Well-Made Play,
English version of une pièce bien faite, a label applied in early 19th-century France, at first in a complimentary sense, to plays written by dramatists skilled above all in putting together a plot. It soon took on a pejorative meaning, and came to be used ironically of all plays in which the action develops artificially, according to the strict laws of logic and not to the unpredictable demands of human nature; and in which the plot, to which the characters are completely subordinated, is conceived in terms of exposition, knot, and denouement, with a series of contrived climaxes to create suspense. It is commonly used in France of the works of ... ...
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