The King’s Threshold: Manuscript Materials, edited by Declan Kiely, Yeats in Manuscript Series (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. lxi + 620.

There is no denying that The King’s Threshold held a special place of affection and honour for the poet amongst his theatrical output. It was in many ways a personal manifesto, a defence of the art of poetry, music and song. Inevitably the play was destined to undergo repeated revision, particularly as Yeats’s own youthful adoption of Shelley’s view of poets as the great legislators of the world came under repeated attack. The play in the form of a morality drama was one of several conceived ..