An early play by Sir Alan Ayckbourn has been found more than 40 years after it was presumed destroyed, completing the 70-volume canon of his manuscripts.

The satires about middle-class manners by Ayckbourn have established him as one of the most highly regarded playwrights in the world, but he was an actor in Scarborough when he wrote Love after All, his second play, in 1959. It was another nine years before he made his name with Relatively Speaking, which became a hit in the West End.

The manuscript was discovered by staff from the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where Ayckbourn’s archive is based and his plays are still premiered. Working with curators from the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library, they found it in the archives of the Lord Chamberlain who, until 1968, vetted every play before it could be performed.

Love after All is a farce written with Christine Roland, who was his wife at the time, under the pen name Roland Allen, a hybrid of his first name and her surname. The play premiered at the Library Theatre, Scarborough, in 1959, and was revived once in a significantly altered form in 1960. It is based loosely on The Barber of Seville and features a father trying to marry off his daughter to a rich heir.

Simon Murgatroyd, the archivist at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, said that Ayckbourn was writing straightforward entertainments to order for his mentor, who founded the theatre. “Stephen Joseph at the time was looking for plays that would pull an audience in from the Scarborough rain and cheer them up for the afternoon,” he said.The playwright, 68, who suffered a stroke last year, would probably only be interested in the find “from a historical perspective” Mr Murgatroyd added. “Alan is contantly moving on and continually writing. He’s always looking to his next play, not ones written 50 years ago.”

The Bob Watson Archive at the theatre is the only place to hold a complete collection of Ayckbourn’s plays

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