View source for Well-made play

{{Short description|Dramatic genre}}
[[File:Bataille-de-dames-1851.jpg|thumb|''Bataille de dames'', 1851, a ''[[locus classicus]]'' of the well-made play.<ref name=gilbert/>]]
The '''well-made play''' ({{langx|fr|la pièce bien faite}}, pronounced {{IPA|fr|pjɛs bjɛ̃ fɛt|}}) is a [[Drama|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 1861, usually in collaboration with co-authors. His plays, breaking free from the old [[Neoclassicism in France|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|Alexandre Dumas ''fils'']], [[Victorien Sardou]] and [[Georges Feydeau]] in France, [[W. S. Gilbert]], [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Noël Coward]], and [[Alan Ayckbourn]] in Britain, and [[Lillian Hellman]] and [[Arthur Miller]] 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]] and [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]].

==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."<ref>{{Cite OED|well-made}}</ref> ''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 and intrigues that drove the story … characteristically based on a secret known only to some of the characters".<ref name=reb>Rebellato, Dan. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198601746.001.0001/acref-9780198601746-e-4198"well-made play"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121204552/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198601746.001.0001/acref-9780198601746-e-4198 |date=2021-01-21 }}, ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance'', Oxford University Press, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 June 2021. {{subscription required}}</ref>

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:<ref>Stanton, pp. xii–xiii</ref>
# 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]]: 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.<ref>[https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9Q0296 "quiproquo"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200821124030/https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9Q0296 |date=2020-08-21 }}, ''Dictionnaire de l'Académie française''. Retrieved 5 June 2021</ref>
*''[[peripeteia]]'' – used in this context as meaning the greatest in a series of mishaps suffered by the hero.{{refn|In classical drama the term means a sudden change by which the hero's fortunes veer round to their opposite – good or bad,<ref>{{Cite OED|peripeteia}}</ref> but in 19th-century French drama it had been narrowed down to mean the nadir of the central character's fortunes.<ref>Stanton, p. xii</ref>|group=n}}
*''[[Scènes à faire|scène à faire]]'' (the "obligatory" scene) – a term invented by the 19th-century critic [[Francisque Sarcey]] – a scene in which the outcome the audience expects and ardently desires comes to pass or is clearly signalled.<ref>Archer, p. 173</ref>

==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 (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'', written some 1,500 years earlier. The prevailing doctrine was [[Verisimilitude (fiction)|"verisimilitude"]], or the appearance of a plausible truth, as the aesthetic goal of a play.<ref>Brockett, pp. 158–159</ref> 

In 1638 the [[Académie Française]] 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]].<ref>Brockett, pp. 268, 284, 286 and 386</ref> [[Corneille]] and [[Jean Racine|Racine]] were regarded as successors to the ancient Greek tragedians, and [[Molière]] as that of [[Plautus]] and [[Terence]] in comedy.<ref>Brockett, p. 272</ref> 

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]], bringing before the public works not constrained by neoclassical formulas.<ref>Brockett, pp. 370–372</ref>

==Scribe==

[[File:Eugène-Scribe-Atelier-Nadar.jpg|thumb|[[Eugène Scribe]]|alt=white man in late middle age, seated. He is clean shaven, and has white hair]]

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 [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] were giving way to the unrestrained and less structured works of [[Romanticism]].<ref name=t11/> 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".<ref name=t11>Taylor, pp. 11–12</ref> Writing with collaborators as a rule, Scribe produced some 500 stage works between 1815 and his death in 1861.<ref>Taylor, p. 12</ref> 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,<ref>Koon and Switzer, pp. 33 and 123</ref> and made him a rich man.<ref>Cardwell, Douglas [http://www.jstor.com/stable/392365 "The Well-Made Play of Eugène Scribe"], ''The French Review'', May, 1983, pp. 876–884 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612171250/https://www.jstor.org/stable/392365 |date=2021-06-12 }}</ref>

Many of Scribe's plays were produced at the [[Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell|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''.<ref name=how>Howarth, W. D. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199574193.001.0001/acref-9780199574193-e-3569 "Scribe, Augustin-Eugène"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210606075850/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199574193.001.0001/acref-9780199574193-e-3569 |date=2021-06-06 }}, ''The Companion to Theatre and Performance'', Oxford University Press, 2010. Retrieved 5 June 2021 {{subscription required}}</ref> A later critic commented:
{{quote|A Scribe play, long or short, is a masterpiece of plot construction. It is as artistically put together as a master watch; the smallest piece is perfectly in place, and the removal of any part would ruin the whole. Such a "well-made" play always displays fertility of invention, dexterity in the selection and arrangement of incidents, and careful planning. Everything is done with the greatest economy. Every character is essential to the action, every speech develops it. There is no time for verbal wit, no matter how clever, or for philosophical musing, no matter how enlightening. The action is all-important.<ref>Tolles, pp. 22–23</ref>|}} 

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,<ref name=how/> and that the plays displayed "shallow theatricality".<ref>Walkley, p. 44</ref> He is remembered more for his influence on the development of drama than for his plays, which are rarely staged; ''[[Les Archives du spectacle]]'' record numerous French productions in the 20th and 21st centuries of works by Scribe, but these are almost all operas with his librettos rather than his non-musical plays.<ref>[https://www.lesarchivesduspectacle.net/?IDX_Personne=36726 "Eugène Scribe"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507143248/https://www.lesarchivesduspectacle.net/?IDX_Personne=36726 |date=2021-05-07 }}, Les Archives du spectacle. Retrieved 4 June 2021</ref>

==Influence==
===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.<ref name=c216>Carlson, p. 216</ref> 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:
{{quote|not for instruction or improvement, but for diversion and distraction, and that which diverts [the audience] most is not truth, but fiction. To see again what you have before your eyes daily will not please you, but that which is not available to you in everyday life – the extraordinary and the romantic."<ref name=c216/>|}}
[[File:Dumas-fils-Sardou-Labiche-Feydeau.jpg|thumb|left|Scribe's successors with ''pièces bien faites'' included, top: [[Alexandre Dumas, fils|Alexandre Dumas ''fils'']], [[Victorien Sardou]]; bottom: [[Eugène Labiche]] (l), [[Georges Feydeau]].|alt=head and shoulders shots of four middle aged white men in Victorian costume. The first and fourth have dark moustaches, the other two are clean-shaven]]
Although Scribe advocated a theatre of entertainment rather than of deep ideas, other writers, beginning with [[Alexandre Dumas, fils]], 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".<ref>Brocket, p. 507</ref> Dumas' thesis plays, written in the "well-made" genre, take clear moral positions on social issues of the day. [[Emile Augier]] also used Scribe's formula to write plays addressing contemporary social issues, although he declares his moral position less forcefully.<ref>Carlson, p. 274</ref>

[[Victorien Sardou]] 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.<ref>Howarth, W. D. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199574193.001.0001/acref-9780199574193-e-3501 "Sardou, Victorien"], ''The Companion to Theatre and Performance'', Oxford University Press. Retrieved 5 June 2021 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210606080053/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199574193.001.0001/acref-9780199574193-e-3501 |date=6 June 2021 }}</ref>

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]], the ''pièce bien faite'' remained largely unchallenged. First [[Eugène Labiche]] and then [[Alfred Hennequin]], [[Maurice Hennequin]] and [[Georges Feydeau]] wrote successful and enduring farces that closely follow Scribe's formula, while refreshing the content of the plots.<ref>Heyraud, Violaine. [http://www.crlc.paris-sorbonne.fr/pdf_revue/revue1/09_Heyraud.pdf "Oser la nouveauté en usant les ficelles"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210605192946/http://www.crlc.paris-sorbonne.fr/pdf_revue/revue1/09_Heyraud.pdf |date=2021-06-05 }}, Université Paris Sorbonne. Retrieved 5 June 2021</ref>

===Britain and US===
In the mid-19th century [[Tom Taylor]] established himself as a leading London playwright. He adapted many French plays, including at least one of Scribe's,{{refn|''L'Ours et le Pasha'', a farce, adapted by Taylor, with George C. Bentinck and Frederick Ponsonby as ''The Barefaced Impostors'' was staged in 1854.<ref>Tolles, p. 276</ref> Taylor translated another Scribe play, ''La Bataille de dames'', given as ''The Ladies' Battle'' in 1851.<ref name=debt>Stanton, Stephen S. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/460551 "Shaw's Debt to Scribe"], ''PMLA'', December 1961, pp. 575–585 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210605200606/https://www.jstor.org/stable/460551 |date=2021-06-05 }}</ref>|group=n}} and made extensive use of Scribe's formula for the well-made play in his own pieces.<ref name=debt/> Other Victorian playwrights who followed Scribe's precepts to a greater or lesser extent were [[Edward Bulwer-Lytton]], [[T. W. Robertson]], [[Dion Boucicault]] and [[W. S. Gilbert]], 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 (play)| Engaged]]'' (1877), as regards both the plot and the dramatic technique – withheld secrets, exposition, peripeteia and obligatory scene.<ref name=gilbert>Stanton, Stephen. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/320492 "Ibsen, Gilbert, and Scribe's 'Bataille de Dames'"], ''Educational Theatre Journal'', March 1965, pp. 24–30 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210605162928/https://www.jstor.org/stable/320492 |date=2021-06-05 }}</ref>
[[File:WSG-Pinero-Coward-Ayckbourn.jpg|British authors of well-made plays: [[W. S. Gilbert]], [[Arthur Wing Pinero]]; below: [[Noël Coward]] (l), [[Alan Ayckbourn]]|thumb|left|alt=head and shoulders shots of four middle-aged to elderly white men, the first with moustache and side-whiskers and a head of hair, the other three clean-shaven and bald]]
Among the next generation of English-language playwrights indebted to Scribe was [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]]; despite Shaw's frequent denigration of Scribe (see "[[#Objections|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]]'' (1892) to ''[[Man and Superman]]'' (1903), and even beyond".<ref name=debt/> Shaw's contemporary [[Oscar Wilde]] followed the pattern of the well-made play in his [[Drawing room play|drawing room dramas]], but unlike Scribe he introduced continual ''bons mots'' into his dialogue, and in his final masterpiece ''[[The Importance of Being Earnest]]'' (derived in part from ''Engaged'')<ref>Rowell, pp. 11 and 13</ref> he abandoned any pretence of plausibility of plot and made fun of many of the traditions of the well-made play.<ref>Taylor, pp. 89–90</ref>

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. 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).<ref>Taylor, pp. 52, 54 and 60</ref> 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]] 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.<ref>Taylor, pp. 99 and 127</ref> With [[Terence Rattigan]] the English tradition of the well-made play was thought to have come to an end.<ref>Taylor, p. 160</ref>{{refn|The critic John Elsom suggests that [[J. B. Priestley]]'s 1946 ''[[An Inspector Calls]]'' may in some ways be considered a "well-made play", although the author adds a twist replacing the expected happy ending with the prospect of a further ordeal for the characters.<ref>Elsom, p. 45</ref>|group=n}}  Some writers have noted a resurgence: Taylor finds elements of it in [[Harold Pinter]], with the important exception that Pinter's plays deliberately eschew crisp exposition of the plot,<ref>Taylor, p. 163</ref> and in a 2008 study, Graham Saunders identifies [[Alan Ayckbourn]], [[Michael Frayn]] and [[Simon Gray]] as playwrights continuing to write well-made plays.<ref>Saunders, Graham. [http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/31307/2/saunders.pdf "The Persistence of the 'Well-Made Play' in British Theatre of the 1990s"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210605213231/http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/31307/2/saunders.pdf |date=2021-06-05 }}, University of Reading, 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2021</ref>
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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:
{{quote|The volumes of George Odell's ''Annals of the New York Stage'' record frequent revivals of plays by Scribe and by dramatists who used his technique. Despite a gradual shift after the First World War from the play with a well-made plot toward the play of mood, the Scribean play has not been demolished.<ref name=sx>Stanton, p. x</ref>|}}
From the US, Stanton singles out ''[[The Little Foxes]]'' (1939) and ''[[Watch on the Rhine (play)|Watch on the Rhine]]'' (1941) by [[Lillian Hellman]] and ''[[All My Sons]]'' (1946) by [[Arthur Miller]] as prominent examples.<ref name=sx/>

==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 [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]] and the theatre like Scribe.{{refn|"L'auteur dramatique qui connaîtrait l'homme comme Balzac et le théâtre comme Scribe serait le plus grand auteur dramatique qui aurait jamais existé."<ref>Lacour, p.  174</ref>|group=n}}

[[Henrik Ibsen]] 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.<ref name=debt/> As his disciple Shaw put it: "up to a certain point in the last act, ''[[A Doll's House]]'' 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".<ref>Shaw, p. 219</ref>

Shaw was given to disparaging those he imitated, such as Scribe and Gilbert,<ref>Holroyd, pp. 172–173</ref> and wrote, "Who was Scribe that he should dictate to me or anyone else how a play should be written?"<ref name=debt/> 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]]'' (1900), almost 40 years after Scribe's death.<ref name=debt/> In a study for the [[Modern Language Association]], Milton Crane includes ''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]'', ''Man and Superman'', and ''[[The Doctor's Dilemma (play)|The Doctor's Dilemma]]'' among those of Shaw's plays in the "well-made" category.<ref>Crane,  Milton. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/460146 "Pygmalion: Bernard Shaw's Dramatic Theory and Practice"], ''PMLA'', December 1951, pp. 879–885 {{subscription required}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210606091305/https://www.jstor.org/stable/460146 |date=2021-06-06 }}</ref>

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=n}}

==References==
===Footnotes===
{{Reflist}}
===Sources===
* {{cite book | last = Archer | first = William |authorlink=William Archer (critic)| title = Play-making: A Manual of Craftsmanship | year = 1930 | location = London | publisher = Chapman & Hall | oclc = 1050814206}} 
* {{cite book | last = Brockett | first = Oscar|authorlink=Oscar Brockett | title = History of the Theatre | year = 1982 | location = Boston | publisher = Allyn and Bacon |url=https://archive.org/details/historyoftheatre0000broc/|url-access=registration| isbn = 978-0-20-507661-1}}
*{{cite book|last1=Carlson|first1=Marvin|title=Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present|url=https://archive.org/details/theoriesoftheatr00carl|url-access=registration|date=1984|publisher=Cornell University Press|location=Ithaca and London|isbn=978-0-80-141678-1}}
* {{cite book | last= Elsom | first= John | title= Post-War British Theatre| year= 1976| location= London| publisher= Routledge| isbn= 978-0-71-008350-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Michael |authorlink=Michael Holroyd|title=Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition |year=1997 |location=London |publisher=Chatto & Windus |isbn=978-0-7011-6279-5 }}
* {{cite book | last = Koon | first = Helene | author2 = Richard Switzer | title = Eugène Scribe | year = 1980 | location = Boston | url = https://archive.org/details/eugenescribe00hele/page/n5/mode/2up | url-access=registration| publisher = Twayne | isbn = 978-0-80-576390-4 }}
* {{cite book | last= Lacour| first= Léopold | title= Trois Théâtres| year= 1880| location= Paris| publisher= Calmann Levy| oclc=1986384}}
* {{cite book | last= Rowell | first= George |chapter=Introduction| title= Plays by W.S. Gilbert| year= 2008| location= Cambridge | publisher= Cambridge University Press | isbn= 978-0-52-123589-1}}
* {{cite book | last= Shaw | first= Bernard | authorlink=George Bernard Shaw| title= The Quintessence of Ibsenism| year= 1925| location= New York| publisher= Brentano| oclc=1151088484}}
* {{cite book | last = Stanton | first = Stephen | title = Camille and Other Plays | url = https://archive.org/details/camilleotherplay00stan | url-access = registration | date = 1956 | location=New York| publisher = Hill and Wang | isbn = 0809007061}}
* {{cite book | last = Taylor | first = John Russell | authorlink=John Russell Taylor| title = The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play | year = 1967 | location = Oxford and New York | publisher = Routledge |url=https://archive.org/details/risefallofwellma0000tayl/|url-access=registration| isbn = 978-0-41-572333-6}}
* {{cite book | last = Tolles | first = Winton | title = Tom Taylor and the Victorian Drama | year = 1940 | location = New York | publisher = Columbia University Press |url=https://archive.org/details/tomtaylorvictori0000toll/|url-access=registration| oclc = 504217641 }}
* {{cite book | last = Walkley | first = A. B. | authorlink=A. B. Walkley|title = Still More Prejudice | year = 1925 | location = London | publisher = Heinemann | oclc = 1113358388 }}

== External links ==
* {{Gutenberg author |id=4444| name=Eugène Scribe}}
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36580 ''Dramatic Technique'' by George Pierce Baker]
{{Henrik Ibsen}}
{{George Bernard Shaw}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Well-Made Play}}
[[Category:19th-century theatre]]
[[Category:Drama]]
[[Category:Theatrical genres]]