rick theatre with _The Profligate_, by Pinero--an unripe and
superficial piece of work in many ways, but still a great advance, both
in ambition and achievement, upon any original work the stage had seen
for many a year.

With all its faults, it may be said that _The Profligate_ notably
enlarged at one stroke the domain open to the English dramatist. And it
did not stand alone. The same year saw the production of two plays by H.
A. Jones, _Wealth_ and _The Middleman_, in which a distinct effort
towards a serious criticism of life was observable, and of two plays by
Sydney Grundy, _A Fool's Paradise_ and _A White Lie_, which, though very
French in method, were at least original in substance. Jones during the
next two years made a steady advance with _Judah_ (1890), _The Dancing
Girl_ and _The Crusaders_ (1891). Pinero in these years was putting
forth less than his whole strength in _The Cabinet Minister_ (1890),
_Lady Bountiful_ and _The Times_ (1891), and _The Amazons_ (March 1893).
But meanwhile new talents were coming forward. The management of George
Alexander, which opened at the Avenue theatre in 1890, but was
transferred in the following year to the St James's, brought prominently
to the front R. C. Carton, Haddon Chambers and Oscar Wilde. Carton's two
sentimental comedies, _Sunlight and Shadow_ (1890) and _Liberty Hall_
(1892), showed excellent workmanship, but did not yet reveal his true
originality as a humorist. Haddon Chambers's work (notably _The Idler_,
1891) was as yet sufficiently commonplace; but in _Lady Windermere's
Fan_ (1892) Oscar Wilde showed himself at his first attempt a brilliant
and accomplished dramatist. Wilde's subsequent plays, _A Woman of No
Importance_ (1893) and _An Ideal Husband_ and _The Importance of being
Earnest_ (1895), though marred by mannerism and insincerity, did much to
promote the movement we are here tracing.

As the production of _The Profligate_ marked the opening of the second
period in the revival of English drama, so the production of the same
author's _The Second Mrs Tanqueray_ is very clearly the starting-point
of the third period. Before attempting to trace its course we may do
well to glance at certain conditions which probably influenced it.

In the first place, economic conditions. The Bancroft-Robertson movement
at the old Prince of Wales's, between 1865 and 1870, was of even more
importance from an economic than from a literary point of view. By
making their l