Where plays had been constructed on a journeyman plan evolved by Labiche and Sardou--mid-nineteenth century writers in France--a plan delighting in symmetry, close-jointedness, false correspondences, an impossible use of coincidence, and a quite unreal complexity and elaboration, they become bolder and less artificial, more close to the likelihoods of real life.

The gravity of the problems with which 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.