The Théâtre du Marais in 1644: A New Look at the Old Evidence Concerning France's Second Public Theatre

Abstract

The history of the Théâtre du Marais is linked indissolubly with the name of Mme S. Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, the Dutch theatre historian whose archival researches brought to light some thirty years ago such a wealth of unsuspected new documentation about the theatre itself, the actors who worked there and the plays they presented. In 1954, in the first of her two-volume Théâtre du Marais, she published the central document for any understanding of the theatre's physical disposition in the early part of its life: the mémoire de ce qu'il faut faire au jeu de paume des Marais, a carpenters' contract which describes the reconstruction work to be carried out after the theatre had been destroyed by fire in January 1644. Historians were quick to pay tribute, not only to the thoroughness of Deierkauf-Holsboer's research, but also to the validity of her interpretation of the new evidence. In 1957 the late Tom Lawrenson established what soon became the general attitude:The indefatigable researches of Mme Deierkauf-Holsboer have finally dragged this house, after centuries of neglect, into the light of day. We now have a very good idea of the aspect it must have presented after its rebuilding … in October 1644. We can do no better than to give the main details of her interpretation of her discovery, Mémoire de ce qu'il faut faire.…