The plays of James Reaney … have a background of religious and philosophical concern behind them. The survey of philosophy in Reaney's "September Eclogue," in A Suit of Nettles, ends significantly with Heidegger and with games of magic taken from The Golden Bough; and Reaney's plays in general are shot through with a kind of religious-philosophical excitement that tells us there is much going on privately in that area. But he is a solitary exile in an empty land, almost unique in being troubled deeply and seriously with such questions; therefore his plays have a peculiar dislocation and feeling of unreality in the context of Canadian society. (p. 322)

[The] proposition that James Reaney's charming theatre is somehow a distant relation to, first, Bernard Shaw and, second, W. B. Yeats, may sound far-fetched, but I think it can help us to understand what is going on in the plays. In...