Thus Bernard Shaw, in a well-known statement from the Preface to his first, long unpublished novel, Immaturity, reflected on his decision to leave Dublin for London in 1876 at the age of 20. It was a retrospect written with the hindsight of almost fifty years: ‘There was no Gaelic League in those days, nor any sense that Ireland had in herself the seed of culture’. Such a view might well reinforce the impression that Shaw, like Wilde immediately before him, belonged to that older tradition of Irish dramatists – Farquhar, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Boucicault – who could only imagine success in metropolitan terms.