Mrs. Warren’s Profession | Style

Dramatic Structure
The ‘‘well-made’’ play was the typical form employed by playwrights in the second half of the nineteenth century. These plays adopted the Aristotelian primacy of plot, which often overshadowed characterization. Well-made comedies depended on accident rather than character development to achieve the inevitable happy ending. Shaw refused to follow what he considered to be the artificial form of the well-made play, insisting that they bore little resemblance to real-life situations. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the action is character driven...

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