This volume contains four One Act Plays by the inventor and director of the Portmanteau Theater. They are all included in the regular repertory of the Theater and the four contained in this volume comprise in themselves an evening's bill.
There is also an Introduction by Edward Hale Bierstadt on the Portmanteau Theater in theory and practice.
The book is illustrated by pictures taken from actual presentations of the plays.
The first play, the "Trimplet", deals with the search for a certain magic thing called a trimplet which can cure all the ills of whoever finds it. The search and the finding constitute the action of the piece.
Second play, "Six who Pass While the Lentils Boil", is perhaps the most popular in Mr. Walker's repertory. The story is of a Queen who, having stepped on the ring-toe of the King's great-aunt, is condemned to die before the clock strikes twelve. The Six who pass the pot in which boil the lentils are on their way to the execution.
Next comes "Nevertheless", which tells of a burglar who oddly enough reaches regeneration through two children and a dictionary.
And last of all is the "Medicine-Show", which is a character study situated on the banks of the Mississippi. One does not see either the Show or the Mississippi, but the characters are so all sufficient that one does not miss the others.
All of these plays are fanciful—symbolic if you like—but all of them have a very distinct raison d'être in themselves, quite apart from any ulterior meaning.
With Mr. Walker it is always "the story first," and herein he is at one with Lord Dunsany and others of his ilk. The plays have body, force, and beauty always; and if the reader desires to read in anything else surely that is his privilege.
Each play, and even the Theater itself has a prologue, and with the help of these one is enabled to pass from one charming tale to the next without a break in the continuity.