Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the
theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the
West, they include
Romanticism,
melodrama, the
well-made plays of
Scribe and
Sardou, the
farces of
Feydeau, the
problem plays of
Naturalism and
Realism,
Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk,
Gilbert and Sullivan's plays and operas,
Wilde's drawing-room comedies,
Symbolism, and proto-
Expressionism in the late works of
August Strindberg and
Henrik Ibsen.