Modern Arabic drama began to be written in the 19th century chiefly in Egypt and mainly influenced and in imitation of French works. It was not until the 20th century that it began to develop a distinctly Arab flavour and be seen elsewhere. The most important Arab playwright was Tawfiq al-Hakim whose first play was a re-telling of the Qur'anic story of the Seven sleepers and the second an epilogue for the "Thousand and One Nights." As is the case with other literary genres, the first accounts of plays during that period were in the form of translations and adaptations of Western works. Gradually, however, the stage, particularly in Egypt, reached its full potency as Egyptian dramatist began writing plays that reflected the current socio-political situation of the country and its people. A major theme that was recurrent in most of the plays was the West-East struggle; an issue that seemed to have both coincided and aggravated the search for an Egyptian national identity. The shift towards realism that took place in writing the novel extended to the play. Dramatic plays, particularly in Egypt, flourished immensely, and subsequently dominated the rest of the Arab world. In that reals, Mahmoud Taymour was the first to experiment with the social realist play, but it did not reach its full potency except on the hands of Tawfiq al-Hakim, who mastered motifs and mental representations, utilized Pharaonic, Islamic, and Western myths, and wrote remarkable cognitive plays such as "Ahl al-Kahf" (The People of the Cave), and "Scheherazade". He also wrote social plays including "Al-Sultan al-Ha'er" (the Bewildered Sultan). Shawqi's contributions to the poetic theater, taken up later by Aziz Abaza, are noticeable for their dealing with historical and classical themes. The employment of colloquial Arabic within the dialogues of the plays was a central issue in studying Arab litterateurs and their motives behind such act. The issue, however, was not as prominent in novels and stories as it was in plays. Nevertheless, al-Hakim and Taymour both tried to utilize colloquialisms in dialogues in both novels and stories, yet their success did not stop the debate that had risen as a result. In fact, it led Taymour to refrain from using colloquialisms in his writings, and he rewrote his previous works by replacing any colloquialisms with Modern Standard Arabic.