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The well-made play (french: la pièce bien faite, pronounced ) is a dramatic genre from
nineteenth-century theatre Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou, the farc ...
, developed by the French dramatist
Eugène Scribe Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of man ...
. It is characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely standardised structure, with little emphasis on characterisation and intellectual ideas. Scribe, a prolific playwright, wrote several hundred plays between 1815 and 1861, usually in collaboration with co-authors. His plays, breaking free from the old neoclassical style of drama seen at the Comédie Française, appealed to the theatre-going middle classes. The "well-made" form was adopted by other French and foreign playwrights and remained a key feature of the theatre well into the 20th century. Among later playwrights drawing on Scribe's formula were Alexandre Dumas ''fils'',
Victorien Sardou Victorien Sardou ( , ; 5 September 18318 November 1908) was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play. He also wrote several plays that were made into popular 19th-centur ...
and
Georges Feydeau Georges-Léon-Jules-Marie Feydeau (; 8 December 1862 – 5 June 1921) was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his farces, written between 1886 and 1914. Feydeau was born in Paris to middle-class parent ...
in France,
W. S. Gilbert Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most f ...
,
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
,
Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
, and
Alan Ayckbourn Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of ...
in Britain, and
Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...
and
Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' ( ...
in the US. Writers who objected to the constraints of the well-made play but adapted the formula to suit their needs included
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
and
Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
.


Definitions

''The Oxford English Dictionary'' defines the "well-made play" as one "written in a formulaic manner which aims at neatness of plot and foregrounding of dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterization, intellectual substance, etc." ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance'' (2004) elaborates on the definition: "A dramatic structure esignedto provide a constantly entertaining, exciting narrative which satisfyingly resolved the many complications and intrigues that drove the story … characteristically based on a secret known only to some of the characters".Rebellato, Dan
play"
, ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance'', Oxford University Press, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
The formula came into regular use in the early 19th century and shaped the direction of drama over several decades, but its various elements contained nothing unknown to previous generations of writers, and neither its first proponent,
Eugène Scribe Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of man ...
, nor his successors applied it unvaryingly. The academic Stephen Stanton (1957) gives seven key points of the genre, which may be summarised as: # a plot based on facts known by the audience but not known by some or all of the characters # a pattern of increasingly intense action and suspense # a series of ups and downs in the main character's fortunes # the depiction of the lowest and the highest point in the main character's adventures # a central misunderstanding or ''quiproquo'' (see below), clear to the audience but unknown to the characters # a logical and plausible dénouement # the overall structure is reflected in each act. Within the structure of the well-made play three technical terms are frequently used: *''quiproquo'' – (derived from post-classical Latin
quid pro quo Quid pro quo ('what for what' in Latin) is a Latin phrase used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other; "a favor for a favor". Phrases with similar meanings include: "give and take", ...
: literally, "something for something"): two or more characters interpret a word, a situation or a person's identity in different ways, all the time assuming that their interpretations are the same. *''
peripeteia Peripeteia ( el, περιπέτεια) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point. The term is primarily used with reference to works of literature; its anglicized form is peripety. Aristotle's view Aristotle, in his ''Poetics'', defines ...
'' – used in this context as meaning the greatest in a series of mishaps suffered by the hero. *'' scène à faire'' (the "obligatory" scene) – a term invented by the 19th-century critic
Francisque Sarcey Francisque Sarcey (8 October 1827 – 16 May 1899) was a French journalist and dramatic critic. Career He was born in Dourdan, Essonne. After some years as schoolmaster, a job for which his temperament was ill-fitted, he entered journalism ...
– a scene in which the outcome the audience expects and ardently desires comes to pass or is clearly signalled.


Background

Before the late-18th century, French theatre had been neoclassical in style, with strict forms reflecting contemporary interpretations of the theatrical laws propounded by
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
in his ''
Poetics Poetics is the theory of structure, form, and discourse within literature, and, in particular, within poetry. History The term ''poetics'' derives from the Ancient Greek ποιητικός ''poietikos'' "pertaining to poetry"; also "creative" an ...
'', written some 1,500 years earlier. The prevailing doctrine was "verisimilitude", or the appearance of a plausible truth, as the aesthetic goal of a play. In 1638 the
Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
codified a system by which dramatists should achieve verisimilitude, and the monarchy enforced the standards of French neoclassicism by licensing and subsidising a limited number of approved theatre companies, chief of which was the Comédie Française.
Corneille Pierre Corneille (; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronag ...
and
Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...
were regarded as successors to the ancient Greek tragedians, and
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
as that of
Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the gen ...
and
Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...
in comedy. Small companies performing simple plays at local fairs were tolerated, and by the middle of the 18th century some were playing in Paris in the
Boulevard du Temple The Boulevard du Temple, formerly nicknamed the "Boulevard du Crime", is a thoroughfare in Paris that separates the 3rd arrondissement from the 11th. It runs from the Place de la République to the Place Pasdeloup, and its name refers to the ne ...
, bringing before the public works not constrained by neoclassical formulas.


Scribe

The dramatist and opera librettist Eugène Scribe was born in 1791, at a time when the conventions and forms of the traditional European literature and theatre of the neoclassical Enlightenment were giving way to the unrestrained and less structured works of
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
. In his 1967 book ''The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play'',
John Russell Taylor John Russell Taylor (born 19 June 1935) is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such figures in film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien L ...
writes that what Scribe set out to do "was not to tame and discipline Romantic extravagance, but to devise a mould into which any sort of material, however extravagant and seemingly uncontrollable, could be poured".Taylor, pp. 11–12 Writing with collaborators as a rule, Scribe produced some 500 stage works between 1815 and his death in 1861. His development of a form that could be used repeatedly to turn out new material met the demands of a growing middle class theatre audience, and made him a rich man. Many of Scribe's plays were produced at the Théâtre du Gymnase, where he was resident dramatist from 1851. He specialised at first in vaudeville, or light comedy, but soon developed the ''pièce bien faite'', frequently (though not invariably) using the form, both for comic and serious plays, keeping the plots tight and logical, subordinating character to situation, building up suspense, and leading up to the resolution in a ''scène à faire''.Howarth, W. D
"Scribe, Augustin-Eugène"
, ''The Companion to Theatre and Performance'', Oxford University Press, 2010. Retrieved 5 June 2021
A later critic commented: Scribe's formula proved immensely successful, and was much imitated, despite objections at the time and later that the constraints of the well-made play turned characters into puppets controlled by chance, and that the plays displayed "shallow theatricality". He is remembered more for his influence on the development of drama than for his plays, which are rarely staged; ''
Les Archives du spectacle Les Archives du spectacle – The Performing Arts Archive – is an online French database covering live performance (theatre, dance, opera, puppetry, etc.). It was created in 2007.Marvin Carlson Marvin Albert Carlson (born September 15, 1935) is an American theatrologist, currently the Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor at City University of New York, and also previously the Walker-Ames Professor at University of Washington. A largely ...
, "cannot be overestimated", and French playwrights of the 19th century, even those who reacted against Scribe and his well-made plays, were all influenced by them to a greater or lesser degree.Carlson, p. 216 Carlson observes that, unlike other influential theatre thinkers, Scribe did not write prefaces or manifestos declaiming his ideas. He influenced theatre, instead, with craftsmanship. Carlson identifies a single instance of Scribe's critical commentary from a speech the playwright gave to the Académie Français in 1836. Scribe expressed his view of what draws the audiences to the theatre: Although Scribe advocated a theatre of entertainment rather than of deep ideas, other writers, beginning with
Alexandre Dumas, fils Alexandre Dumas (; 27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) was a French author and playwright, best known for the romantic novel ''La Dame aux Camélias'' (''The Lady of the Camellias''), published in 1848, which was adapted into Giuseppe Verdi's 1 ...
, adopted Scribe's structure to create didactic plays. In a letter to a critic, Dumas ''fils'' wrote, "... if I can find some means to force people to discuss the problem, and the lawmaker to revise the law, I shall have done more than my duty as a writer, I shall have done my duty as a man". Dumas' thesis plays, written in the "well-made" genre, take clear moral positions on social issues of the day.
Emile Augier Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *'' Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *'' Emil and the Detecti ...
also used Scribe's formula to write plays addressing contemporary social issues, although he declares his moral position less forcefully.
Victorien Sardou Victorien Sardou ( , ; 5 September 18318 November 1908) was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play. He also wrote several plays that were made into popular 19th-centur ...
followed Scribe's precepts, producing numerous examples of the well-made play from 1860 into the 20th century, not only at the Comédie-Française and commercial theatres in Paris, but also in London and the US. His subject matter included farce and light comedy, comedy of manners, political comedy and costume dramas both comic and serious. The critic W. D. Howarth writes that Sardou's "well-developed sense of theatre and meticulous craftsmanship" made him the most successful dramatist of his day. Although so far as serious drama was concerned there was a reaction against Scribe's formulaic precepts in the later years of the 19th century, nevertheless in comedy, and in particular in
farce Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity o ...
, the ''pièce bien faite'' remained largely unchallenged. First
Eugène Labiche Eugene is a common male given name that comes from the Greek εὐγενής (''eugenēs''), "noble", literally "well-born", from εὖ (''eu''), "well" and γένος (''genos''), "race, stock, kin".Alfred Hennequin Alfred Néoclès Hennequin (13 January 1842 – 7 August 1887) was a Belgian playwright, best known for his farces. Born in Liège, Hennequin was trained there as an engineer, and was employed by the national railway company. In his spare time he w ...
,
Maurice Hennequin Maurice Hennequin (10 December 1863 – 3 September 1926) was a French-naturalized Belgian playwright. Biography A great-grandson of the painter Philippe-Auguste Hennequin, Maurice Hennequin was the son of Alfred Hennequin (1842–1887), him ...
and
Georges Feydeau Georges-Léon-Jules-Marie Feydeau (; 8 December 1862 – 5 June 1921) was a French playwright of the era known as the Belle Époque. He is remembered for his farces, written between 1886 and 1914. Feydeau was born in Paris to middle-class parent ...
wrote successful and enduring farces that closely follow Scribe's formula, while refreshing the content of the plots.


Britain and US

In the mid-19th century
Tom Taylor Tom Taylor (19 October 1817 – 12 July 1880) was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of ''Punch'' magazine. Taylor had a brief academic career, holding the professorship of English literature and language a ...
established himself as a leading London playwright. He adapted many French plays, including at least one of Scribe's, and made extensive use of Scribe's formula for the well-made play in his own pieces. Other Victorian playwrights who followed Scribe's precepts to a greater or lesser extent were
Edward Bulwer-Lytton Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 180318 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secret ...
, T. W. Robertson,
Dion Boucicault Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault (né Boursiquot; 26 December 1820 – 18 September 1890) was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the ...
and
W. S. Gilbert Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most f ...
, the last of whom, like Scribe, was an extremely successful opera librettist as well as author of many non-musical plays. Stanton sees the influence of Scribe in Gilbert's best-known play, '' Engaged'' (1877), as regards both the plot and the dramatic technique – withheld secrets, exposition, peripeteia and obligatory scene.Stanton, Stephen
"Ibsen, Gilbert, and Scribe's 'Bataille de Dames'"
''Educational Theatre Journal'', March 1965, pp. 24–30
Among the next generation of English-language playwrights indebted to Scribe was
Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
; despite Shaw's frequent denigration of Scribe (see " Objections", below), the latter's influence is seen in many of Shaw's plays. Stanton writes, "The evidence suggests that Shaw availed himself of as many of the tricks and devices of the popular stagecraft of Scribe as would help him to successfully establish on the stage his early plays, from ''
Widowers' Houses ''Widowers' Houses'' (1892) was the first play by George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It premièred on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society — a subscription club, formed to escape th ...
'' (1892) to ''
Man and Superman ''Man and Superman'' is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. ''Man and Superman'' opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London ...
'' (1903), and even beyond". Shaw's contemporary
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
followed the pattern of the well-made play in his drawing room dramas, but unlike Scribe he introduced continual ''bons mots'' into his dialogue, and in his final masterpiece ''
The Importance of Being Earnest ''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious ...
'' (derived in part from ''Engaged'') he abandoned any pretence of plausibility of plot and made fun of many of the traditions of the well-made play. In John Russell Taylor's view,
Arthur Wing Pinero Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (24 May 185523 November 1934) was an English playwright and, early in his career, actor. Pinero was drawn to the theatre from an early age, and became a professional actor at the age of 19. He gained experience as a supp ...
brought the well-made play to its pinnacle so far as the English theatre was concerned, not only in his farces and comedies, but also in serious plays. Pinero did not regard the well-made play as sacrosanct, and wrote many plays in which he avoided the conventional formulas, including his best-known, ''
The Second Mrs Tanqueray ''The Second Mrs. Tanqueray'' is a problem play by Arthur Wing Pinero. It utilises the "Woman with a past" plot, popular in nineteenth century melodrama. The play was first produced in 1893 by the actor-manager George Alexander and despite ca ...
'' (1893). After Pinero, in 20th-century British plays, the well-made play came to be seen as appropriate for comedies, but not for serious works. The comedies of
Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
were generally of the well-made genre, although he deliberately stretched plausibility to its limits;
Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
worked within the genre although his plotting was rarely complex and often slight; Taylor considers that he revived and refined the genre. With
Terence Rattigan Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan (10 June 191130 November 1977) was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background.Geoffrey Wan ...
the English tradition of the well-made play was thought to have come to an end. Some writers have noted a resurgence: Taylor finds elements of it in
Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanne ...
, with the important exception that Pinter's plays deliberately eschew crisp exposition of the plot, and in a 2008 study, Graham Saunders identifies
Alan Ayckbourn Sir Alan Ayckbourn (born 12 April 1939) is a prolific British playwright and director. He has written and produced as of 2021, more than eighty full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of ...
,
Michael Frayn Michael Frayn, FRSL (; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce ''Noises Off'' and the dramas ''Copenhagen'' and ''Democracy''. His novels, such as '' Towards the End of the Mo ...
and
Simon Gray Simon James Holliday Gray (21 October 1936 – 7 August 2008) was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Q ...
as playwrights continuing to write well-made plays. Stanton writes that in the US the situation in the 20th century was much the same as in Britain so far as the well-made play was concerned: From the US, Stanton singles out ''
The Little Foxes ''The Little Foxes'' is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman, considered a classic of 20th century drama. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 of the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the litt ...
'' (1939) and ''
Watch on the Rhine A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by ...
'' (1941) by
Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...
and '' All My Sons'' (1946) by
Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), ''Death of a Salesman'' ( ...
as prominent examples.


Objections

In the later 19th century and subsequently, the principal objection to Scribe's model, so far as serious plays were concerned, was that their concentration on plot and entertainment was limiting for playwrights who wished to examine character or discuss a social message. His admirer Dumas ''fils'' alluded to this by saying that the greatest playwright who ever existed would be one who knew humanity like Balzac and the theatre like Scribe.
Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
was often a preferred model for those who turned against the well-made play. He took the Scribean form but changed it in one important respect: replacing the ''scène à faire'' with a dissection of the social or emotional aspects of the plot. As his disciple Shaw put it: "up to a certain point in the last act, ''
A Doll's House ''A Doll's House'' (Danish and nb, Et dukkehjem; also translated as ''A Doll House'') is a three-act play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having bee ...
'' is a play that might be turned into a very ordinary French drama by the excision of a few lines, and the substitution of a sentimental happy ending for the famous last scene". Shaw was given to disparaging those he imitated, such as Scribe and Gilbert, and wrote, "Who was Scribe that he should dictate to me or anyone else how a play should be written?" Shaw was particularly dismissive of Sardou, for his concentration on plot rather than character or ideas – "Sardoodledom", as Shaw called it – but he nonetheless used the established techniques to convey his own didactic ideas, as he admitted in his preface to ''
Three Plays for Puritans ''Three Plays for Puritans'' is a collection of plays by George Bernard Shaw published in 1901. It consists of '' The Devil's Disciple'' (1897), '' Caesar and Cleopatra'' (1898) and ''Captain Brassbound's Conversion'' (1900), with a long preface ...
'' (1900), almost 40 years after Scribe's death. In a study for the
Modern Language Association The Modern Language Association of America, often referred to as the Modern Language Association (MLA), is widely considered the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature. The MLA aims to "st ...
, Milton Crane includes ''
Pygmalion Pygmalion or Pigmalion may refer to: Mythology * Pygmalion (mythology), a sculptor who fell in love with his statue Stage * ''Pigmalion'' (opera), a 1745 opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau * ''Pygmalion'' (Rousseau), a 1762 melodrama by Jean-Jacques ...
'', ''Man and Superman'', and '' The Doctor's Dilemma'' among those of Shaw's plays in the "well-made" category.Crane, Milton
"Pygmalion: Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Theory and Practice"
''PMLA'', December 1951, pp. 879–885


Notes


References


Footnotes


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
''Dramatic Technique'' by George Pierce Baker
{{DEFAULTSORT:Well-Made Play 19th-century theatre Drama Theatrical genres