Word.ws English Dictionary

well-made play

well-made play noun: a play belonging to a 19th-century neoclassical theatrical genre involving a tight plot and a climax close to the end. The story depends upon a key piece of information kept from some characters, and moves forward in a chain of actions that use minor reversals of fortune to create suspense.

Noun

well-made play (plural well-made plays)

  1. A play belonging to a 19th-century neoclassical theatrical genre involving a tight plot and a climax close to the end. The story depends upon a key piece of information kept from some characters, and moves forward in a chain of actions that use minor reversals of fortune to create suspense.
    • Ultimately Ibsen denies the basic philosophy of the well-made play, that there is meaning and progress in time, and that all human beings are rational creatures, subject to the reassuring process of cause and effect.1983, George Stade, European Writers: The Romantic century, Charles Baudelaire to the well-made play, Scribner, →ISBN

Forms of well-made play

pluralwell-made plays

Origin of well-made play

Calque of French pièce bien faite, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861).

Questions about well-made play

What does well-made play mean?
Well-made play means a play belonging to a 19th-century neoclassical theatrical genre involving a tight plot and a climax close to the end. The story depends upon a key piece of information kept from some characters, and moves forward in a chain of actions that use minor reversals of fortune to create suspense.
What part of speech is well-made play?
Well-made play is a noun.
What is the plural of well-made play?
The plural of well-made play is well-made plays.

Words near well-made play in the dictionary

  1. well-liking
  2. well-lit
  3. well-looked
  4. well-loved
  5. well-made
  6. well-made play
  7. well-made plays
  8. well-mannered
  9. well-matched
  10. well-meaner
  11. well-meaners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: well-made play (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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