The Well-Made Play

Originating in France as the pièce bien faite, the well-made play is a style of dramatic writing characterized by a meticulous, methodological purposiveness of plotting. The logically precise construction of the well-made play is typified by a number of conventions. The plot is most often based on a withheld secret—known to the audience but unknown to the characters—which, when revealed at the climax, reverses the fortunes of the play’s hero. During the course of the play, the overall pattern of the drama is reflected in the movement of the individual acts, in which a steadily mounting suspense is achieved through the battle of wits between the hero and the villain. The hero’s fortune fluctuates during his conflict with the adversary...