SRI AUROBINDO

Collected Plays and Short Stories

Part One

Bibliographical Note

Perseus the Deliverer was originally published in serial form in the weekly Bande Mataram, Calcutta, 1907. Subsequently it was included in Collected Poems and Plays of Sri Aurobindo, published in 1942, with the exception of two scenes which were not available at that time. The missing scenes (Act II, Scenes 2 & 3) were later found and included in the 1955 edition.

Vasavadutta exists in several versions, not all of them complete. What seems to be the last complete version has this note at the end: “Revised and recopied between April 8th and April 17th, 1916.” An earlier version has a similar entry at the end: “Copied Nov. 2, 1915 — written between 18th and 30th October 1915. Completed 30th October. Revised in April 1916. Pondicherry.” The first edition of Vasavadutta was published in 1957. It was reprinted in 1965.

Rodogune belongs to the end of the Baroda period. It is dated February 1906, just before Sri Aurobindo left Baroda for Bengal. It was first published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1958, and also issued in book-form in the same year.

Eric was written in Pondicherry in 1912 or 1913. Several drafts were made of some of its acts and each carries its own later corrections. One is not always sure which corrections were the last to be made. The text published now is more or less a combination of two or more drafts wherever it was thought that the author's purposes would be served better by this arrangement. Alternatives, however, have been given in the footnotes. Eric was first published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual, 1960, and also issued in book-form in the same year.