Шеппей: Сомерсет Моэмның соңғы пьесасы

1933 play by William Somerset Maugham

Sheppey (1933) was William Somerset Maugham's last play, written at the age of 59 and after he had reached distinction as a novelist and playwright. Maugham dedicated the book to Sir John Gielgud. It is the story about the change of fortune of hairdresser Joseph Miller who was born on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent and nicknamed Sheppey. The play is set in the 1930s. Sheppey, a hard worker at the same establishment for 15 years, wins a subsidiary prize in the Irish Lottery of £8,500 but does not take to his win with the same style that most others would – and to which most, including his boss, his wife or his daughter and her fiancé (a teacher given to believing that he is more educated than most) — expect him to. The play was written in 1932 and first produced at the Wyndham's Theatre London on 14 September 1933 with a cast that included Ralph Richardson, then aged 31, and Laura Cowie who had been a star of the silent movies. After the production of Sheppey, Maugham announced publicly that he would write no more plays and kept to his word until his death in 1965. He did, however, write numerous other short stories, novels, articles and other items.

John O'Hara was prompted by Maugham's Sheppey inclusion of the scene with Death to title his influential book Appointment in Samarra. He directly acknowledges Maugham in the foreword to the 1952 edition of his book. Jeffrey Archer in his book To Cut a Long Story Short includes the Maugham version word for word. His preface to the book directly credits John O'Hara and Somerset Maugham as the source for this version, although he is aware that the story is much older, deriving from ancient Middle Eastern sources. At one point in Peter Bogdanovich's 1968 film Targets, Boris Karloff's character recites Maugham's version of the story almost word for word (describing Death in the third person, but including the same details of the servant's flight). A modified version of the story is told in "The Six Thatchers" (2017), the first episode of the fourth series of the British television programme Sherlock. The servant is absent from the tale; it is instead the merchant who has the nighttime appointment with Death in Samarra after being startled to see Death that morning in the Baghdad market.