A Scandal in Bohemia
"A Scandal in Bohemia" is the first short story, and the third overall work, featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It is the first of the 56 Holmes short stories written by Doyle and the first of 38 Sherlock Holmes works illustrated by Sidney Paget. The story is notable for introducing the character of Irene Adler, who is one of the most notable female characters in the Sherlock Holmes series, despite appearing in only one story. Doyle ranked "A Scandal in Bohemia" fifth in his list of his twelve favourite Holmes stories.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was first published on 25 June 1891 in the July issue of The Strand Magazine, and was the first of the stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892.
Plot summary
recounts an adventure that started on 20 March 1888. While the currently married Watson is paying Holmes a visit, a masked visitor arrives, introducing himself as Count Von Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client. Holmes quickly deduces that the visitor is, in fact, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and the hereditary King of Bohemia. Realizing Holmes has seen through his guise, the King admits this and tears off his mask.It transpires that the King is to become engaged to Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meiningen, a young Scandinavian princess. However, five years before the events of the story he had enjoyed a liaison with a "well-known adventuress", the American opera singer Irene Adler, whilst she was prima donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. She has since retired and now lives in London. Fearful that should the strictly principled family of his fiancée learn of this impropriety, the marriage would be called off, he had sought to regain letters and a photograph of Adler and himself together, which he had sent to her during their relationship as a token. The King's agents have tried to recover the photograph through sometimes forceful means, burglary, stealing her luggage, and waylaying her. An offer to pay for the photograph and letters was also refused. With Adler threatening to send them to his future in-laws, which the King presumes is intended to prevent him from marrying any other woman, he makes the incognito visit to Holmes to request his help in locating and obtaining the photograph.
The photograph is described to Holmes as a cabinet and therefore too bulky for a lady to carry upon her person. As regards expenses, the King says Holmes has carte blanche and gives him £1,000, stating "I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph." Holmes asks Dr. Watson to join him at 221B Baker Street at 3 o'clock the following afternoon.
The next morning, Holmes goes to Adler's house, disguised as a drunken out-of-work groom. He discovers from the local stable workers that Adler has a gentleman friend, the barrister Godfrey Norton of the Inner Temple, who calls at least once a day. On this particular day, Norton comes to visit Adler, and soon afterward takes a cab to the Church of St. Monica in Edgware Road. Minutes later, the lady herself gets into her landau, bound for the same place. Holmes follows in a cab and enters a church, where he is unexpectedly asked to be a witness to Norton and Adler's wedding. Curiously, they go their separate ways after the ceremony.
Meanwhile, Watson has been waiting for Holmes to arrive, and when Holmes finally does deliver himself back to Baker Street, he starts laughing. Watson is confused and asks what is so funny. Holmes then recounts his tale and comments he thought the situation and position he was in at the wedding was amusing. He also asks whether or not Watson is willing to participate in a scheme to figure out where the picture is hidden in Adler's house. Watson agrees, and Holmes changes into another disguise as a clergyman. The duo departs Baker Street for Adler's house.
When Holmes and Watson arrive, a group of jobless men meanders throughout the street. When Adler's coach pulls up, Holmes enacts his plan. A fight breaks out between the men on the street over who gets to help Adler. Holmes rushes into the fight to protect Adler and is seemingly struck and injured. Adler takes him into her sitting room, where Holmes motions for her to have the window opened. As Holmes lifts his hand, Watson recognizes a pre-arranged signal and tosses in a plumber's smoke rocket. While smoke billows out of the building, Watson shouts "Fire!" and the cry is echoed up and down the street.
Holmes slips out of Adler's house and tells Watson what he saw. As Holmes expected, Adler rushed to get her most precious possession at the cry of "fire" – the photograph of herself and the King. Holmes was able to see that the picture was kept in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right bell pull. He was unable to steal it at that moment, however, because the coachman was watching him. He explains all this to Watson before being bid good-night by a familiar-sounding youth, who promptly manages to get lost in the crowd.
The following morning, Holmes explains his findings to the King. When Holmes, Watson, and the King arrive at Adler's house at 8 am, her elderly maidservant sardonically informs them she left the country by the 5.15 train from Charing Cross railway station. Holmes quickly goes to the photograph's hiding spot, finding a photo of Irene Adler in an evening dress and a letter dated midnight and addressed to him. In the letter, Adler tells Holmes he did very well in finding the photograph and taking her in with his disguises. She also reveals that she posed as the youth who bid Holmes good-night. Adler has left England with Norton, "a better man" than the King, adding she will not compromise the King, despite being "cruelly wronged" by him; she had kept the photo only to protect herself from further action he might take.
The King exclaims how amazing Adler is Holmes replies Miss Adler is indeed on a much different level from the King. Thanking Holmes effusively, the King offers a valuable emerald ring from his finger as further reward. Holmes says there is something he values even more highly – the photograph of Adler. Ignoring the handshake proffered by the King, Holmes leaves. He keeps the photograph as a reminder of her cleverness, and of being beaten by a woman's wit. Watson also tells that, since their meeting, Holmes always refers to her by the honorable title of "the woman".
In the opening paragraph of the short story, Watson calls her "the late Irene Adler", suggesting she is deceased. It has been speculated, however, that the word "late" might actually mean "former". She married Godfrey Norton, making Adler her former name.
Holmes' relationship to Adler
Adler earns Holmes' unbounded admiration. When the King of Bohemia says, "Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity she was not on my level?" Holmes replies that Adler is indeed on a much different level from the King, implying that she was superior to the King all along.The beginning of "A Scandal in Bohemia" describes the high regard in which Holmes held Adler:
This "memory" is kept alive by a photograph of Irene Adler, which had been deliberately left behind when she and her new husband took flight with the embarrassing photograph of her with the King. Holmes had then asked for and received this photo from the King, as payment for his work on the case. In "The Five Orange Pips" he comments to a client that he has been defeated on a mere handful of occasions and only once by a woman.
In derivative works, she is frequently used as a romantic interest for Holmes, a departure from Doyle's novels where he only admired her for her wit and cunning. In his Sherlock Holmes Handbook, Christopher Redmond notes "the Canon provides little basis for either sentimental or prurient speculation about a Holmes-Adler connection."
Publication history
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in July 1891, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in August 1891. The story was published with ten illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in October 1892.Adaptations
Stage
's 1899 stage play Sherlock Holmes is based on several stories, among them "A Scandal in Bohemia". Films released in 1916 and 1922, both titled Sherlock Holmes, were based on the play, as was a 1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptation titled The Immortal Sherlock Holmes, starring Orson Welles as Holmes.The 1965 Broadway musical Baker Street was loosely based on the story, making Irene Adler into the heroine and adding Professor Moriarty as the villain.
Steven Dietz's 2006 play Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, adapted from the 1899 play Sherlock Holmes, merges the storylines of "A Scandal in Bohemia" and The Final Problem. In this adaptation, Godfrey Norton is under the employ of Professor Moriarty and whose original plan was to rob Adler. However, they ended up falling in love, complicating the plan and forcing Moriarty to intervene when Holmes begins investigating on behalf of the King.
Film
The story was adapted as a 1921 silent short film as part of the Stoll film series starring Eille Norwood as Holmes.The 1946 film Dressed to Kill, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, features several references to "A Scandal in Bohemia", with Holmes and Watson discussing the recent publication of the story in The Strand Magazine, and the villain of the film using the same trick on Watson that Holmes uses on Irene Adler in the story.
The 1998 film Zero Effect updates the story to late 90s America, with Bill_Pullman as Daryl Zero and Ben Stiller as Steve Arlo; the Holmes/Watson characters. Kim Dickens plays Gloria Sullivan, the Irene Adler character, while Ryan O'Neal is Gregory Stark, the King of Bohemia equivalent.
Radio
The second episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes featured an adaptation by Edith Meiser of the story on 27 October 1930 and starred Clive Brook as Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Watson. A remake of the script aired in March 1933, with Richard Gordon playing Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell again playing Dr. Watson. Another remake of the script aired in August 1936, with Gordon as Holmes and Harry West as Watson.Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who played Holmes and Watson in the film Dressed to Kill and other films, did the story for their radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The episode aired on 10 December 1945, and was followed by a sequel, "Second Generation", featuring Irene's daughter hiring Holmes in retirement. "Second Generation" aired on 17 December 1945.
A radio adaptation starring John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson aired in October 1954 on the BBC Light Programme. The production was also broadcast on NBC radio in January 1955, and on ABC radio in May 1956.
Michael Hardwick adapted the story as a radio production which aired on the BBC Light Programme in 1966, as part of the 1952–1969 radio series. Carleton Hobbs played Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley played Dr. Watson.
A radio adaptation was broadcast as an episode of the series CBS Radio Mystery Theater in 1977, with Kevin McCarthy as Sherlock Holmes and Court Benson as Dr. Watson. Marian Seldes played Irene Adler.
Bert Coules dramatised "A Scandal in Bohemia" for BBC Radio 4 in 1990, as an episode of the 1989–1998 radio series, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. It also featured Andrew Sachs as the King.
The story was adapted as a 2012 episode of the American radio series The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson.
Television
The story was adapted for a 1951 TV episode of We Present Alan Wheatley as Mr Sherlock Holmes in... starring Alan Wheatley as Holmes, Raymond Francis as Dr. Watson and Olga Edwardes as Irene Adler."A Scandal in Bohemia" was adapted as part of the Soviet television film series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, in the form of a flashback in The Treasures of Agra; two episodes adapting The Sign of the Four. It starred Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes, Vitaly Solomin as Dr. Watson, Georgiy Martirosyan as the King of Bohemia and Larisa Solovyova as Irene Adler.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was adapted as the first episode of the 1984–1985 television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The episode featured Jeremy Brett as Holmes, David Burke as Watson, and Gayle Hunnicutt as Irene Adler.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was featured in a season 1 episode of the PBS series Wishbone, entitled "A Dogged Exposé". In the episode, the supporting human characters search for an incognito photographer at their school who has been publishing embarrassing photographs of students. Intermingled with the plot, the title character Wishbone portrays Sherlock Holmes in a slightly modified adaptation of the original story to compare with the events of the "real-life" plot.
A series of four television movies produced in the early 2000s starred Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Watson. One of these films, The Royal Scandal, adapted "A Scandal in Bohemia" and combined its story with "The Bruce-Partington Plans".
"A Scandal in Belgravia", episode one of the second series of the TV series Sherlock, was loosely adapted from the short story and aired on 1 January 2012, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, Martin Freeman as Watson and Lara Pulver as Irene Adler. The plot of the short story - Holmes and Watson attempting to recover incriminating photos from Adler - is covered briefly in the first half of the episode updated for the contemporary period and adjusted ; the episode then moves on to a storyline based on other Sherlock Holmes stories and films while including Adler, Mycroft Holmes and Jim Moriarty.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" was adapted to the second episode "The Adventure of the Headmaster with Trouble" of NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is a pupil of an imaginary boarding school Beeton School. One day he pretends to be ill and goes to the nurse's office to search the photo that Headmaster Ormstein and school nurse Irene Adler are in. But Adler sees through his feigned illness. Then Holmes and his roommate John H. Watson make a false fire to find the photo but she penetrates their wiles and tells Holmes that she returned the photo to Ormstein.
The hereditary king makes an appearance in a season six episode of Elementary entitled "Breathe."