SOURCE: "The Weil-Made Play," in Dramatic Values, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925, pp. 62-74.

In the essay that follows, Montague discusses the dramatic techniques of the well-made playwrights, focusing on Sandeau, Augier, and Dumas.

During the long reign of the French "well-made piece" the voice of its makers was seldom stilled on the darling theme of how they did it. They lectured on it, and wrote prefaces, and the interviewer went not empty away. Like simple, truthful conjurors—men who are always admitting that rabbits come out of their hats without Divine interposition—"Simply the perfection of my method, ladies and gentlemen, nothing more"—they disclaimed inspiration; they made out that they were only doing a kind of sums; only, like naturalists, inferring the whole of a good-sized unknown beast from the modest premise of one knucklebone.

Then would follow technical instructions. An unwritten play, said Sardou, always appeared to...