  OR, THE TERROR OF THE WESTERN SEAS. 1s. net; or, Coloured by the Author, 5s. net. “A ‘memory’ of R. L. Stevenson comes seldom amiss, and now especially, when the romancer’s name and fame are as a shuttlecock between wholly adoring and still discriminating friends, may be considered apt and seasonable. So it won’t hurt to read this: “There stands, I fancy, to this day (but now how fallen!) a certain stationer’s shop at a corner of the wide thoroughfare that joins the city of my childhood with the sea. When upon any Saturday we made a party to behold the ships, we passed that corner; and since in those days I loved a ship as a man loves Burgundy or daybreak, this of itself had been enough to hallow it. But there was more than that. In that window, all the year round, there stood displayed a theatre in working order, with a ‘forest set,’ ‘a combat,’ and a few ‘robbers carousing’ in the slides; and below and about—dearer tenfold to me!—the plays themselves, those budgets of romance, lay tumbled, one upon another.”—A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured. “Here, palpably, was a hint for somebody, who has turned out to be Mr. Jack B. Yeats. The first of his ‘plays in the old manner’—‘James Flaunty; or, The Terror of the Western Seas’—lies before me, and it is a study in grotesque. The most notable point in this production is the fact that the interest thereof attaches not only to the dialogue—you will, however, relish that—but to the setting, the close reproduction of old-world lettering and art, which is a vast deal more than an ordinary publisher’s advertisement, and cunning enough to deceive the very elect. The ferocious woodcuts, the jaunty humour of the speeches, the fore-and-aft and down-the-hatchway plot, the bizarre characters, harmonize perfectly, and well they may; for Mr. Yeats, all by himself, has invented those same characters, contrived the plot, fashioned the speeches, and designed the illustrations. “Debauched by sixpenny and even threepenny editions, some may rail at this as a dear shilling’s worth. (For superior copies the charge is a crown.) For all such niggards this lean but precious pamphlet—it is no more—will be caviare. But drat economy, say I, when a paltry subscription will land you straight into the arms of a real toy pirate. Never again will you have so good a chance of seeing one, of hanging on his talk, of sympathising with his peril. Never, I mean, apart from the present showmen, who, however, promise yet better things. Stevenson, you mark, had two sources of enjoyment—play and puppet-show—and Mr. Mathews announces his intention of producing the plays, with scenes and characters, on sheets, to be cut out and played on miniature stages. What will the next generation be like? Certes, ’tis a bold experiment, and, to say the worst, a queer revival.”—Speaker, 1/2/02.F. J. S. “At a time when the palmy days of the drama are a melancholy remembrance, we welcome the publication of James Flaunty; or, The Terror of the Western Seas, by Jack B. Yeats (Elkin Mathews), which, in its awakening of romance, may be dimly associated with the Celtic revival. The spirit of the publication may be indicated by a quotation on the cover from Stevenson’s ‘A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured.’ It is announced that copies of the play coloured by the author may be had for five shillings, but it is difficult to believe that colour can add materially to the excellence of these designs. Still, a judicious use of crimson lake (‘Hark to the sound of it, reader,’ as Stevenson says) might add something to the glories of Captain Gig and the rest. We may particularly commend the reticence of effect in the pictures, which aim at no vulgarity of facetiousness, and there is an exquisite moderation in the dialogue. ‘It is intended later to produce the plays with scenes and characters on sheets, to be cut out and placed on miniature stages.’ We should like to be there to see.”—Manchester Guardian, 10/12/01. 1s. net; or, Coloured by the Author, 5s. net. “Mr. Jack B. Yeats’s 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. |
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