Page "Eugène Scribe" Paragraph 4

Scribe's main subject matter was the contemporary bourgeoisie.

He mastered his craft writing comédies vaudevilles, short middle-class entertainments, often with songs.

Eventually he developed the formulaic " well-made play "; popular pieces with elaborate plots featuring clever twists and turns, and usually centering on a misunderstanding ( quiproquo ) which is revealed early on to the audience but not realised by the protagonists until the final scenes.

Characters face a series of obstacles, the resolution of which may create in turn further problems.

At the end a scène a faire, with startling revelations, leads to a sensational denouement.

Whilst their ingenuity was recognised by contemporary and later critics, the plays lack fine language, depth of character, thought, or social analysis.

They thus stand in sharp contrast, for example, to Romantic plays of the same period, such as those of Victor Hugo.

Théophile Gautier questioned how it could be that, " an author without poetry, lyricism, style, philosophy, truth or naturalism could be the most successful writer of his epoch, despite the opposition of literature and the critics?