Plays of Near & Far

G. P. Putnam's Sons
London & New York
MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN
First printed December, 1922
Limited Edition: Five Hundred Copies only
Printed by the BOTOLPH PRINTING WORKS GATE ST., KINGSWAY, W.C.2
The Gods of Pegana Time and the Gods The Sword of Welleran A Dreamer's Tales The Book of Wonder Five Plays Fifty-one Tales Tales of Wonder Plays of Gods and Men Tales of War Unhappy Far-off Things Tales of Three Hemispheres If The Chronicles of Rodriguez
Believing plays to be solely for the stage, I have never before allowed any of mine to be printed until they had first faced from a stage the judgment of an audience, to see if they were entitled to be called plays at all. A successful production also has been sometimes a moral support to me when some critic has said, as for instance of A Night at an Inn, that though it reads passably it could never act.
But in this book I have made an exception to this good rule (as it seems to me), and that exception is The Flight of the Queen. I know too little of managers and theatres to know what to do with it, and have a feeling that it will be long before it is ever acted, and am too fond of this play to leave it in obscurity. This beautiful story has been lying about the world for countless centuries, without ever having been dramatized. It is the story of a royal court, which I have merely adapted to the stage. The date that I have given is accurate; it happened in June; and happens every June; perhaps in some corner of the reader's garden. It is the story of the bees.
As for The Compromise of the King of the Golden Isles, it is just the sort of play through which those that hunt for allegories might hunt merrily, unless I mention that there are no allegories in any of my plays.
An allegory I take to be a dig at something local and limited, such as politics, while outwardly appearing to tell of things on some higher plane. But, far from being the chef d'œuvre of some ponderously profound thinker, I look on the allegory, if I have rightly defined it, as being the one form of art that is narrowly limited in its application to life. When the man whose cause it championed has been elected alderman, when the esplanade has been widened, or the town better lighted or drained, the allegory's work must necessarily be over; but the truth of all other works of art is manifold and should be eternal.