AustLit

Dedication: To the memory of "Pakie" Macdougall to whose kindly encouragement these plays owe their beginning

None of these plays may be performed in public without permission in writing first being obtained-for performance in New South Wales or Queensland, from Will Andrade, 173 Pitt Street, Sydney; in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia or Tasmania, from Miss M.F. Miller, Box 707F, G.P.O., Melbourne, to either of whom a fee of 10/6 per performance must be remitted.(Note after t.p. and dedication)

Introduction by George Mackaness ....this assemblage of five "proven" plays from the pen of Lionel Shave is important dramatically, for it now makes available in printed form for the first time some of the most outstanding Australian dramatic successes of the last two decades....Lionel Shave owes his success, apart, of course, from his natural genius, to the pains he has taken with plot construction, to his realism in the treatment of character and to the skill he shows in the use of dialogue....In the present volume will be found only five of the twenty odd plays of Lionel Shave. In all he has written four of full length. Of the one-acters, one, That's Murder, has recently been pronounced as "perhaps the most popular short play ever written by an Australian."...' G.M.(i-ii).

E. Morris Miller and Frederick T. Macartney's Australian Literature : A Bibliography to 1938 Extended to 1950 (1956): 424 comments: 'These one-act plays comprise "A Sirius Cove" in which a woman's plans for her daughter's marriage are defeated by a hardly credible ruse on the part of the lover whom the latter prefers; "Red and Gold", with its action in the days of the gold-diggings and bushrangers; "That's Murder: A Mystery Comedy"; "The Resignation of Mr. Bagworth", with a bank official's settled habits prevailing over a chance of betterment; and "Twelve Moon's Cold", proceeding from cross-purposes connected with recovery of a thief's booty after he is released from jail. The interest in each instance is sustained with easy animation.'