Arms and the Man, Candida, You Never Can Tell, and The Man of Destiny, published (1898) in the second volume of Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant; and The Devil’s Disciple, published (1900) in Three Plays for Puritans, are among his best dramas.  With their stage directions and descriptions, they are as delightful to read as novels.  Of these plays, Candida is first in character drawing and human interest.  The dramatic action is wholly within the mental states of the three chief actors, but the situations are made intense through a succession of unique, absorbing, entertaining, and well-developed conversations.

Shaw is more destructive than constructive in his philosophy as expressed in his plays; and he criticizes so many of the institutions held sacred by society that people have refused to accept him seriously, even when he has written expository prefaces to his dramas.  In Arms and the Man, he satirizes the romantic admiration for the soldier’s calling; in The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), he attacks the professional man; in Widowers’ Houses (1898), he assails the rich property holder with his high rents on poor people’s houses:  and in Man and Superman (1903), he dissects love and home until the sentiment is entirely taken out of them.

Shaw’s chief object is to place before his audience facts, reasons, and logical conclusions.  He will not tolerate romantic emotions or sentimentalism, which he ridicules with a reckless audacity, a literal incisiveness, and a satiric wit that none of his contemporaries can excel.  His chief claim to his present important position among playwrights is based on his originality and fearlessness of thought, the unfailing sprightliness of his conversation, the infectious spirit of raillery in his comedies, and his mastery of the requirements of the modern stage.

J.M.  Barrie.—­With the successful stage production of The Little Minister (1897), Barrie passed from novelist to playwright.  The qualities of humor, fancy, and quaint characterization, which were such a charm in his novels, reappear in his plays.

[Illustration:  JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE.]

The Admirable Crichton, produced in 1903, is one of Barrie’s most successful comedies.  He displays skill and humor in handling the absurd situation of a peer’s family wrecked on a desert island, where the butler, as the most resourceful member of the party, takes command.  In Peter Pan (1904), the dramatization of the novel, The Little White Bird, care-free, prankish Peter Pan visits three children in their sleep and teaches them to fly away with him.  He carries them to the little people of the fairy world, to the pirate ship, to other scenes dear to children’s hearts, and finally to his home in the tree tops.  The play is a mixture of fancy, symbolism, and realism.  These are woven into a bright phantasy by an imagination that is near to childhood and has not lost its morning’s brightness.