constructive social student and philosopher, who uses a popular
amusement as a vehicle for the wider dissemination of perfectly serious
views: a socialist, a mystic who believes in the Life Force sweeping man
on (if man but will) to a high destiny, and a lover of fellow man who in
his own words regards his life as belonging to the community and wishes
to serve it, in order that he may be "thoroughly used up" when he comes
to die. He has conquered as a playwright because beneath the sparkling
sally, the startling juxtaposition of character and the apparent
irreverence there hides a genuinely religious nature. Shaw shows himself
an "immoralist" only in the sense that he attacks jejune, vicious
pseudo-morals now existent. For sheer acting values in the particulars
of dialogue, character, scenic effectiveness, feeling for climax and
unity of aim such plays as _Candida_, _Arms and the Man_, _Captain
Brassbound's Profession_, _The Devil's Disciple_, _John Bull's Other
Island_, _Man and Superman_, _The Showing Up of Blanco Posnett_, and
others yet, are additions to the serious comedy of England likely to be
of lasting luster, so far as contemporary vision can penetrate.

One of the most interesting developments of recent years has been the
Irish theater movement, in itself part of the general rehabilitation of
the higher imaginative life of that remarkable people. The drama of the
gentle idealist poet Yeats, of the shrewdly observant Lady Gregory and
of the grimly realistic yet richly romantic Synge has carried far beyond
their little country, so that plays like Yeats' _The Land of Heart's
Desire_ and _The Hour Glass_, Lady Gregory's _Spreading the News_ and
Synge's _Riders to the Sea_ and _The Playboy of the Western World_ are
heard wherever the English language is understood, this stage literature
being aided in its travels by the excellent company of Irish Players
founded to exploit it and giving the world a fine example of the success
that may come from a single-eyed devotion to an ideal: namely, the
presentation for its own sake of the simple typical native life of the
land.

It should be remembered that while these three leaders are best known,
half a dozen other able Irish dramatists are associated with them, and
doing much to interpret the farmer or city folk: writers like Mayne,
Boyle, McComas, Murray, and Robinson.

Under the stimulus of Shaw in his reaction against the machine-made
piece and the tiresome reitera