Yes, or the Death of Aristocracy is one of the interludes of The Drama for Fools, a large-scale dramatic cycle containing multiple puppet plays. This cycle kept Craig exceedingly busy between 1916 and 1918. It was supposed to hold 365 short plays and be performed like a traveling show: each night, from 31 April to 31 March, a new play would be shown in a new location. Craig, who wrote his plays under the pen name Tom Fool, stopped writing before the cycle was finished and gave up on performing the play himself.

Nonetheless, he stored his drafts in three cardboard boxes, as a collection of typewritten notebooks containing many illustrations and whose covers display words written in colourful calligraphy. He cared immensely for these notebooks, as he improved, corrected, and supplemented them until the 1950s. This collection is today held at the Institut International de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mézières.

Craig puts this interlude forward as the “shortest tragedy in the world”. There are multiple translations to its single line, in Russian (“da”), in German (“ja”), in Italian (“si”), in French (“oui”), and in American English (“I guess”).

On a beach, a knight in armour appears from afar. He is tiny. He moves closer and progressively gets bigger. When he is the closest, he lays on the sand, says a single word, “yes,” and dies.