The Well-Made Play
- Plot contains secrets known to audience, but withheld from certain characters. The secret is revealed and this is the climax. ...
- There is careful attention paid to exposition, usually the entire first act at minimum. ...
- There are expected and logical reversals. ...
What are the features of a well made play?
Click to see full answer. Thereof, what are the features of a well made play? The technical formula of the well-made play, developed around 1825 by the French playwright Eugène Scribe, called for complex and highly artificial plotting, a build-up of suspense, a climactic scene in which all problems are resolved, and a happy ending.
Is the overall structure of a well-made play reflected in each act?
the overall structure is reflected in each act. Within the structure of the well-made play three technical terms are frequently used:
What is a well made play according to Aristotle?
The well-made play retains the shape of Aristotle's ideal Greek-tragedy model outlined in his Poetics. The well-made play can be broken down into a specific set of criteria. Click to see full answer. Herein, what does a well made play mean?
What is a well-made play?
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."
Who are the playwrights who draw on the principles of the well-made play?
Lillian Hellman and Terence Rattigan are among 20th-century playwrights whose works draw on the principles of the well-made play. This article was most recently revised and updated by Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer, Research Editor.
Who wrote the play "Make em laugh"?
Scribe, with the aid of assistants, wrote literally hundreds of plays and librettos that were translated, adapted, and imitated all over Europe. In England the well-made play was taken up by such practitioners as Wilkie Collins, who summed up the formula succinctly: “Make ’em laugh; make ’em weep; make ’em wait.”.
What was Oscar Wilde's wit?
…conventions of the French “well-made play” (with its social intrigues and artificial devices to resolve conflict), he employed his paradoxical, epigrammatic wit to create a form of comedy new to the 19th-century English theatre.
Who brought the well-made play to its pinnacle so far as the English theatre was concerned?
In John Russell Taylor's view, Arthur Wing Pinero 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.
What is the formula for drama?
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, nor his successors applied it unvaryingly. The academic Stephen Stanton (1957) gives seven key points of the genre, which may be summarised as: 1 a plot based on facts known by the audience but not known by some or all of the characters 2 a pattern of increasingly intense action and suspense 3 a series of ups and downs in the main character's fortunes 4 the depiction of the lowest and the highest point in the main character's adventures 5 a central misunderstanding or quiproquo (see below), clear to the audience but unknown to the characters 6 a logical and plausible dénouement 7 the overall structure is reflected in each act.
How many stage works did Scribe write?
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.
What did Scribe set out to do?
In his 1967 book The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play, John Russell Taylor 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".
What was Scribe's influence on theatre?
France. Scribe's influence on theatre, according to the theatre historian Marvin Carlson, "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.
What was Pinero's best known play?
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 (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.
Was Somerset Maugham a well made comedies?
The comedies of Somerset Maugham were generally of the well-made genre, although he deliberately stretched plausibility to its limits; Noël Coward worked within the genre although his plotting was rarely complex and often slight; Taylor considers that he revived and refined the genre.
What is the rise and fall of the well made play?
John Russell Taylor’s The Rise and Fall of the Well Made Play (1967) usefully discusses the development of this format both before and after the impact of Ibsen, and helps to build a picture of the tastes and expectations of a typical middle-class audience of the period. He demonstrates the durability of the structure, with its emphasis on suspense and an exciting curtain at the end of each act. Ibsen relied on it to give A Doll’s House a solid framework, even though the characters are doing everyday things like paying visits and sneaking sweets.
What is the structure of a doll's house?
A Doll’s House has a clear basic structure – that of the well-made play, as devised by the hugely popular French dramatist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861). First, the exposition sets up the situation. Nora’s conversations in Act One with Helmer, Mrs Linde and Krogstad tell us all we need to know in order to understand how pressing the situation is. The curtain falls on a note of suspense with Krogstad’s first demand. Act Two is taken up with the development and complication of the story. Nora struggles to find a way out, first by changing Helmer’s mind, then by asking for Dr Rank’s help. The action reaches a crisis when all her possible solutions fail. Nora’s tarantella – a frantic attempt to postpone the reading of Krogstad’s letter – makes a strong curtain .
Definition of well-made play
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First Known Use of well-made play
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Overview
The well-made play is a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. 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 18…
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 [designed] to provide a constantly entertaining, exciting narrative which satisfyingly resolved the many complications an…
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 in his Poetics, 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 codified a system by which dramatists should achieve verisimilit…
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. In his 1967 book The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play, John Russell Taylor writes that what Scribe set out to do "w…
Influence
Scribe's influence on theatre, according to the theatre historian Marvin Carlson, "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 observes that, unlike other influential theatre thinkers, Scribe did not write prefaces or manifestos declai…
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.
Notes, references and sources
• Archer, William (1930). Play-making: A Manual of Craftsmanship. London: Chapman & Hall. OCLC 1050814206.
• Brockett, Oscar (1982). History of the Theatre. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0-20-507661-1.
• Carlson, Marvin (1984). Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-80-141678-1.
External links
• Works by Eugène Scribe at Project Gutenberg
• Dramatic Technique by George Pierce Baker