well-made play

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

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.
   • 1983, George Stade, European Writers: The Romantic century‎, Charles Baudelaire to the well-made play, Scribner, →ISBN:

     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.