ch they set themselves to deal heightened their
influence. In England men began to ask themselves whether the theatre
here too could not be made an avenue towards the discussion of living
difficulties, and then arose the new school of dramatists--of whom the
first and most remarkable is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. In his earlier
plays he set himself boldly to attack established conventions, and to
ask his audiences to think for themselves. _Arms and the Man_ dealt a
blow at the cheap romanticism with which a peace-living public invests
the profession of arms; _The Devil's Disciple_ was a shrewd criticism of
the preposterous self-sacrifice on which melodrama, which is the most
popular non-literary form of play-writing, is commonly based; _Mrs.
Warren's Profession_ made a brave and plain-spoken attempt to drag the
public face to face with the nauseous realities of prostitution;
_Widowers' Houses_ laid bare the sordidness of a Society which bases
itself on the exploitation of the poor for the luxuries of the rich. It
took Mr. Shaw close on ten years to persuade even the moderate number of
men and women who make up a theatre audience that his plays were worth
listening to. But before his final success came he had attained a
substantial popularity with the public which reads. Possibly his early
failure on the stage--mainly due to the obstinacy of playgoers immersed
in a stock tradition--was partly due also to his failure in constructive
power. He is an adept at tying knots and impatient of unravelling them;
his third acts are apt either to evaporate in talk or to find some
unreal and unsatisfactory solution for the complexity he has created.
But constructive weakness apart, his amazing brilliance and fecundity of
dialogue ought to have given him an immediate and lasting grip of the
stage. There has probably never been a dramatist who could invest
conversation with the same vivacity and point, the same combination of
surprise and inevitableness that distinguishes his best work.

Alongside of Mr. Shaw more immediately successful, and not traceable to
any obvious influence, English or foreign, came the comedies of Oscar
Wilde. For a parallel to their pure delight and high spirits, and to the
exquisite wit and artifice with which they were constructed, one would
have to go back to the dramatists of the Restoration. To Congreve and
his school, indeed, Wilde belongs rather than to any later period. With
his own age he had little in co