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 the thing that happens.
His play of '_The Treasure of the Garden_' carries on a tradition
that shook the stage before playwrights became self-conscious and
before poets aimed to please the high foreheads in the stalls.
There is no mental dyspepsia in his characters. They present no
problem. Their aim is to be real. To be glad and sorry for a little
while on a miniature stage measuring a foot across."--_Academy,
14/3/03._