Charlemagne
Charlemagne or Charles the Great, numbered Charles I, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, Holy Roman Emperor from 800. He united much of central Europe during the Early Middle Ages, he was the first recognised emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. The expanded Frankish state that Charlemagne founded is called the Carolingian Empire, he was canonized by Antipope Paschal III. Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, born before their canonical marriage, he became king in 768 following his father's death as co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. Carloman's sudden death in December 771 under unexplained circumstances left Charlemagne as the sole ruler of the Frankish Kingdom, he continued his father's policy towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in northern Italy and leading an incursion into Muslim Spain. He campaigned against the Saxons to his east, Christianizing them upon penalty of death and leading to events such as the Massacre of Verden.
He reached the height of his power in 800 when he was crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day at Rome's Old St. Peter's Basilica. Charlemagne has been called the "Father of Europe", as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire and united parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule, his rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church. All Holy Roman Emperors considered their kingdoms to be descendants of Charlemagne's empire, as did the French and German monarchies. However, the Eastern Orthodox Church views Charlemagne more controversially, labelling as heterodox his support of the filioque and the Pope's recognition of him as legitimate Roman Emperor rather than Irene of Athens of the Byzantine Empire; these and other machinations led to the eventual split of Rome and Constantinople in the Great Schism of 1054. Charlemagne died in 814, having ruled as emperor for 14 years and as king for 46 years.
He was laid to rest in his imperial capital city of Aachen. He married at least four times and had three legitimate sons, but only his son Louis the Pious survived to succeed him. By the 6th century, the western Germanic tribe of the Franks had been Christianised, due in considerable measure to the Catholic conversion of Clovis I. Francia, ruled by the Merovingians, was the most powerful of the kingdoms that succeeded the Western Roman Empire. Following the Battle of Tertry, the Merovingians declined into powerlessness, for which they have been dubbed the rois fainéants. All government powers were exercised by their chief officer, the mayor of the palace. In 687, Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, ended the strife between various kings and their mayors with his victory at Tertry, he became the sole governor of the entire Frankish kingdom. Pepin was the grandson of two important figures of the Austrasian Kingdom: Saint Arnulf of Metz and Pepin of Landen. Pepin of Herstal was succeeded by his son Charles known as Charles Martel.
After 737, Charles declined to call himself king. Charles was succeeded in 741 by his sons Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne. In 743, the brothers placed Childeric III on the throne to curb separatism in the periphery, he was the last Merovingian king. Carloman resigned office in 746. Pepin brought the question of the kingship before Pope Zachary, asking whether it was logical for a king to have no royal power; the pope handed down his decision in 749, decreeing that it was better for Pepin to be called king, as he had the powers of high office as Mayor, so as not to confuse the hierarchy. He, ordered him to become the true king. In 750, Pepin was elected by an assembly of the Franks, anointed by the archbishop, raised to the office of king; the Pope ordered him into a monastery. The Merovingian dynasty was thereby replaced by the Carolingian dynasty, named after Charles Martel. In 753, Pope Stephen II fled from Italy to Francia, appealing to Pepin for assistance for the rights of St. Peter.
He was supported in this appeal by Charles' brother. In return, the pope could provide only legitimacy, he did this by again anointing and confirming Pepin, this time adding his young sons Carolus and Carloman to the royal patrimony. They thereby became heirs to the realm that covered most of western Europe. In 754, Pepin accepted the Pope's invitation to visit Italy on behalf of St. Peter's rights, dealing with the Lombards. Under the Carolingians, the Frankish kingdom spread to encompass an area including most of Western Europe. Orman portrays the Treaty of Verdun between the warring grandsons of Charlemagne as the foundation event of an independent France under its first king Charles the Bald; the middle kingdom had broken up by 890 and absorbed into the Western kingdom and the Eastern kingdom and the rest developing into smaller "buffer" nations that exist between Fr
Illustrator
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, the reason illustrations are found in children's books. Illustration is the art of making images that work with something and add to it without needing direct attention and without distracting from what they illustrate; the other thing is the focus of the attention, the illustration's role is to add personality and character without competing with that other thing. Illustrations have been used in advertisements, architectural rendering, greeting cards, books, graphic novels, manuals, magazines, video games and newspapers. A cartoon illustration can add humor to essays. Use reference images to create scenes and characters; this can be as simple as looking at an image to inspire your artwork, or creating character sketches and detailed scenes from different angles to create the basis of a picture book world.
Some traditional illustration techniques include watercolor and ink, airbrush art, oil painting, wood engraving, linoleum cuts. John Held, Jr. was an illustrator who worked in a variety of styles and media, including linoleum cuts and ink drawings, magazine cover paintings, comic strips, set design, while creating fine art with his animal sculptures and watercolor, many established illustrators attended an art school or college of some sort and were trained in different painting and drawing techniques. Traditional illustration seems to have made a resurgence in the age of social media thanks to social networks like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Traditional and digital illustration are both flourishing. Universities and art schools offer specific courses in illustration so this has become a new avenue into the profession. Many illustrators are freelance. Most scientific illustrations and technical illustrations are known as information graphics. Among the information graphics specialists are medical illustrators who illustrate human anatomy requiring many years of artistic and medical training.
A popular medium with illustrators of the 1950s and 1960s was casein, as was egg tempera. The immediacy and durability of these media suited illustration's demands well; the artwork in both types of paint withstood the rigors of travel to clients and printers without damage. Computer illustration, or digital illustration, is the use of digital tools to produce images under the direct manipulation of the artist through a pointing device, such as a tablet or a mouse. Computers changed the industry and today, many cartoonists and illustrators create digital illustrations using computers, graphics tablets, scanners. Software such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, Affinity Designer are now used by those professionals. Airbrush artist Archaeological illustration Architectural illustrator Cartoonist Fashion illustration Graphic designer Marker rendering Painters Pictorial maps Storyboard artist Stuttgart Database of Scientific Illustrators Visualizer Societies and organizationsDirectory of Illustration Illustratörcentrum Society of Illustrators American Illustration Communication Arts Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators San Francisco Society of Illustrators Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles The Association of Illustrators The Illustrators Partnership of America AIIQ – l’Association des Illustrateurs et Illustratrices du Québec Colorado Alliance of Illustrators The Association Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors Guild of Natural Science Illustrators The Association of Medical Illustrators Guild of Natural Science Illustrators-Northwest Illustrators Australia French illustrators Urban Sketchers Official website
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of its properties. Chemists describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms. Chemists measure substance proportions, reaction rates, other chemical properties; the word'chemist' is used to address Pharmacists in Commonwealth English. Chemists use this knowledge to learn the composition and properties of unfamiliar substances, as well as to reproduce and synthesize large quantities of useful occurring substances and create new artificial substances and useful processes. Chemists may specialize in any number of subdisciplines of chemistry. Materials scientists and metallurgists share skills with chemists; the work of chemists is related to the work of chemical engineers, who are concerned with the proper design and evaluation of the most cost-effective large-scale chemical plants and work with industrial chemists on the development of new processes and methods for the commercial-scale manufacture of chemicals and related products.
The roots of chemistry can be traced to the phenomenon of burning. Fire was a mystical force that transformed one substance into another and thus was of primary interest to mankind, it was fire. After gold was discovered and became a precious metal, many people were interested to find a method that could convert other substances into gold; this led to the protoscience called alchemy. The word chemist is derived from an abbreviation of alchimista. Alchemists discovered many chemical processes. Chemistry as we know it today, was invented by Antoine Lavoisier with his law of conservation of mass in 1783; the discoveries of the chemical elements has a long history culminating in the creation of the periodic table by Dmitri Mendeleev. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry created in 1901 gives an excellent overview of chemical discovery since the start of the 20th century. Jobs for chemists require at least a bachelor's degree, but many positions those in research, require a Master of Science or a Doctor of Philosophy.
Most undergraduate programs emphasize mathematics and physics as well as chemistry because chemistry is known as "the central science", thus chemists ought to have a well-rounded knowledge about science. At the Master's level and higher, students tend to specialize in a particular field. Fields of specialization include biochemistry, nuclear chemistry, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, polymer chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, theoretical chemistry, quantum chemistry, environmental chemistry, thermochemistry. Postdoctoral experience may be required for certain positions. Workers whose work involves chemistry, but not at a complexity requiring an education with a chemistry degree, are referred to as chemical technicians; such technicians do such work as simpler, routine analyses for quality control or in clinical laboratories, having an associate degree. A chemical technologist has more education or experience than a chemical technician but less than a chemist having a bachelor's degree in a different field of science with an associate degree in chemistry or having the same education as a chemical technician but more experience.
There are degrees specific to become a chemical technologist, which are somewhat distinct from those required when a student is interested in becoming a professional chemist. A Chemical technologist is more involved in the management and operation of the equipment and instrumentation necessary to perform chemical analyzes than a chemical technician, they are part of the team of a chemical laboratory in which the quality of the raw material, intermediate products and finished products is analyzed. They perform functions in the areas of environmental quality control and the operational phase of a chemical plant. In addition to all the training given to chemical technologists in their respective degree, a chemist is trained to understand more details related to chemical phenomena so that the chemist can be capable of more planning on the steps to achieve a distinct goal via a chemistry-related endeavor; the higher the competency level achieved in the field of chemistry, the higher the responsibility given to that chemist and the more complicated the task might be.
Chemistry, as a field, have so many applications that different tasks and objectives can be given to workers or scientists with these different levels of education or experience. The specific title of each job varies from position to position, depending on factors such as the kind of industry, the routine level of the task, the current needs of a particular enterprise, the size of the enterprise or hiring firm, the philosophy and management principles of the hiring firm, the visibility of the competency and individual achievements of the one seeking employment, economic factors such as recession or economic depression, among other factors, so this makes it difficult to categorize the exact roles of these chemistry-related workers as standard for that given level of education; because of these factors affecting exact job titles with distinct responsibilities, some chemists might begin doing technician tasks while other chemists might begin doing more complicated tasks than those of a technician, such as tasks th
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations. Engraving is one of the oldest and most important techniques in printmaking. Wood engraving is not covered in this article. Engraving was a important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines, it has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been replaced by etching and other techniques. "Engraving" is loosely but incorrectly used for any old black and white print. Many old master prints combine techniques on the same plate, further confusing matters.
Line engraving and steel engraving cover use for reproductive prints, illustrations in books and magazines, similar uses in the 19th century, not using engraving. Traditional engraving, by burin or with the use of machines, continues to be practised by goldsmiths, glass engravers and others, while modern industrial techniques such as photoengraving and laser engraving have many important applications. Engraved gems were an important art in the ancient world, revived at the Renaissance, although the term traditionally covers relief as well as intaglio carvings, is a branch of sculpture rather than engraving, as drills were the usual tools. Other terms used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or line engraving. Steel engraving is the same technique, on steel or steel-faced plates, was used for banknotes, illustrations for books and reproductive prints and similar uses from about 1790 to the early 20th century, when the technique became less popular, except for banknotes and other forms of security printing.
In the past, "engraving" was used loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by different techniques, such as etching or mezzotint. "Hand engraving" is a term sometimes used for engraving objects other than printing plates, to inscribe or decorate jewellery, trophies and other fine metal goods. Traditional engravings in printmaking are "hand engraved", using just the same techniques to make the lines in the plate; each graver has its own use. Engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin, or graver, to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate. However, modern hand engraving artists use burins or gravers to cut a variety of metals such as silver, steel, gold and more, in applications from weaponry to jewellery to motorcycles to found objects. Modern professional engravers can engrave with a resolution of up to 40 lines per mm in high grade work creating game scenes and scrollwork. Dies used in mass production of molded parts are sometimes hand engraved to add special touches or certain information such as part numbers.
In addition to hand engraving, there are engraving machines that require less human finesse and are not directly controlled by hand. They are used for lettering, using a pantographic system. There are versions for the insides of rings and the outsides of larger pieces; such machines are used for inscriptions on rings and presentation pieces. Gravers come in a variety of sizes that yield different line types; the burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line, characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a curved tip, used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, used to do fill work on larger areas or to create uniform shade lines that are fast to execute. Ring gravers are made with particular shapes that are used by jewelry engravers in order to cut inscriptions inside rings. Flat gravers are used for fill work on letters, as well as "wriggle" cuts on most musical instrument engraving work, remove background, or create bright cuts.
Knife gravers are for line engraving and deep cuts. Round gravers, flat gravers with a radius, are used on silver to create bright cuts, as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Square or V-point gravers are square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines. V-point can be anywhere depending on purpose and effect; these gravers have small cutting points. Other tools such as mezzotint rockers and burnishers are used for texturing effects. Burnishing tools can be used for certain stone setting techniques. Musical instrument engraving on American-made brass instruments flourished in the 1920s and utilizes a specialized engraving technique where a flat graver is "walked" across the surface of the instrument to make zig-zag lines and patterns; the method for "walking" the graver may be referred to as "wriggle" or "wiggle" cuts. This technique is necessary due to the thinness of metal used to make musical instruments versus firearms or jewelry. Wriggle cuts are found on
Departments of France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, five are overseas departments, which are classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils; each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school buildings and technical staff, local roads and school and rural buses, a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; the departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity.
All of them were named after physical geographical features, rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The division of France into departments was a project identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had been discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers; the earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Overseas departments have a three-digit number; the number is used, for example, in the postal code, was until used for all vehicle registration plates. While residents use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, more distant departments are referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.
For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as "the 45". In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, to transfer their powers to other levels of governance; this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved in order to weaken old loyalties; the modern departments, as all-purpose units of the government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure.
Their boundaries served two purposes: Boundaries were chosen to break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation. Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of a department; this was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas far from any centre of government; the old nomenclature was avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after other physical features. Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy became the department of Mont-Blanc; the number of departments 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86.
In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department; the 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin became known as the Territoire de Belfort; when France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department; the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, a new Moselle department was created in the regaine
Gallo-Roman culture
The term "Gallo-Roman" describes the Romanized culture of Gaul under the rule of the Roman Empire. This was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman morals and way of life in a uniquely Gaulish context; the well-studied meld of cultures in Gaul gives historians a model against which to compare and contrast parallel developments of Romanization in other, less-studied Roman provinces. Interpretatio romana offered Roman names for Gaulish deities such as the smith-god Gobannus, but of Celtic deities only the horse-patroness Epona penetrated Romanized cultures beyond the confines of Gaul; the barbarian invasions beginning in the early fifth century forced upon Gallo-Roman culture fundamental changes in politics, in the economic underpinning, in military organization. The Gothic settlement of 418 offered a double loyalty, as Western Roman authority disintegrated at Rome; the plight of the Romanized governing class is examined by R. W. Mathisen, the struggles of bishop Hilary of Arles by M. Heinzelmann.
Into the seventh century, Gallo-Roman culture would persist in the areas of Gallia Narbonensis that developed into Occitania, Cisalpine Gaul, Orléanais, to a lesser degree, Gallia Aquitania. The Romanized north of Gaul, once it had been occupied by the Franks, would develop into Merovingian culture instead. Roman life, centered on the public events and cultural responsibilities of urban life in the res publica and the sometimes luxurious life of the self-sufficient rural villa system, took longer to collapse in the Gallo-Roman regions, where the Visigoths inherited the status quo in 418. Gallo-Roman language persisted in the northeast into the Silva Carbonaria that formed an effective cultural barrier with the Franks to the north and east, in the northwest to the lower valley of the Loire, where Gallo-Roman culture interfaced with Frankish culture in a city like Tours and in the person of that Gallo-Roman bishop confronted with Merovingian royals, Gregory of Tours. Based on mutual intelligibility, David Dalby counts seven languages descended from Gallo-Romance: Gallo-Wallon, Franco-Provençal, Ladin and Lombard.
However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance languages, Occitano-Romance languages, Gallo-Italic languages. Gaul was divided by Roman administration into three provinces, which were sub-divided in the third century reorganization under Diocletian, divided between two dioceses and Viennensis, under the Praetorian prefecture of Galliae. On the local level, it was composed of civitates which preserved, broadly speaking, the boundaries of the independent Gaulish tribes, organised in large part on village structures that retained some features in the Roman civic formulas that overlaid them. Over the course of the Roman period, an ever-increasing proportion of Gauls gained Roman citizenship. In 212 the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all free-born men in the Roman Empire. During the Crisis of the Third Century, from 260 to 274, Gaul was subject to Alamanni raids because of the civil war. In reaction to local problems the Gallo-Romans appointed their own emperor Postumus.
The rule over Gaul and Hispania by Postumus and his successors is called The Gallic Empire although it was just one set of many usurpers who took over parts of the Roman Empire and tried to become emperor. The capital was Trier, used as the northern capital of the Roman Empire by many emperors; the Gallic Empire ended. The pre-Christian religious practices of Roman Gaul were characterized by syncretism of Graeco-Roman deities with their native Celtic, Basque or Germanic counterparts, many of which were of local significance. Assimilation was eased by interpreting indigenous gods in Roman terms, such as with Lenus Mars or Apollo Grannus. Otherwise, a Roman god might be paired with a native goddess, as with Rosmerta. In at least one case – that of the equine goddess Epona – a native Gallic goddess was adopted by Rome. Eastern mystery religions penetrated Gaul early on; these included the cults of Orpheus, Mithras and Isis. The imperial cult, centred on the numen of Augustus, came to play a prominent role in public religion in Gaul, most at the pan-Gaulish ceremony venerating Rome and Augustus at the Condate Altar near Lugdunum annually on 1 August.
Gregory of Tours recorded the tradition that after the persecution under the co-emperors Decius and Gratus, future pope Felix I sent seven missionaries to re-establish the broken and scattered Christian communities, Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturninus to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Martial to Limoges, Austromoine to Clermont. In the fifth and sixth centuries, Gallo-Roman Christian communities still consisted of independent churches in urban sites, each governed by a bishop; some of the communities had origins. The personal charisma of the bishop set the tone, as fifth-century allegiances, for pagans as well as Christians, switched from institutions to individuals: most Gallo-Roman bishops were drawn from the highest levels of society as appropriate non-military civil roads to advancement dwindled, they represented themselves as bulwarks of high literary standards and Roman traditions against the Vandal and Gothic interlopers. Bishops took on the duties of civil administrator after the contraction of the Roman imperial administration d
Playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; the word "wright" is an archaic English term for a builder. The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words and other elements into a dramatic form—a play; the first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, thought to refer to John Marston: Epigram LXVIII — On Playwright PLAYWRIGHT me reads, still my verses damns, He says I want the tongue of epigrams. Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known In my chaste book. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and so were regarded as the province of poets; this view was held as late as the early 19th century.
The term "playwright" again lost this negative connotation. The earliest playwright in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks; these early plays were for annual Athenian competitions among play writers held around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, "the act of making"; this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, in which he analyzed the principle of action or praxis as the basis for tragedy, he considered elements of drama: plot, thought, diction and spectacle. Since the myths, on which Greek tragedy were based, were known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was determined by action. Tragedy is mimesis—"the imitation of an action, serious", he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist, which provides the basis for the "conflict-driven" play.
The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action and time; this meant that the playwright had to construct the play so that its "virtual" time would not exceed 24 hours, that it would be restricted to a single setting, that there would be no subplots. Other terms, such as verisimilitude and decorum, circumscribed the subject matter significantly. For example, verisimilitude limits of the unities. Decorum fitted proper protocols for language on stage. In France, contained too many events and actions, violating the 24-hour restriction of the unity of time. Neoclassicism never had as much traction in England, Shakespeare's plays are directly opposed to these models, while in Italy and bawdy commedia dell'arte and opera were more popular forms. In England, after the Interregnum, restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a move toward neoclassical dramaturgy.
One structural unit, still useful to playwrights today, is the "French scene", a scene in a play where the beginning and end are marked by a change in the makeup of the group of characters onstage, rather than by the lights going up or down or the set being changed. Popularized in the nineteenth century by the French playwrights Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou, the most schematic of all formats, the "well-made play" relies on a series of coincidences that determined the action; this plot driven format is reliant on a prop device, such as a glass of water, or letter that reveals some secret information. In most cases, the character receiving the secret information misinterprets its contents, thus setting off a chain of events. Well-made plays are thus motivated by various plot devices which lead to "discoveries" and "reversals of action," rather than being character motivated. Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House is an example of a well-made structure that began to integrate a more realistic approach to character.
The character Nora's leaving is as much motivated by "the letter" and disclosure of a "past secret" as it is by her own determination to strike out on her own. The well-made play infiltrated other forms of writing and is still seen in popular formats such as the mystery, or "whodunit." Full-length play: Generally, two or three acts with an act break that marks some kind of scene change or time shift. These acts are divided into scenes, which are defined by shifts in time and place; this type of structure is called episodic. Episodic plays contain scene changes and require careful attention to transitions, so as to maintain entails a more causal relationship between units and is defined by the unity of time, and/or action. Short play: A more popular format the short play does not have an intermission and runs over an hour, but less than an hour-and-a-half. One-act play: A useful form for experimental work with less reliance on character development and arc; these remain under an hour in length.
In the US the 10-minute play
