When William Somerset Maugham celebrated his seventh birthday in Paris, he received from Lady Anglesey, a family friend, a generous gift of twenty francs. Asked how he planned to use his money, young Willie (as he preferred to be addressed) eagerly responded that he wanted to attend a performance of a melodrama featuring the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Slightly more than a quarter of a century later, when the precocious little boy with a fascination for the theater had matured into a young man of thirty-four, he would have become the famous playwright who had achieved the still unsurpassed feat of seeing four of his own works run concurrently on London stages. Punch cartoonist Bernard Partridge commemorated the occasion with a drawing of billboards advertising the titles of Lady Frederick,Mrs. Dot,Jack Straw, and The Explorer--before which hunched a hatless, scowling, finger-biting, bald bard, William...