SOURCE: "The Conventions of the Nō Drama" and introductions to Komachi at Sekidera (Sekidera Komachi), The Brocade Tree (Nishikigi), Semimaru, The Deserted Crone (Obasute), Lady Han (Hanjo), and The Reed Cutter (Ashikari), in Twenty Plays of the No Theatre, edited by Donald Keene with Royall Tyler, Columbia University Press, 1970, pp. 1-15, 66-7, 82-3, 100-01, 116-17, 130-31, 148-49.

In the excerpts below, Keene discusses some of the difficulties inherent in establishing a canon of Zeami's works, and he offers brief introductions to six of his plays.

The difficulties confronting the would-be critic of No are enormous. Not a single play is dated, and all we can infer about even the most famous works is the date before which they must have been composed, information perhaps gleaned from a diary entry mentioning a performance. Some plays can be dated only by century, and others seem to have been rewritten so...