SOURCE: "The Coming of Realism," in World Drama: From Aeschylus to Anouilh, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949, pp. 484-518.

In the following excerpt, Nicoll discusses the primary representatives of the well-made play.

… Scribe and the Well-made Play

Meanwhile a significant development in dramatic technique was being evolved in France. This came partly through the practice of the melodrama and of its associate, the comédie-vaudeville, partly through trends in the sphere of comedy.

From the time of the Revolution to the thirties of the nineteenth-century French comedy had been unsure of itself. The famous decree of 1791 established complete freedom for the theatres; decrees issued fifteen years later, in 1806 and 1807, not only limited the number of playhouses, but once more set up a censorship; still other decrees, continually changing the regulations, left those concerned with stage affairs never certain by what rules they would next be bound. Such were not...