“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.
