But, when he was writing _Lady Windermere's Fan_, or a little earlier, he wrote down, swiftly, as if to relieve himself, a play whose mood was at the opposite end of his range. And, while _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was filling the St. James's Theatre, he was trying to finish _La Sainte Courtisane_, and had submitted to a manager the latter part of _A Florentine Tragedy_, which he had never been able to begin. When he was released from prison, he left the manuscript of the first in a cab, and did not complete the second. He had imagined, while in Reading Gaol, two other such plays as _Salome--Ahab and Isabel_, and _Pharaoh_. These, unfortunately, like _The Cardinal of Arragon_, portions of which Wilde was accustomed to recite, were never written. The non-existence and the incompleteness of these plays are explicable on other grounds than those of inclination. I think that if _Salome_ had been produced with success as soon as it was written, Wilde would very likely not have written his plays about good women and conscience-stricken men of State, or, having written one, would have written no more. It is possible that we owe _The Importance of Being Earnest_ to the fact that the Censor prevented Sarah Bernhardt from playing _Salome_ at the Palace Theatre. For though Wilde had the secret of a wonderful laughter, he preferred to think of himself as a person with magnificent dreams. He would rather have been a magician than a jester. The well-dressed modern plays starved too many of his intimate desires. He was unable to clothe magnificent emotions in evening dress. But applause was necessary to him. He made sure of it by the modern plays, and had not a chance of securing it by anything else. And so there are four social comedies, and only one _Salome_.