles then gives Bunny the box to put under his cloak, and starts filling his own pockets with coins.
The real Inspector Mackenzie appears, having come because a German agent is trying to acquire the Prince's indiscreet letters to Alice, which she kept in a gold cigar box.
Raffles, Mackenzie, and the Marquess had gone to the roof to cut off a possible escape route for the German agent.
Raffles takes the agent's gun and gets him to agree not to search for the letters by making him undress to his combinations.
Greene said that "Raffles and Bunny were, in a sense, the reverse side of the medal of Sherlock Holmes and Watson.
Bunny had been imprisoned with Oscar Wilde for a quite different offence, and so I've introduced Lord Alfred Douglas and the Marquis of Queensberry, and also the Prince of Wales, whom I've always found a very sympathetic character."
"[3] Greene precedes the published version of the play with an author's note, which explains the story cannot of course be accepted as strictly true to history: I have in one respect seriously deviated from the truth – the Marquess of Queensberry met his end in January 1900 and I have extended his life into the late summer of that year.... On the other hand the gold box presented by the theatrical profession to the Prince of Wales is in no way fictitious.... And I am prepared to defend the truth of Raffles' return from South Africa alive.
His chronicler, and his close companion, Bunny, wrote a moving account of Raffles' death and claimed to have been beside him when he was 'killed', but Bunny had every reason for falsifying history, to disguise the fact that, far from being in South Africa, he was, at the date of Spion Kop, incarcerated in Reading Gaol, where he had the good fortune to meet Oscar Wilde.
[4]Denholm Mitchell Elliott starred as Raffles in the London premiere of the play at the Aldwych Theatre.
[5] The play was presented in Canada at the Theatre New Brunswick in 1979 with John Neville as Raffles and David Renton as Bunny.
[5] Brian Protheroe appeared as Raffles with Adrian Ross-Magenty as Bunny in a 1994 production at the Watford Palace Theatre.
[7][8] Martin Esslin wrote a positive review of the play's original Aldwych Theatre production and commented that Denholm Elliott was "brilliantly cast" as Raffles,[9] while Benedict Nightingale was critical of Elliott's performance and the play's dialogue.
[10] In his 1999 book Raffles and His Creator, Peter Rowland wrote regarding the play that "the dialogue crackles with life and the changes are rung in a dazzling fashion which Hornung himself couldn't have bettered", and added that "Greene had produced a little gem of a play and one which ought, ideally, to be admitted to the official canon.