What was of more importance, a new generation of playwrights came to the front. Its most notable representatives were J. M. Barrie, who displayed his inexhaustible gift of humorous observation and invention in _Quality Street_ (1902), _The Admirable Crichton_ (1903), _Little Mary_ (1903), _Peter Pan_ (1904), _Alice Sit-by-the-Fire_ (1905) and _What Every Woman Knows_ (1908); Mrs Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes"), who produced in _The Ambassador_ (1898) a comedy of fine accomplishment; and H. V. Esmond, Alfred Sutro, Hubert Henry Davies, W. S. Maugham, Rudolf Besier, Roy Horniman and J. B. Fagan. Meanwhile, the efforts to relieve the drama from the pressure of the long-run system had not been confined to the Independent theatre. Several other enterprises of a like nature had proved more or less short-lived; but the Stage Society, founded in 1900, was conducted with more energy and perseverance, and became a real force in the dramatic world. After two seasons devoted mainly to Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, Maeterlinck and Hauptmann, it produced in its third season _The Marrying of Ann Leete_, by Granville Barker (b. 1877), who had developed in its service his remarkable gifts as a producer of plays. A year or two later, Barker staged for another organization, the New Century theatre, Professor Gilbert Murray's rendering of the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides; and it was partly the success of this production that suggested the Vedrenne-Barker partnership at the Court theatre, which, between 1904 and 1907, gave an extraordinary impulse to the intellectual life of the theatre. Adopting the "short-run" system, as a compromise between the long-run and the repertory systems, the Vedrenne-Barker management made the plays of Bernard Shaw (both old and new) for the first time really popular. Of the plays already published _You Never Can Tell_ and _Man and Superman_ were the most successful; of the new plays, _John Bull's Other Island_, _Major Barbara_ and _The Doctor's Dilemma_. But though Shaw was the mainstay of the enterprise, it gave opportunities to several other writers, the most notable being John Galsworthy (b. 1867), author of _The Silver Box_ and _Strife_, St John Hankin (1869-1909), author of _The Return of the Prodigal_ and _The Charity that began at Home_, and Granville Barker himself, whose plays _The Voysey Inheritance_ and _Waste_ (1907) were among the most important products of this movement. It should also be noted that the production of the _Hippolytus_ was followed up by the production of the _Trojan Women_, the _Electra_ and the _Medea_ of Euripides, all translated by Gilbert Murray.