That there is a market in these days of tight publishing budgets for a bibliography of works by and on Robertson Davies, a study of his plays, and a collection of his "Pronouncements" is an index of Davies' current popularity. This popularity is based on his second trilogy—Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders—for in these books Davies has created vivid and distinctive central characters whose eccentric interests have both popular appeal and a philosophic undercurrent. (p. 56)

[Davies'] childhood love of theater bore fruit in his excellent Oxford thesis, published under the title Shakespeare's Boy Actors (1939) and in a stream of plays from the mid-forties on. Fourteen of these have been published and some ten others produced. His early plays earned him a permanent place in the history of Canadian drama. (pp. 56, 58)

Some of [Davies'] witty and irascible comment on the passing scene published in...