wit-at-any-price

Updated: May 18, 2025

If we compare this passage with any page taken at random from Mid-Channel, we might think that a century of evolution lay between them, instead of barely twenty years. The convention of wit-at-any-price is, indeed, moribund; but it is perhaps not quite superfluous, even now, to emphasize the difference between what the French call the "mot d'auteur" and the "mot de situation."

William Archer - Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship