 As in some earlier work, the playwright displays "his conviction that nurture rather than nature often accounted for criminal behaviour".The grim and powerful piece became one of Gilbert's most successful serious dramas, and experts conclude that, in those last months of Gilbert's life, he was developing a new style, a "mixture of irony, of social theme, and of grubby realism," to replace the old "Gilbertianism" of which he had grown weary.In these last years, Gilbert also wrote children's book versions of "[[H.M.S.