The theatre of William Butler Years is one of the permanent legacies of English literature, and this edition marks the first time a selection of his plays has been made available in the United States. These eleven plays cover the whole brilliant spectrum of Yeats' dramatic genius - from the romantic dramas of his youth to his last play, The Death of Cuchulain, written shorty before his death at the age of seventy-three.Manager of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin for many years, Yeats devoted great energy and courage to the creation of an Irish theatre and a poetic drama. He discovered and aided the work of other Irish dramatists, Lady Gregoy and John Synge among them. In this own plays he sought to express romantic love, to give life to literary and philosphical ideas, and to restate the heroic ideal. His desire to believe, to create the great moments of tragedy, to convey something of his sardonic as well as his profoundly serious attitude to life resulted, as the plays in this volume so powerfully attest, in a body of dramatic work of unparalleled beauty and emotional intensity.