SOURCE: "The Toy Theatre, Romance, and Treasure Island: The Artistry of R. L. S.," in English Studies in Canada, Vol. VIII, No. 4, December, 1982, pp. 409-21.

In the following essay, McKenzie examines the influence of the nineteenth-century toy theatre upon Stevenson's aesthetic sensibility. She focuses on elements of excitement, imagination, chance, and playfulness in both the toy theatre and Stevenson's fiction.'

Treasure Island, a six-part romance first published in a boys' paper, has been charming readers as a kind of archetypal adventure tale for a century. Its rapid but¹ predictable incidents, swashbuckling characters, and exotic settings combine with the enthusiasm of the young narrator to create the impression of a youthful day-dream rather than a serious quest. The story's² apparent naivete, however, conceals interesting elements of the author's carefully considered ideas about art and life that were then influencing his developing literary theories. Its construction also foreshadows in...