Eugène Scribe is remembered primarily for his dramas.

One of the most prolific playwrights of all time, the author of more than three hundred dramatic works, Eugène Scribe is best remembered as the originator of the well-made play. His insistence on expert dramatic craftsmanship and his remarkable success in pleasing the public brought him power, prestige, and wealth. While he was always sensitive to popular taste and could give his audience what it wanted, he elevated the middlebrow comedy-vaudeville both in form and in content, and he renovated serious comedy. He is also considered to be the principal inventor of grand opera. In his day, Scribe virtually controlled all the theaters in Paris and exerted a powerful influence on the next several generations of dramatists.

Perhaps his most enduring legacy to his colleagues was the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques , which he helped to establish in 1827 to protect authors’ rights and grant them a fair share of the profits. As for his dramatic technique, it has been said that for the remainder of the nineteenth century, all French drama was either a continuation of Scribe or a reaction against him. The influence took many forms, from the madcap farces of Eugène Labiche and Georges Feydeau to the problem plays of Alexandre Dumas, fils, and Émile Augier to the thrillers of Victorien Sardou, and that influence was by no means limited to France. Scribe’s drama was translated and performed with great success throughout Europe and the New World. Henrik Ibsen, who in the 1850’s directed more than twenty plays of Scribe, was the most brilliant of the many playwrights who learned their technique from the French master.

Critical reception of Scribe’s work was mixed even in his lifetime. Although elected to the Académie Français in 1836, he provoked the wrath of the Romantics, of whose moral and aesthetic ideas he disapproved, and of elitist critics who objected both to Scribe’s willingness to cater to the masses and to the financial rewards he reaped in the process. His supporters noted with approbation the lively situations and interesting characters, the logical and carefully constructed plots, the attempt to address serious issues and vices of the age, and the uncanny ability to select and represent the manners of middle-class Parisian society. In fact, Scribe’s vivid rendering of that society, while not as thorough and ambitious as that of his younger contemporary Honoré de Balzac, remains one of his claims to the attention of modern readers.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Scribe fell into critical disrepute, a result both of increasing opposition to the well-made play and of the harsh judgment of eminent historians of literature, such as Gustave Lanson, who objected to Scribe’s mediocre style, superficiality, and lack of idealism. None of these accusations can be denied. In particular, Scribe’s undistinguished style has never had any defenders, and it continues to deter some readers. It is also true, however, that he composed his plays to be performed rather than read and did not hesitate to sacrifice purity of style for the dramatic situation. A number of studies have helped to rehabilitate Scribe by shedding new light on his extraordinary variety and originality, his technical wizardry, and even his role as moralist and social critic. The real proof of Scribe’s continued vitality lies in live performance, and continuing revivals of some of his best plays demonstrate that audiences can still derive pleasure from his work.