Digitised version of IE TCD MS 3739, four notebooks comprising acts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Victorian gothic drama 'Vanderdecken' written jointly by the Irish authors William Gorman Wills and Percy Fitzgerald. The play was inspired by Wagner's 1843 opera 'The Flying Dutchman,' based on a Dutch legend about a ship captained by a man cursed with the burden of eternal life. "When Percy Fitzgerald and W.G. Wills were preparing an adaptation of the 'Flying Dutchman' for Henry Irving, the actor [Irving] made a suggestion which the authors immediately adopted. The romantic legend has for its hero a sea-captain condemned to eternal life until he can find a maiden willing to share his lot; and when at last he meets the heroine she has another lover, who is naturally jealous of the new aspirant to her hand. The young rival challenges Vanderdecken to a duel, and what Irving proposed was that the survivor of the fight should agree to throw the body of his rival into the sea, and that the waves should cast up the condemned Vanderdecken on the shore, since the ill-fated sailor could not avoid his doom by death at the hand of man. This was an appropriate development of the tale; it was really imaginative; and it would have been strangely moving if it had introduced into it a ballad on the old theme. But in a play performed before us in a theater its effect was not altogether what its proposer had hoped for, altho he presented it with all his marvelous command of theatrical artifice." (Matthews, Brander. A Book about the Theater, Chapter II, The Limitations of the Stage. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916). 'Vanderdecken' opened at the Lyceum Theatre, London on 8th June, 1878. Volume for Act 1: folios i, 1- 24. On folio i (=Act 1 volume's cover) is a MS note, in pencil: "Wills, WG + Percy Fitzgerald". On folio 4v is a pencil sketch of chairs and their stage placement. -- Volume for Act 2: folios 25-44 (plus 3 unfoliated leaves of text, 1 directly after each of folios 29, 32, and 42). -- Volume for Act 3: folios 45-59. On folio 45r is a MS note, in pencil: "This Act is copied from the original manuscript & not from the prompt copy [initials]. -- Volume for Act 4: folios 60-69. Also forming part of IE TCD MS 3739 but not digitised are folios 69a, 70-119, a typescript (for copy) with slight pencil annotation, in four fascicules (25.8cm x 21.8cm).