latest play for the miniature stage, The Scourge of the Gulph (Elkin Mathews, pp. 18, 1s. net), has the same exalted qualities that endeared ‘James Flaunty’ and ‘The Treasure of the Garden’ to the judicious. Blood runs gaily through the lee scuppers, in accordance with the best precedents; but plenty more of it is left to keep up the native hue of resolution in the cheeks of the survivors. If Mr. Andrew Lang ever finds the ‘Odyssey’ losing its power to affect the mind like ocean thundering on a Western beach, he should try ‘The Scourge of the Gulph.’ There is a delicious drawing by Mr. Jack Yeats on the back of the cover.”—Manchester Guardian, 12/1/04.

[Pg 28]

One of Jack B. Yeats’s Plays for the Miniature Stage

THE TREASURE OF THE GARDEN:

A PLAY IN THE OLD MANNER.

With Illustrations, Hand Coloured by the Author, 4to, 5s. net; Uncoloured copies, 2s. 6d. net.

⁂ Stages, with Prosceniums designed by the Author, Footlights, Slides, and Scenes can be had, price 5s. net, each. The Play set up ready for Acting by the Author, with Stage and all necessaries, price three guineas.

“The sensations of wonder and respect produced by Mr. Jack B. Yeats’s play (for a miniature theatre), ‘James Flaunty; or, The Terror of the Western Seas,’ are deepened by the appearance of The Treasure of the Garden (Elkin Mathews, 5s. net). Here we have no mere jejune text, but also the characters and the scenery painted unstintingly by the author, and all ready to be gummed on cardboard and strut and fret their five minutes on the toy stage. As Stevenson, were he now living, would probably cut his work in order to produce this drama if it reached him in working hours, the rest of us need take no shame to ourselves for the same inclination. For about ten shillings—a stage costs five shillings—the least among us may now explore the sensations of theatrical management—a happiness for which far higher prices have been paid by many famous lessees of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.”—Manchester Guardian, 2/3/03.

“So many in these days are for reviving the romantic drama, for bringing to life—

The mellow glory of the Attic stage,

and for restoring the arts of acting and of speaking verse, that we have come to regard the exposition of a new theory without emotion; the advent of a new play without excitement. Our romantic dramatists take themselves too seriously, and aim at expressing rather the sorrows than the joys of life. Since the world has heard the beauty of the muted string it has forgotten that life ever went merrily to a pipe, or to the Arcadian, but penny, whistle. It has forgotten the song, and the old tune, and the old story. It has forgotten that the drama ever shook men’s hearts, and has come to prefer that it should help to digest men’s dinners. We want—

The old laughter that had April in it.

Now perhaps the chief reason for the dulness of modern plays is the somewhat exclusive attitude of the playwright. His appeal is no longer to the world. His appeal is to an audience. No breadth of range, no scope, is allowed to him. He has lost touch with the external forces of daily life. An introspective study, an allegory of the state of his own mind, is the most we can look for from him.

But in Mr. Jack B. Yeats we recognise the makings of a dramatist of an older order; a writer of plays that are written in the intimate speech of the folk-ballad. While his contemporaries argue, wrangle and disagree as to what is music, and what is the best music, and what music saves a man’s soul, he, like the hero Finn, is content with the best of all music—

The music of