There was a continuity in Wilde's interest in the theatre wholly lacking in his passing fancies for narrative or essay-writing. This, with the fact that his plays brought him his first financial success, has made it usual to consider him as a dramatist whose recreations are represented by his books. Even Mr. Symons, in his article on Wilde as "An Artist in Attitudes," finds that his plays, "the wittiest that have been seen upon the modern stage," expressed, "as it happened by accident, precisely what he himself was best able to express." I cannot help feeling that this is a little unjust to him. His most perfectly successful works, those which most exactly accomplish what they attempt, without sacrificing any part of themselves, are, perhaps, _The Importance of Being Earnest_ and _Salome_. Both these are plays. But neither of them seems to me so characteristic, so inclusive of Wilde as _Intentions_, _De Profundis_, _The Portrait of Mr. W. H._, or even _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. His plays are wilfully limited, subordinated to an aim outside themselves, and, except in the two I have just mentioned, these limitations are not such as to justify themselves by giving freedom to the artist. Some limitations set an artist free for an achievement otherwise impossible. But the limitations of which I complain only made Wilde a little contemptuous of his work. They did not save his talent from preoccupations, but compelled it to a labour in whose success alone he could take an interest. It is impossible not to feel that Wilde was impatient of the methods and the meanings of his first three successful plays, like a juggler, conscious of being able to toss up six balls, who is admired for tossing three. These good women, these unselfish, pseudonymous mothers, these men of wit and fashion discomfited to make a British holiday; their temptations, their sacrifices, their defeats, are not taken from any drama played in Wilde's own mind. He saw them and their adventures quite impersonally; and no good art is impersonal. Salome kissing the pale lips of Iokanaan may once have moved him when he saw her behind the ghostly footlights of that secret theatre in which each man is his own dramatist, his own stage-manager, and his own audience. But Lady Windermere did not return to her husband for Wilde's sake, and he did not feel that Sir Robert Chiltern's future mattered either way. He cared only that an audience he despised should be relieved at her return, and that to them the career of a politician should seem to be important. Not until the production of _The Importance of Being Earnest_ did he share the pleasure of the pit. I know a travelling showman who makes "enjoy" an active verb, and speaks of "enjoying the poor folk" when, for coppers, he lets them ride on merry-go-rounds, and agitate themselves in swing-boats, which offer him no manner of amusement. In just this way Wilde "enjoyed" the London audiences with his early plays. He did not enjoy them himself.