With the exception of a piece from
Polite Farces for The Drawing Room, produced briefly in 1914, none of this mass of work ever appeared on the stage. Although Bennett eventually earned a substantial part of his income writing plays, with his last success,
Mr. Prohack , coming as late as 1927, he never acquired a mastery of the dramatic form. George Bernard Shaw, who attempted to teach Bennett the art, finally despaired of his ever learning the craft, insisting that Bennett wrote plays as if they were novels.
Despite his slow start and frequent failures as a dramatist, Bennett did write, or share in the writing of, three plays that were major box-office successes--The Great Adventure (1911), adapted from his novel Buried Alive (1908); Milestones (1912), written in collaboration with Edward Knoblock; and Mr. Prohack, adapted from his novel of the same name and also written in collaboration with Knoblock.
In addition to these three plays, Bennett wrote a dozen others between 1908 and 1928 that enjoyed moderate success in the London theaters. With the exception of an important innovation in form in Milestones, Bennett broke no new ground in his plays, writing in a style popular with London audiences in the two decades before and after World War I.
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