Sir Arthur W. Pinero's play The Second Mrs. TanqueraySir Arthur W. Pinero's play The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was written in 1893 and was built around the conventions of well-play. The well-made play originated in France under the name of piece bien fait and is characterized by a detailed and practical organization of the plot. The logical and precise construction of a well-performed play is characterized by a number of conventions: the audience is quickly introduced to the characters and their relevant stories, there is a usually secret complication, known to the audience but unknown to the characters, which , when revealed at the climax, is an unreal coincidence and reverses the fortunes of the hero of the play. The hero's fortunes fluctuate during this conflict with the antagonist until finally, at the climax, the plot quickly unravels, the secret revealed in the final denouement, or resolution. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is an effective and well-executed play because of its structure and how it impacts the audience in the end. As the elements of a well-made play imply, we are introduced to all the characters and understand their history and the problems their story may cause. More specifically, it is the story of a very unconventional woman of this audience's era and as I go through the play I will identify her key representations of the play well done. Aubery Tanqueray, a self-made man, is a forty-two-year-old widower with a beautiful teenage daughter, Ellean, for whom he seems very protective. His deceased wife, the first Mrs. Tanqueray, was “an iceberg,” stiff and assertive, living as if dead (13). Ironically, she had died of a fever "the only heat, I believe, that ever reached this woman's body" (14). Now alone because his daughter is in a convent, he has found someone who can add a little life to his elite, high-class existence; a little someone, we learn, who has a past that doesn't quite match that of the rest of his friends. The problems begin in the first act, the exposition, the day before Aubery's marriage to a stranger. Aubery drinks and dines with his three closest friends, Cayley Drummel, single, Dr Gordon Jayne and Frank Misquith, QC, MP. His conversation seems to be that of a farewell: "We will end a pleasant chapter here tonight, and after tonight, start again.