-- contemporary corruption in clergy and business, sexual inequality, prudishness another victorian unmentionables-- were considered dangerous, his method of presentation was conventional. he used melodramatic devices, usually making quite explicit the division between good characters and bad. to make deceptively simple-looking plays, he wrote what was called the well-made play, that is, a play so carefully constructed that almost every line and object turned out to have some important use in a latter part of the play. it was said that if the heroine of a well-made play coughs in the first act, she will surely die of tuberculosis by the end. if a gun is handled, it will surely be used. there are no casual deliveries of mail. a letter will bring joy to some, destruction to others. no one will merely observe the beauty of a piece of jewelry. it will surely turn up later as part of someone's effort to conceal the past. ibsen's audiences love such revelations in which it is shown that things are not what they seem to be. the baby is the child of someone else. the poor man has unexpectedly inherited a