The tradition of the well-made play emerged in the nineteenth century. It was also called "piece bien faite", meaning 'Second Empire Drama'. It was first made popular by the works of Eugene Scribe and Victorien Sardou of France. The tradition reached it's peak with Sardou's works in which the techniques of construction invented by Scribe were completely used. Construction and stagecraft are exploited fully rather than characterization and ideas. In the plot construction of the well-made play, an action turns on artificial complications that are easily solved by ingenious solutions. The plays are made up with only four scenes, and props become important in detailed realism. The stage is set up in a drawing room setting, with doors that open and close. The problem or secret in the play is revealed in the obligatory scene, where often it causes a sudden change. Eventually, the play ends happily and agreeably tying up all loose ends. I will discuss Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde, and why it is considered a well-made play.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was an Anglo-Irish dramatist, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, critic, and poet. He was part of the Decadence,

Bloom, Harold (editor). Oscar Wilde's the Importance of Being Earnest (Modern Critical Interpretations.)

A well made play stresses precise cause-and-effect occurrence; it is usually a snugly composed crisis drama. Many of nineteenth century writers used the well-made play structure to focus on everyday life, for example they often wrote domestic melodramatic plays. The actions often concentrate around a secret that is known to the audience, but not to the characters. The beginning of the play gives the story behind everything about to happen. Throughout the play the staged action is clearly foreshadowed, and each at builds to the climax. In the obligatory scene, the characters in disagreement confront each other in a face-off. The plot is sensibly resolved, so there are no loose ends.

Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde ,which was his first success in the theatre and a comedy of social class , is set in the plot construction of the tradition of the well-made play. The plot of the play is constructed in the 'exposition' , 'crisis' rising through the complication caused by devices and solved easily and 'denouement'. In Lady Windermere's Fan as in Wilde's other plays not only these elements such as devices , complications and solutions are used , but also unities of time and place are limited in the plot emphasizing a single dramatic action. The unity of time is underlined in the synopsis of the scenes of the play : 'The action of the play takes place within twenty-four hours , beginning on a Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock and ending the next day at 1.30 p.m.' In such a short time , the relation between Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Windermere which rumored for six months suddenly emerged as a scandal. Within these few hours a happy marriage, which has eventually been saved, would be broken .

On the bottom of the social pyramid lie the characters that do not pretend to be proper: Lord Augustus Lorton, Mr. Cecil Graham and Mrs. Erlynne. All of these characters admit their transgressions (gossip, scandals, etc) and make no apology for themselves. On the top of the pyramid lies the epitome of properness: Lady Plymdale, Lady Stutfield, and Lady Jedburgh. These are the stuck-up characters that make up the top tier of the three-layered social strata represented in the play.

Brynofski, Dedria. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Gale Group, 1999.

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