This volume includes the contents of the two most important collections of Yeats's critical prose, Ideas of Good and Evil (1903) and The Cutting of an Agate (1912, 1919). Among the seminal essays are considerations of Blake, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, and Synge, as well as an extended discussion of the Japanese Noh theatre. The first scholarly edition of these materials, Early Essays offers a corrected text and detailed annotation of all allusions. Several appendices include materials from early printings which were later excluded, as well as black and white illustrations.