George Bernard Shaw at Whitehall Court. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw secured a firm reputation as a playwright. In 1904 J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker established a company at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, Chelsea to present modern drama. Over the next five years they staged fourteen of Shaw's plays. The first, "John Bull's Other Island", a comedy about an Englishman in Ireland, attracted leading politicians and was seen by Edward VII, who laughed so much that he broke his chair. The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre, for fear of the affront it might
J. B. Priestley ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease." He moved into a new genre and became equally well known as a dramatist. "Dangerous Corner" (1932) was the first of many plays that would enthrall West End theatre audiences. His best-known play is "An Inspector Calls" (1945). His plays are more varied in tone than the novels, several being influenced by J. W. Dunne's theory of time, which plays a part in the plots of "Dangerous Corner" (1932) and "Time and the Conways". In 1940, Priestley wrote an essay for "Horizon" magazine, where he criticised George Bernard Shaw for his support of