THE KING. A Daring Tragedy. By Stephen Phillips, Crown 8vo, cloth. 2s. 6d. net. Don Carlos, heir to the throne of Spain, learns that Christina, a young lady of the Court, with whom he is secretly in love, is really his sister. The gloom of the tragedy is deepened by the discovery that Christina is about to be a mother. Brother and sister, who are at the same time husband and wife, die by the same dagger. The king, who has already abdicated in favour of his son, whom he desired to marry the Princess of Spain, resolves to put an end to his life also, but is persuaded by his minister that the task of living as king will be a greater punishment for all the misery he has created. The story is developed with skill, reticence, simplicity, in solemn harmonies and with tragic beauty.
SHAKESPEARE’S END AND TWO OTHER IRISH PLAYS. By Conal O’Riordan (Norreys Connell). Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. Mr. O’Riordan, who is better known by his nom-de-guerre of “Norreys Connell,” which has served him for twenty years, has brought together in this volume the three plays in which he has given expression to his view of the relation between England and Ireland. In a prefatory letter to Mr. Joseph Conrad he presents a synthesis of the trilogy, and explains why this, of his several books, is the first which he wishes to associate with his proper name.
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OH, MY UNCLE! By W. Teignmouth Shore, author of “The Talking Master,” “D’Orsay,” etc. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. Wit, fun, frolic, fairy tale, nonsense verses, satire, comedy, farce, criticism; a touch of each, an olla podrida which cannot be classified. It certainly is not history, yet cannot fairly be put under the heading fiction; it is not realism, yet fairy-taleism does not fully describe it; it deals with well-known folk, yet it is not a “romance with a key”; it is not a love story, yet there is love in it; in short, again, it cannot be classified. It is a book for those who love laughter, yet it is not merely frivolous. It deals with the lights of life, with just a touch now and again of delicate shadow. One thing may safely be said—Miss Blue-Eyes and Uncle Daddy will make many friends.
STEPHEN SWIFT & CO., LTD.
Footnotes:
[1] These dates are important in another aspect of the matter—the authorship of the plan. I will, therefore, return to them in more detail at the close of this section.
[2] I pay no attention to the ridiculous suggestion that the delay was due to the contemporary peril in Poland, and to Thugut’s anxiety to have Austrian troops in the east rather than on the western frontier. People who write modern history thus seem to forget that the electric telegraph did not exist in the eighteenth century. The more reasonable pretension that the Austrians hesitated between marching north to effect the plan against Souham, and marching east to relieve the pressure upon Kaunitz, who was hard pressed upon the Sambre, deserves consideration. But Kaunitz’s despatch, telling how he had been forced to fall back, did not reach headquarters until the 12th, and if immediate orders had been given for the northern march, that march would have begun before the news of Kaunitz’s reverse had arrived. The only reasonable explanation in this as in most problems in human history, is the psychological one. You have to explain the delay of George III.’s son, and Joseph II.’s nephew. To anyone not obsessed by the superstition of rank, the mere portraits of these eminent soldiers would be enough to explain it.
[3] Fortescue, vol. iv., part i., p. 255.