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
George Bernard Shaw: His Plays George Bernard Shaw: His Plays George Bernard Shaw: His Plays (1905) is H. L. Mencken's interpretation of G. Bernard Shaw's plays, in which Mencken overwhelmingly embraced the man who was, at that time, his favourite playwright. According to Mencken: "Through Shaw, I found my vocation at last." It is no surprise that Mencken was enthusiastic in his praise of Shaw when he wrote "His Plays", but as time passed, this love would wane, and he would eventually criticize Shaw in a later work "Prejudices". Mencken began work on the book in 1904, with the goal of publishing the book under