A.A. Milne, now known chiefly for his works for children, also wrote extensively and often very successfully for the theatre, feeling that writing plays is 'the most exciting form of writing'. The preface to The Ivory Door is a forceful protest against being labelled as 'whimsical', a word used of his work for Punch as early as 1910, and inseparably associated with him in the press as the author of Winnie the Pooh. The introduction to Four Plays discusses the relationship between author and actors. '[The author] sees the characters clearly in his mind; he puts them down as well as he can on paper; and he must answer, at the moment of writing anyhow, that in the persons of the ideal cast they will come to life exactly as he saw them...[The] usual assumption is that a play is automatically improved by the fact of production, and that its characters...increase their stature by a measure proportionate to the reputation of the player...To the dramatist's intentions the player, being of flesh and blood, and a servant of compromise, will never make a complete response, even if she be Miss Barrymore herself...Even indeed, if she be Miss Barrymore not being herself'.