was the farce Charley's Aunt. It was written for his friend, the actor W. S. Penley. Later the two disagreed (and went to court) about how much, if any, of the plot was Penley's invention rather than Thomas's. Penley told a journalist in 1894, "The play was my idea and Brandon Thomas wrote it. Later on, we went down into the country and worked at it. Then we worked it out on the stage." Penley produced the play and took the star role of Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The early performances of the play were given on tour in the English provinces, beginning at Bury St Edmunds on 29 February 1892. The Royalty Theatre in London became unexpectedly vacant, and Penley took it, opening Charley's Aunt there on 21 December 1892. For the first few weeks in London, Thomas played the role of Sir Francis Chesney, the benevolent father of one of the undergraduates; he regularly played the part in later revivals until shortly before his death. The play was an immediate success and transferred to the larger Globe Theatre on 30 January 1893. It ran for a record-breaking 1,466 performances across four years, closing on 19 December 1896. It was simultaneously toured by seven companies in the United Kingdom. The piece was successfully staged throughout the English-speaking world and, in translation, in many other countries. It had a major success on Broadway in 1893 and was revived there several times. In 1894, it was given both German and French premieres and was produced in Berlin every Christmas for many years. In 1895, The Theatre recorded that Charley's Aunt had been taken up in country after country. "From Germany it made its way to Russia, Holland, Denmark and Norway, and was heartily welcomed everywhere." Thereafter, it was frequently revived for decades and successfully adapted for films and musicals. Thomas's career as a character actor continued to prosper. In 1892, he played in W. S. Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a parody of Hamlet, and Faithful James, by B. C. Stephenson, with Ellaline Terriss, both at the Court Theatre. In 1895, he starred in a revival of The Rivals in another dialect role, Sir Lucius O'Trigger. Bernard Shaw wrote that Thomas succeeded in the part, "mainly by not doing what is expected of him". Other parts in which Thomas