[Gillespie closely examines the structure of Scribe's dramas in an attempt to formulate a precise definition of the term "well-made play. "]

Considerable confusion surrounds the meaning of the phrase well-made play. This confusion can be lessened by agreeing to restrict its use to those plays written in or after the nineteenth century, by or in the manner of Eugene Scribe. But even men the phrase lacks precision since little agreement exists about which features of Scribe's plays combine to call forth the designation well-made. The consistency with which various critics speak of the well-made play form or formula seems to imply an awareness of some pattern in the over-all structure, but the infrequent attempts to discover the pattern have not been successful.

Perhaps a key to this presumed form, or formula, or overall structure, is an understanding of how Scribe built and resolved complication. Aristotle identified complication and denouement as the formal parts of plot, and critics are fond of remarking that Scribe relied on "lots of plot" as he wrote his plays. Although random remarks concerning complications in Scribean drama appear throughout the critical literature, no systematic study of Scribe's construction of complications has been undertaken and reported. A methodical inquiry into these techniques seems warranted, for it should provide valuable information about recurring features of construction throughout the body of Scribe's plays. And mese recurring features, once identified, should constitute a very important part of any eventual definition of the phrase well-made play.

Before turning to the analysis of the plays themselves, how-ever, the meanings of certain terms should be clarified. A play has two formal parts: complication and denouement. The play is divided into mese parts by the crisis. A complication is anything which alters or threatens to alter the course of an action. A crisis, or turning point, is reached whenever no further entanglement or involvement of a complication is possible. For the untangling or resolving of complication, the French adopted the term denouement. Line of action will be used to designate a related series of complications. The number of complications within any given play may be vast, for a single line of action may encompass numerous complications, and many plays develop more than one line of action.

But dealing with complications can be simplified by agreeing that a play has a major complication, the resolution of which precipitates, or allows, an end to the play. Similarly, a single complication may have its own crisis and resolution; therefore, a play will have several crises. But the major crisis of the play occurs when the play's major complication reaches the point at which its further entanglement is impossible. An example will clarify. The major complication of Hamlet is initiated when the young prince accepts the three-fold charge from the ghost of his father; the major crisis is the famous mousetrap scene; the complication ends with the death of Hamlet.

Clearly, the relative position of the play's major crisis determines in large measure the form of the play's complication and denouement. Three basic patterns are possible. If the crisis is early, the play will build complications fairly rapidly to the point where further involvement is impossible; the play will then rather slowly resolve its complications. If the crisis is very late, the complications will build for an extended period and then resolve abruptly: the denouement will be short. When the crisis occupies an intermediate position, the knotting of the complications and the untying (the denouement) will adjust accordingly. To clarify and to provide a convenient point of reference, two examples will serve. Shakespeare frequently employed an early crisis, a crisis located in what is now the third act of his five-act play. Moliere, on the other hand, placed the crisis of Tartuffe in the fourth act and used the whole fifth act for the denouement. Such a crisis, I will call intermediate. The term late crisis will designate a crisis in the fifth act of a five-act play or in a proportionately similar position in the case of one-, two-, three- or four-act plays.

Scribe employs all three structural patterns, but he shows a decided preference for crises in the intermediate and late positions. Of the thirty-five plays [which contain no music], only Dix Ans de la vie d'une femme and Le Mauvais Sujet display an early crisis and extensive denouement. Significantly, these two plays are early works and are atypical in another respect: both posit a change in the ethical disposition of the leading character.

In Le Mauvais Sujet, Estelle and Raymond are happily contemplating marriage, but the arrival and subsequent intervention of the mysterious and malevolent Robert complicates the action. About midway through the play's single act, Robert undergoes a spiritual conversion because he discovers that his father has forgiven him. He becomes the benefactor of the play's sympathetic characters and hastily eliminates those very obstacles he had earlier contrived. Robert then leaves the village as secretly as he had come, sacrificing his own happiness for that of his friends and family. Only after his ship sails do the characters guess his true identity. The crisis, Robert's reformation, occurs about midway in the action; the denouement explores the changed attitudes of Robert and shows his attempts to undo the wrongs which he committed in his past.

In Dix Ans de la vie d'une femme, Adele's foolish decision to obey her friends rather than her husband, Darcey, leads directly to a life of adultery. The crisis is reached in Act III when Darcey exposes Adele's sin to the entire family. The denouement begins with the decision that Adele's punishment will be estrangement from Darcey; the rest of the play portrays her consequent moral decline and progressively worsening economic plight. As in Le Mauvais Sujet, the play's final resolution depends upon the removal of the protagonist from the dramatic action; whereas Robert sails away, Adele dies (repentant but not forgiven). In both plays, the ending is less a resolution of the play's major complication than a contrivance for stopping the action.

With respect to the position of the crisis, the remaining thirty-three plays are about equally divided, the late crisis being slightly more prevalent. Five of the six one-act plays and nine of the eleven three-act plays have this construction; among the five-act works, the late crisis is rare but not absent. Usually the late crisis takes the form of a major plot discovery (e.g., Rêves d'amour); less often it is a threat to a sympathetic character (e.g., La Passion secrete), a decision by a principal character (e.g. Valérie), or a confrontation (e.g., Le Puff). Whatever its form, the late crisis leads almost immediately to the play's resolution, the rapidity of which is most often made possible by the direct and successful intervention of an agent aligned with the sympathetic characters. Although the interfering agent may be new to the action (e.g., Le Valet de son rival), typically he has been a participant throughout but assumes a new position of strength by means of information only recently acquired (e.g., Les Indépendants). Less often the speedy resolution is made possible by an agent's conversion (e.g., La Czarine and La Frileuse), or by another discovery (e.g., Rodolphe). In plays dependent on deception, the resolution may merely be the successful completion of the trickery and abysmal (and acknowledged) defeat of one agent (e.g., La Grand'mere and Le Valet de son rival). Whatever the instrument of resolution, in Scribe's plays which have a late crisis, the denouement is less an untangling than a cutting-through the mass of complications.

Japhet, Feu Lionel, La Tutrice, and most of Scribe's five-act plays have an intermediately-placed crisis. This crisis is also usually a major plot discovery, but on some occasions a deed (e.g., La Tutrice) or a confrontation (e.g., Le Fils de Cromwell) may substitute for, or strongly supplement, the discovery.

Obviously, plays with an intermediately-placed crisis have more extensive denouements than those with a late crisis. The way in which Scribe uses the lengthy denouments is varied. The denouement most often develops (often to a crisis) numerous minor lines of action preparatory to resolving both them and the principal line of the play. In Bertrand et Raton, for example, the crisis is at the end of Act IV. The early part of the fifth act por-trays the plight of the young lovers, dramatizing their helplessness and inability to extricate themselves from their dilemma; the rest of the act reinforces the didactic purposes of the play: suggesting that governing is best left to the aristocrats and politicians and showing the ineptitude of the people and the fickleness of the mob.

An intermediate crisis not infrequently gives rise to another complication; the denouement then is itself the initiation, development, and resolution of this complication. In La Calomnie, for example, the discovery of the identity of the count's real lover will presumably end the threat to Cecile's reputation and restore her happiness. Instead, the discovery (the major crisis) initiates another complication. Before the crisis, Raymond has only to put an end to the rumors about Cecile; his strategy is simple—he will learn and then reveal the identity of the real lover. After the crisis, Raymond must dispel the rumors still, but he must do so without revealing that Herminie (his sister) is the true culprit. Act five is devoted to exploring alternative solutions to the dilemma and to selecting and effecting one of these.

In most plays of trickery depending on a conflict between wits, the action after the crisis is devoted primarily to the unsuccessful efforts of the antipathetic wit to re-gain the advantage lost at the play's crisis. In La Camaraderie, for example, Cesarine employs all of her wiles to recoup her losses and to reverse the trend toward Edmond's nomination which she herself had mistakenly engineered. The play ends when the absolute defeat of Cesarine by Zoe is irrevocable and painfully clear even to Cesarine.

In Les Trois Maupins and La Tutrice there is a significant lapse of time between the act containing the crisis and the one setting forth the denouement; therefore, both plays devote a large proportion of the action after the crisis to an exposition of interim events and developments. Only following these explanations does the active process of disentanglement begin and the play's final resolution emerge. Clearly when Scribe uses the intermediate crisis and the fairly extensive denouement, his purpose and forms vary considerably.

Certain practices of Scribe with respect to major complication, crisis, and denouement are now clear. Scribe generally avoided an early crisis, but he used the intermediate and late crisis almost equally, seeming to prefer the former for his five-act plays and the latter for his oneand three-act works. The major crises are usually discoveries, but other devices are not rare. Rapid denouements most often depend upon the direct intervention of an agent late in the action; conversions, decisions, or discoveries may suffice for the resolution, however. Denouements following intermediately-placed crises usually develop secondary lines of action to a crisis or begin and develop new complications; secondarily, they may reinforce the play's didactic statement or explain interim events.

Having considered Scribe's practices with respect to the formal parts of plays, a closer examination of the complications themselves is possible. In some plays, action is relatively simple. Although a few minor and seemingly unrelated complications may be introduced prior to the initiation of the play's principal action, once the major complication is underway, other complications become subsidiaries to it. The minor complications are then either quickly resolved or become a means for adding to the suspense and entanglement of the major complication. The resolution of the major complication effects or is effected by the resolution of the minor, subsidiary complications.

Rodolphe, an early one-act play, provides one excellent example of how Scribe handles complications in plays with rather simple constructions. Rodolphe is the legal guardian of Therese, but he has been posing for years as her brother to avoid any appearance of impropriety. He now loves her, but he fears to reveal the truth lest she reject his suit, or worse still, marry him from a sense of obligation only. Therese loves Rodolphe but consents to wed another in order to suppress her own evil, "incestuous" emotions. The dilemma is solved by a double discovery: Rodolphe learns of Therese's love and Therese learns that Rodolphe is not her brother.

The play's development from complication to crisis and denouement is direct. The major complication is introduced in the play's opening scene when Rodolphe reads aloud a letter recently composed for a suitor of Therese. In the letter he describes their real relationship; in his musings he tells of his love. A series of supportive complications then follow quickly: Antoine declares his love for Therese; whereupon Rodolphe, frenzied by jealousy, insults his former partner and friend; Therese discovers that her love for Rodolphe exceeds the fraternal and falsely concludes that her emotion is vile. Therese promotes a reconciliation between the men and then asks Antoine to marry her; Rodolphe mistakenly concludes that Therese does not love him, and so announces his intention to depart forever. The mutual discoveries and confessions then follow and begin the play's denouement. The final resolution occurs when Antoine returns to the stage having read Rodolphe's letter to the suitor. Knowing the real relationship and realizing their mutual love, Antoine insists on giving up Therese so that she and Rodolphe will be free to marry.

In Rodolphe, the several complications occur sequentially. Some interlock, that is, the initiation of a second precedes the resolution of the first; some do not. Although several episodic and minor complications exist, the series as a whole serves to supplement the major complications directly and in some important way. The action of this play, therefore, might be conveniently schematized as simple and linear.

La Passion secrète is another relatively simple construction, but it differs significantly enough to warrant its brief consideration. The initiation of the major complication in this play is much later than that in Rodolphe. Prior to its commencement, several questions are raised and answered; the answer to each question raises yet another question. Following the interrogative series and the introduction (but not the development) of two monetary complications, the last question is answered, and the play's principal complication is introduced: the woman, Albertine, is a compulsive gambler in need of money. Albertine steals, and immediately a number of threatening complications develop: Albertine is asked to return some money and to provide other money for a dowry; as a villain barters for her body, Albertine's final attempt to secure a loan fails. The timely intervention of Leopold resolves all complications.

While the questions and complications of Act I are sequential and interlocking like those in Rodolphe, the complications in Act III develop differently. Several supportive complications in Act III are introduced early and then abandoned for a time. They are later developed quickly and sequentially to a crisis. Each is suspended at this stage of its development and held at the crisis while all are connected to the play's major complication. Since none of the minor complications can be resolved prior to the resolution of the major complication, the major crisis and resolution gain great force. The result is of the threat increasing geometrically rather than arithmetically. The suspense of impending doom is cumulative and might be compared with an assault or bombardment. La Passion secrète, then, differs from Rodolphe both in the point at which the play's major complication is initiated and in the way by which the supportive complications are related to the principal line. But like Rodolphe, La Passion secrète is essentially a linear development in which all the secondary lines of action contribute more or less directly to the construction of the play's principal complication.

Few of Scribe's plays are so simple, and few can be profitably schematized as linear progressions. Most display many lines of action developing simultaneously on several levels. These plays might be better conceptualized as planar instead of linear arrangements. An example can illustrate.

The story line for Feu Lionel is rather complicated and its structure sufficiently representative to serve the purpose. Lionel, under the name of Rigaud, has been living at the home of Bremontier and has fallen in love with his daughter, Alice. Lionel has been a perpetual failure in love and finances and is disguised as M. Rigaud because he tried (and failed) to commit suicide. He is ashamed to face his friends, and he fears that Alice would find him ridiculous and cease to love him should she learn the truth. Montgiron, his former friend and lawyer, promises to help him keep the secret; but the arrival of an officious Baronne and then of the foolish Robertin threatens to expose Lionel's real identity. Developing concurrently with this story are two secondary lines: (1) the Baronne is negotiating with Bremontier to close a business deal involving the transfer of a piece of land, and (2) Robertin is trying to establish with certainty the death of Lionel so that he may be declared the only surviving relative of a wealthy person and thus inherit a vast sum of money. Alice eventually discovers the truth, but she loves Lionel in spite of his foolishness. She will marry him if only he will confront his friends. The sting of the confrontation is reduced for Lionel when Montgiron invents a bet which allegedly caused Lionel to undertake the impersonation: he wagered that if Lionel were to disappear, the capriciousness of the Baronne would be proved. Ridicule shifts from Lionel to the Baronne and Robertin, whose incipient courtship crashes forthwith.

The development of the complications is clear if intricate. Before the initiation of the play's principal action, two questions are raised successively and then answered almost simultaneously. "Who is Rigaud?" and "What is the connection between Rigaud and Montgiron?" are both answered in Act I when the old friends engage in a long expository dialogue: Rigaud is Lionel.

The major complication begins to develop immediately: Rigaud must not be exposed because he would become an object of ridicule. Threatening complications follow quickly. The Baronne, a former lover of Lionel, arrives unexpectedly: Robertin, a prospective heir, appears and is determined to investigate the circumstances surrounding Lionel's death. The major complication becomes intricately and irrevocably tied to the developing love between Alice and Lionel: Alice is told of a hypothetical case in which a man tried to commit suicide, failed, and chose to assume another identity rather than face the ridicule of his friends. Alice giggles uncontrollably during the recital of the story. At its completion she launches an indignant and self-righteous condemnation of such a man and declares that she herself could never be sympathetic with such a foolish person. By this device Scribe makes the play's major complication (the identity) into a threat to the secondary complication (the love). Another threat to the love interest is immediately posed: Montgiron becomes a serious suitor for Alice's hand. All of these complications are temporarily suspended while the intricacies of a financial relationship between the Baronne and Robertin are discovered, explored, and related to the business of Bremontier and the identity of Lionel.

The play's final resolution depends upon the interference of Montgiron who promotes Robertin's courtship of the Baronne and who informs Alice of the true identity of Rigaud. Alice's demand for a public confession resolves the two major complications; the confession also exposes the falsity of Robertin's claims to fortune. Montgiron's happy notion to introduce the bet serves to mitigate the ridicule destined for Lionel, redirecting it to Robertin and the Baronne; moreover, the bet serves to expose the perfidy of the Baronne as a business woman and to tie off the Robertin-Baronne affair. The appropriate dispensation of the lands and monies completes the play's resolution and brings the action to a conclusion, each complication having been resolved and some connection having been made.

Five features appearing in Feu Lionel recur often in the thirty-five plays. For convenience these techniques are listed and briefly explained. Their use in Feu Lionel is indicated and the titles of one or two other plays in which the technique is particularly clear are offered for those who wish to explore them more fully.

1. Questions of identity or intent are raised and answered prior to the initiation of major lines of action. In Feu Lionel, "Who is Rigaud?"; "Rigaud is Lionel." See also and
2. Two or more important lines of action are interwoven intricately so that a threat to one ramifies at once in the other. A love interest is usually the basis of at least one of the interdependent lines of action. The Baronne's deal with Bremontier and Robertin's desire for inheritance threaten to expose Lionel's identity. See also and
3. Important complications are frequently abandoned for stretches of dramatic time in order to permit the exploitation of decidedly minor complications which may or may not relate integrally to the development of the play's principal action. Although the minor complications generally connect with the major lines, they often are developed internally far beyond what is required in terms of their ultimate contribution to the overall construction. In Feu Lionel the several threats to the love story are suspended while the finances of Baronne and Robertin are explored. (See also and ).
4. The internal development of a complication or line of action usually proceeds in a fairly regular sequence, either interlocking or freed, that is, a sequence of the sort described in Rodolphe. Scribe varies this pattern from time to time. He may develop complication within complication, that is, he may build and resolve successively smaller complications within the frame of the next larger complication. This technique is observable in Feu Lionel. Less frequently he turns to an "assault" technique described for Act III of La Passion secrète. Although each of the three developmental patterns can be seen in many, perhaps even most, of Scribe's plays, La Fille de trente ans is a particularly good play in which to observe Scribe's use of the three forms. …
5. By interweaving the important complications early in the play and by deftly and unobtrusively connecting certain of the minor complications to these and to each other from time to time during the course of the play, Scribe manages to cement all but a few lines prior to the play's crisis. At the crisis, these few remaining strands are made to converge. In Feu Lionel the secret identity is threatened by Robertin and the Baronne. The revelation of the secret threatens the love affair. The rival suitor reveals the secret of Lionel's identity, ending the first complication. Alice remains in love and requires a confession, ending the second. The one-time suitor superintends the rewards and punishments and ties-off all lines of action.

But plays like Feu Lionel are not Scribe's most complex constructions. Some of the political plays and comedies of social comment posit large frames which surround the plays' story. For example, in Le Verre d'eau, the complication of the war between France and England is introduced in the first scene of Act I and then abandoned while first the love interest and then the wits' battle get underway and develop. Although mentioned from time to time, the political action receives scant attention until the play's crisis and denouement. In such extra levels, Scribe may have striven for an effort like Shakespeare achieved in Hamlet. That Shakespeare successfully exploited the Fortinbras complication to present ramifications in a political sphere while Scribe fails to achieve a similar resonance seems due to a limited genius rather than a faulty conception.

In summary, Scribe generally avoids an early crisis; he shows a slight preference for a late crisis in the short plays and an intermediately-placed crisis in the five-act plays. The crises most often take the form of discoveries. Lengthy denouements usually develop secondary complications to a point of crisis or introduce and develop a new complication (one initiated at the crisis). Rapid denouements are most often attributable to the direct intervention of agents in a position of power.

All of Scribe's plays develop several lines of action, each with many internal complications. Scribe generally ties two of the important lines together early in the play and connects various minor lines to one another and to the major lines throughout the play. By this means, he prepares the way for the rapid converging of all lines during the play's denouement. Some plays use a framing complication which seems intended to add another dimension to the play's meaning.

The implications of these practices are several and significant. Although Scribe employed an abundance of complications, he usually chose a late point-of-attack and a loose antecedent-consequence scheme of probability and unity. It is the combination of these three techniques that becomes an important component of the well-made play, and it is this combination which created many of the problems in Scribe's plays to which critics allude.

To appreciate the nature of the problem, one might imagine placing a Shakespearean network of complications and "sub-plots" inside of a Racinean (Neo-Classical) construct with its late point of attack and "causal" scheme of probability. Obviously, the richness, diffusion, and complexity of the Elizabethan drama is ill-accommodated by the sparse, compressed, and restricted constructions of the French Neo-Classical writers. Thus, Scribe's multitudinous complications and lines of action strain under the late point of attack and antecedent-consequence scheme of probability and unity.

The strain of this combination is intense, often approaching a kind of breaking point. Only the greatest ingenuity and technical skill will permit the convergence of the several lines of action and the final resolution of all important complications within the narrow constructive principles which Scribe adopted for his plays. The manipulations necessary to achieve the play's ending become apparent to someone familiar with a body of the plays and therefore the plots are dubbed "mechanical." The profusion of complications becomes silhouetted against the stark pseudo-Aristotelian structure and leads to critical comments that well-made plays have "lots of plot."

It is the combination of these three techniques which is central to Scribe's dramaturgy. It is this combination and its significance which past critics have failed to recognize and specify. It is this combination which must be cited as an important component of Scribe's plays and which must occupy a prominent place in the definition of well-made play.