Preface

    The four tragedies included in this volume are widely separated in their subject-matter. It is a far call from Arthur of the Round Table, of ancient Celtic Britain, to Daulac, of the French Canadas, and they each are seemingly separated from the fortunes of the great Pope Gregory; yet these plays are included in the one volume because they deal with those eternal problems of the human soul which all of the world’s thinkers have had at heart. Two of the plays, “Mordred” and “Hildebrand,” were written in 1893, and published in a small edition in 1895, while the others now appear for the first time in book form. The author makes no apology for the form of these plays. Like other writers, he has his own literary ideals, and with the great mass of the sane British peoples, believes that Shakespeare is still the great dramatic poet of the modern world.
    If these plays, in spite of their imperfections, receive a kindly welcome, the author will later publish another group of his historical dramas and comedies in a separate volume.

OTTAWA, November, 1908 [Page 5].