From Tatters of the King

Talbot Estus loaned a copy of this play to Nathaniel Browne. He claims to have adapted and translated it into his play "Carcosa, or The Queen and the Stranger". The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris also has a single reference copy of the play.

The book, published in 1885, 8 years before Chambers' "The King in Yellow" is a thin black octavo volume with the Yellow Sign embossed upon its cover. The play is in French, and no author's name is listed. However, some sources name the playwright as 'Castaigne' and say that he killed himself after completing it.

Though not the notorious work of Chambers' stories this play was indeed suppressed and burned by the French authorities, for reasons that are unclear, and there are rumours of madness and death surrounding it.

Those who see the Yellow Sign on the cover sometimes appear to be psychologically affected by it, but this is by no means a universal reaction.

The play predates Chambers' work so seems to have been an inspiration for him as well.

Some of the names used in the play, such as Carcosa and Haita also appear in the works of Ambrose Bierce, indicating that the either Bierce's stories were used in creating the names or that both the play and Bierce borrowed from and even earlier work. There is evidence of older works with the same name - a fragment by Marlowe and a lost Restoration drama, but neither is available for perusal.

Browne has completed studying the play, though he's not sure that he fully understood it. It differs from Estus's work in several significant ways (for example Aldones, the king of Alar is a character in this, but not in Estus's play), but is clearly the source of the Texan's play.

The copy borrowed from Estus has been heavily annotated in English by him.