By First Eugène Labiche and then Alfred Hennequin, Maurice Hennequin and Georges Feydeau wrote successful and enduring farces that closely follow Scribe’s formula, while refreshing the content of the plots. Scribe’s formula proved immensely successful, and was much imitated, despite objections at the time and later that the constraints of the well-made play turned characters into puppets controlled by chance, and that the plays displayed “shallow theatricality”. He is remembered more for his influence on the development of drama than for his plays, which are rarely staged; Les Archives du spectacle record numerous French productions in the 20th and 21st centuries of works by Scribe, but these are almost all operas with his librettos rather than his non-musical plays.
The term was created by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central in The Colbert Report’s first episode, which took place in October 2005, to describe things that he fervently believes to be the case regardless of the facts. In addition, truthiness became the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year for 2005. In a study for the Modern Language Association, Milton Crane includes inernment Pygmalion, Man and Superman, and The Doctor’s Dilemma among those of Shaw’s plays in the “well-made” category. Although so far as serious drama was concerned there was a reaction against Scribe’s formulaic precepts in the later years of the 19th century, nevertheless in comedy, and in particular in farce, the pièce bien faite remained largely unchallenged.
In 1638 the Académie Française codified a system by which dramatists should achieve verisimilitude, and the monarchy enforced the standards of French neoclassicism by licensing and subsidising a limited number of approved theatre companies, chief of which was the Comédie Française. Corneille and Racine were regarded as successors to the ancient Greek tragedians, and Molière as that of Plautus and Terence in comedy. Yet, experimental results and real-life observations seldom support that expectation. As for the prospects, they are also projecting an integrated identity; they seldom behave like customers in the interactions. It is worth mentioning that direct sales of country food were seldom reported by the informants. In fact, it is difficult to run one’s eye over these listings without realizing – and regretting – how seldom they have been put to use.
In a letter to a critic, Dumas fils wrote, “… if I can find some means to force people to discuss the problem, and the lawmaker to revise the law, I shall have done more than my duty as a writer, I shall have done my duty as a man”. Dumas’ thesis plays, written in the “well-made” genre, take clear moral positions on social issues of the day. Emile Augier also used Scribe’s formula to write plays addressing contemporary social issues, although he declares his moral position less forcefully. Exculpate To clear from alleged fault or guilt.Searches for they increased by 313% in 2019 over 2018; the use of they to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary in September 2019. Quid pro quo is most often used in legal texts, and interest in the term is primarily attributed to the Trump–Ukraine scandal.
In the mid-19th century Tom Taylor established himself as a leading London playwright. He adapted many French plays, including at least one of Scribe’s, and made extensive use of Scribe’s formula for the well-made play in his own pieces. Other Victorian playwrights who followed Scribe’s precepts to a greater or lesser extent were Edward Bulwer-Lytton, T. W. Robertson, Dion Boucicault and W. S. Gilbert, the last of whom, like Scribe, was an extremely successful opera librettist as well as author of many non-musical plays. Stanton sees the influence of Scribe in Gilbert’s best-known play, Engaged , as regards both the plot and the dramatic technique – withheld secrets, exposition, peripeteia and obligatory scene. The Words of the Year usually reflect events that happened during the years the lists were published.
The word is also considered an acronym in the online gaming world for the phrase We owned the other team. This word was also used in the 1990 film Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts exclaimed “Woot, woot, woot!” to her date’s friends during a polo match. Among the next generation of English-language playwrights indebted to Scribe was Bernard Shaw; despite Shaw’s frequent denigration of Scribe (see “Objections”, below), the latter’s influence is seen in many of Shaw’s plays. Stanton writes, “The evidence suggests that Shaw availed himself of as many of the tricks and devices of the popular stagecraft of Scribe as would help him to successfully establish on the stage his early plays, from Widowers’ Houses to Man and Superman , and even beyond”. Shaw’s contemporary Oscar Wilde followed the pattern of the well-made play in his drawing room dramas, but unlike Scribe he introduced continual bons mots into his dialogue, and in his final masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest he abandoned any pretence of plausibility of plot and made fun of many of the traditions of the well-made play.
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