A Paris Theatre in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Since 1680, when Louis XIV ordered the amalgamation of the two existing French companies of actors, the Comédie Française had been the Paris theatre. Until the Revolution it enjoyed a monopoly of the performance of those plays, inherited from the previous century, which it still considered worth performing, and, save for most of the comedies of Marivaux, almost all new plays of any value were first produced on its stage. It was to the Comédie Française that a serious theatre-goer would make his way—for the greater part of the century to the theatre on the Left Bank, in what is now known as the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie; then, when these premises became unusable in 1770, to the Tuileries Palace; and finally, from 1782 to the Revolution, to the new building, opposite the Luxembourg Gardens, which, although twice ravaged by fire, still stands, bearing the name of the Théâtre de l'Odéon, or, more accurately, that of Comédie Française, Salle Luxembourg.