Editing Edwardian era (section)

===Performing arts===
Cinema was primitive and audiences preferred live performances to picture shows. [[Music hall]] was very popular and widespread; influential performers included male impersonator [[Vesta Tilley]] and comic [[Little Tich]].<ref>J. B. Priestley ''The Edwardians'' (1970), pp. 172–176.</ref>

The most successful playwright of the era was [[W. Somerset Maugham]]. In 1908, he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards. Maugham's plays, like his novels, usually had a conventional plot structure, but the decade also saw the rise of the so-called New Drama, represented in plays by [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Harley Granville Barker]], and Continental imports by [[Henrik Ibsen]] and [[Gerhardt Hauptmann]]. The actor/manager system, as managed by [[Sir Henry Irving]], [[George Alexander (actor)|Sir George Alexander]], and [[Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree]], was in decline.