"The King's Threshold," first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903, referred to an Irish tradition that dates back to the 7th-8th centuries of commoners enforcing hunger strikes against people of higher status to whom they were indebted. It told the story of a bard who undergoes a hunger strike against the king.

"The Shadowy Waters" was a play that Yeats began writing as a boy, possibly as early as 1885, and spent years reshaping and revising until its final acting version in 1906, which was performed at the Abbey Theatre.

"The Hour Glass," appeared on stage as early as 1902, and underwent many revisions by its final version in 1922. This edition contains the prose version of that play. The story presents a Fool, a Wise Man and an Angel who sort through questions of faith, doubt and the Wise Man's unrelenting rationalism. In this edition we have Yeats' prose version of the play.

In 1899 Yeats helped found the Irish National Theatre Society, which later became the famous Abbey Theatre of Dublin. There, he collaborated on several plays with Lady Augusta Gregory. One such play, "The Unicorn from the Stars", was first performed at the Abbey Theatre on November 23, 1907.

In 1922 "The Jealousy of Emer" premiered in Amsterdam, and like many of Yeat's plays featured Japanese-style masks. The story is based on a legend from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology about Emer, the wife of the notorious soldier Cuchulain. The play picks up at the close of "On Baile's Strand," during Cuchulain's fight with the sea.

In this volume we find one of Yeats' lesser-known works, "The Player Queen".

"On Baile's Strand" was first performed here in 1904, as part of one of the inaugural productions. The short play is the earliest of five that Yeats wrote about the legendary Irish hero Cuchulain, a tale that dates from the ninth or tenth century. Cuchulain is being threatened by the Scottish warrior queen Aoife, who has sent her son to kill the hero. Cuchulain has sworn allegiance to King Conchubar, who orders the soldier to fight the Scottish foe....

William Butler Yeats was prompted to write "At the Hawk's Well" in 1916, after his close friend, Ezra Pound, exposed him to the symbolic theatre genre of Japanese Noh drama. The play, based on the Cuchulain legends of Irish mythology, uses Japanese-style masks and very simple sets to achieve an abstract, stylized form. The story is set by a dried up well on a barren mountainside, guarded constantly by a hawk-woman, and watched diligently by an old...

"The Land of Heart's Desire," one of Yeats best and most well-known works. The play describes an encounter between a fairy child and newlyweds Shawn and Bridget Bruin, and explores themes of mysticism and the temporary nature of life. Yeats felt an internal struggle with the contradictions he felt in his nature and in life, and spent much of his life seeking out a philosophical system to resolve this conflict.

The stage is any bare place in a room close to the wall. A screen with a pattern of mountain and sky can stand against the wall, or a curtain with a like pattern hang upon it, but the pattern must only symbolize or suggest. One musician enters and then two others, the first stands singing while the others take their places. Then all three sit down against the wall by their instruments, which are already there-a drum, a zither, and a flute. Or they...