Charles Brookfield's skit Under the Clock (1893) and John Webb's play Sherlock Holmes (1894); nevertheless, Doyle now wrote a new five-act play with Holmes and Watson in their freshmen years as detectives. Doyle offered the role first to Herbert Beerbohm Tree and then to Henry Irving. Irving turned it down and Tree demanded that Doyle readapt Holmes to his peculiar acting profile; he also wanted to play both Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Doyle turned down the deal, considering that this would debase the character. Literary agent A. P. Watt noted that the play needed a lot of work and sent the script to Charles Frohman, who traveled to London to meet Conan Doyle. There Frohman suggested the prospect of an adaptation by Gillette. Doyle endorsed this and Frohman obtained the staging-copyright. Doyle insisted on only one thing: there was to be no love interest in Sherlock Holmes. Frohman uttered a Victorian rendition of "Trust me!" Gillette then read the entire collection for the first time, outlining the piece in San Francisco while still touring in Secret Service. On one occasion, after they had exchanged numerous telegrams about the play, Gillette telegraphed Conan Doyle: "May I marry Holmes?" Doyle responded: "You may marry him, or murder or do what you like with him." Milestones New Holmes play Gillette's Sherlock Holmes consisted of four acts combining elements from several of Doyle's stories. He mainly utilized the plots "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Final Problem". Also, it had elements from A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", and "The Greek Interpreter". However, all the characters in the play were Gillette's own creations with the exception of Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty. His creation of Billy the Buttons (Pageboy) was later used by Doyle for "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone". Gillette portrayed Holmes as brave and open to express his feelings, which was substantially different from the intellectual-only original, "a machine rather than a man". He wore the deerstalker cap on stage, which was originally featured in illustrations by Sidney Paget. Props and famous phrase Gillette introduced the curved or bent briar pipe instead of the straight pipe pictured by Strand Magazine illustrator Sidney Paget, most likely so that Gillette could pronounce his lines more easily; a straight pipe can wiggle or fall when speaking, or cause problems with declaring lines while it is clenched between the teeth.