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.