The Explorer: A Melodrama in Four Acts.

The Explorer, a melodrama in four acts, was among the early plays with which W. Somerset Maugham conquered the London stage. It was first produced at the Lyric Theatre in 1908, the year in which Maugham had four plays running simultaneously in the West End, a feat that prompted Punch to publish a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his thumb in envy before the theater hoardings. Maugham also worked the same story into a novel of the same title, published in 1908, though the play text did not appear in book form until Heinemann issued it in this uniform series of his plays. William Somerset Maugham (1874 to 1965) trained as a physician before turning to writing and became one of the most popular and highest paid authors of his age, the creator of Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale, and The Razor's Edge, as well as the Ashenden stories drawn from his own service as a British intelligence agent during the First World War.