Well-made play
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The well-made play (from the French: pièce bien faite) is a form of drama developed in the nineteenth century and associated especially with the French playwright Eugene Scribe (1791-1861).
The term gives to a variety of plays written since about 1825 which combine in a seemingly logical and plausible structure the following features: Frequently, the hero experiences a conflict between love (for a naive girl he wishes to marry) and duty (to an older and more worldly woman from whom he wishes to disengage himself without embarrassment). This, of course, is an updated version of the conflict which was basic to so much neoclassical tragedy. Most of the other features of the well-made play can similarly be traced to earlier forms.
The structural features of the well-made play are:
- plot based on a secret known by the audience but not by certain characters
- a pattern of increasingly intense action and suspense, prepared by exposition and assisted by contrived entrances and exits, letters etc.
- a series of ups and downs in the hero's fortune caused by conflict with an adversary
- counterpunch of peripeteia and "scène a faire" (low and high point), caused by disclosure of secrets
- a central misunderstanding that is obvious to the spectator but not to the characters
- logical dénouement
- reproduction of the overall action pattern in the individual acts of the play
