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weak ending The *promotion of a normally unstressed monosyllable (usually a conjunction, preposition, or auxiliary verb) to the position usually occupied by a stressed syllable at the end of an *iambic line, causing a wrenched *accent. In this quotation from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, both line-endings are weak:

Friends, be gone. You shall

Have letters from me to some friends that will

Sweep your way for you.

The weak ending may be distinguished from the *feminine ending in that it places the unstressed syllable in a stress position (the 10th syllable in an iambic *pentameter) rather than adding an extra 11th syllable. See also enjambment.

well-made play Now a rather unfavourable term for a play that is neatly efficient in the construction of its plot but superficial in ideas and characterization. In 19th-century France, the term (pièce bien faite) at first had a more positive sense, denoting the carefully constructed suspense in comedies and *melodramas by Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) and his follower Victorien Sardou (1831–1908). As this tradition was displaced by the more serious concerns of dramatic *naturalism, the term acquired its dismissive sense, especially in the critical writings of Bernard Shaw.

Further reading: John Russell Taylor, The Decline and Fall of the Well-Made Play (1967).

Weltanschauung [velt-an-show-uung] The German term for a ‘world-view’, that is, either the ‘philosophy of life’ adopted by a particular person or the more general outlook shared by people in a given period.

Weltliteratur ‘World literature’, a term coined by Goethe to suggest the capacity of literature to transcend national and linguistic boundaries. See also comparative literature.

Weltschmerz [velt-shmairts] The German word for world-weariness (literally ‘world-ache’), a vague kind of melancholy often associated with Romantic poetry.

Wertherism [ver-ter-izm] A fashion for morbid and self-indulgent melancholy or *Weltschmerz provoked by J. W. von Goethe’s *sentimental novel Die Lieden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774), in which the hero commits suicide because of his hopeless love for a young married woman. The novel was a sensation throughout Europe: Napoleon read it several times, and young men copied Werther’s distinctive costume of yellow breeches with a blue coat. More alarmingly, one young woman drowned herself with a copy of the novel in her pocket, and several other youthful suicides were blamed on this craze.

West End In theatrical parlance, the area of central London in and around Shaftesbury Avenue where the major commercial theatres have been concentrated since the 19th century. It has become associated with polished but generally ‘lighter’ kinds of dramatic entertainment (musicals, *farces, etc.) by contrast with the higher literary drama offered at theatres located in less fashionable districts—such as the Old Vic or the National Theatre, both south of the Thames.

wit A much-debated term with a number of meanings ranging from the general notion of ‘intelligence’ through the more specific ‘ingenuity’ or ‘quickness of mind’ to the narrower modern idea of amusing verbal cleverness. In its literary uses, the term has gone through a number of shifts: it was associated in the *Renaissance with intellectual keenness and a capacity of ‘invention’ by which writers could discover surprisingly appropriate *figures and *conceits, by perceiving resemblances between apparently dissimilar things. It took on an additional sense of elegant arrangement in the 17th and 18th centuries, as in Pope’s famous definition of true wit in his Essay on Criticism (1711):

What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest.

However, the advent of *Romanticism with its cult of *imagination and genius tended to relegate wit, along with *fancy and ingenuity, to an inferior position, transferring its older positive senses to the imaginative faculty. The usual modern sense of wit, then, is one of light cleverness and skill in *repartee or the composition of amusing *epigrams. In 20th-century criticism, an attempt to restore a stronger sense of wit was mounted by T. S. Eliot in his discussions of the *metaphysical poets: he praised the wit of Andrew Marvell as a kind of ‘tough reasonableness’, while other critics have seen wit as a kind of disposition towards *irony. The important point to note is that earlier uses of the term included the positive sense of imaginative capacity, which has since become rather detached from the weaker modern notion of what is witty.