ARTHUR
A TRAGEDY

TO
SIR JOHN AND LADY MARTIN HARVEY

With what names should I inscribe this play but with yours? Yetwhat right have I to dedicate to you what is already so much your own?Memory goes back to that June day, now long ago, when first I undertookto write for you a play out of Malory’s pages on a theme long ponderedby you both. And many days come back to me, in London or by the sunnyChannel, when time was forgotten in ardent work and interchangeof ideas; in thinking out and talking over crucial situations; inrejecting and recasting; in the search for essential structure. Howmuch the play owes to you, both in framework and in detail, noneknows so well as I. Give me leave, therefore, to write these wordsin grateful acknowledgment of that initial trust, of much fruitfulsuggestion and inspiriting counsel, and of all I have learnt from youof the playwright’s patient craft.

LAURENCE BINYON.