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 common; he was without interest in its social and moral problems; when he approved of socialism it was because in a socialist state the artist might be absolved from the necessity of carrying a living, and be free to follow his art undisturbed.  He loved to think of himself as symbolic, but all he symbolized was a fantasy of his own creating; his attitude to his age was decorative and withdrawn rather than representative.  He was the licensed jester to society, and in that capacity he gave us his plays.  Mr. Shaw may be said to have founded a school; at any rate he gave the start to Mr. Galsworthy and some lesser dramatists.  Wilde founded nothing, and his works remain as complete and separate as those of the earlier artificial dramatists of two centuries before.