David Garrick (play) - Novel

Novel

According to several sources, Robertson originally fashioned the story as a novel, David Garrick: A Love Story, which was first printed in 1864 as a serial in the magazine The Young Englishwoman. However, in the 1865 printing in book form, Robertson says in his preface that it was the other way around, and his novel was adapted from his play.

While the plots are virtually identical, the tone of the novelization is much more sentimental and somber. Whereas in the play, the wedding between Ada and Chivy is called off after Chivy openly races off in pursuit of Garrick's housemaid and carelessly leaves out embarrassing love letters sent between himself and other women, the novel shows the wedding cancelled when it is revealed that Chivy (called Raubreyne in the book) has an illegitimate child with a woman he has falsely promised to marry; and even then, Ada is only permitted to marry Garrick after "dying of love" leaves her otherwise incurably bedridden for several months. The element of the duel is also removed from the novel. In the introduction to the 2009 reprint, it is speculated that the "less farcical tone" may have more closely resembled Robertson's early drafts of the play, before Sothern's contributions.

While much of the humor was removed in the novelization, a great deal of exposition was added, and the story actually begins on the day Garrick and Ada first set eyes on each other.

Many of the character's names were altered from the play. Simon Ingot becomes Alderman Trawley, Richard Chivy becomes Robert Raubreyne, "Sawney" Smith becomes "Sammy" Smith, and Ada Ingot becomes Ada Trawley.