©Comédie-Française 2005
 
 
             

Racine		   A TROUBLED HISTORY

Louis XIV, whose passion for centralisation was felt throughout the kingdom, ordered both companies of French actors in Paris to merge. On 25 August 1680, the unified company gave its first performance. On 21 October, a royal decree, signed in Versailles, confirmed the creation of a single theatre company comprising 27 actors who were selected by the King for their excellence, with a view to "perfecting the performance of comedies".

  
 
On 5 January 1681, the Comédiens-Français drew up an act of association, according to an old theatre company tradition. This agreement has never been questioned. Thanks to the annual pension granted to them in 1682, they started to benefit from royal protection, but had to comply more strictly with the whims of the King and interventions by Royal Household officials.		  

Corneille 
 
In 1689, the Company moved to Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain. The repertoire grew thanks to the works of the Company's actor-playwrights: Baron's L'Homme à bonnes fortunes (1686), Dancourt's Le Chevalier à la mode (1687), Jean-François Regnard's Le Joueur (1696), Les Folies amoureuses (1704), and above all, Le Légataire universel (1708), Alain-René Lesage's Crispin, rival de son maître (1707) and Turcaret (1709), and Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon's Rhadamiste et Zénobie (1711), which were all greatly acclaimed.		  


Mademoiselle
Duclos		  
After Louis XIV's death in 1715, the advent of the Régent and the return to luxury and pleasure drove the Comédiens-Français to fight hard against the rival company of Italian actors and the popular Théâtre de la Foire (fair theatre). Marivaux and Voltaire would soon dominate the 18th-century stage.		  
 
Marivaux, who is one of the most performed playwrights today, obtained little success at the Comédie-Française in his own lifetime. He preferred the acting of the Comédiens-Italiens, where Arlequin poli par l'amour was a triumphant success in 1720. He only wrote about ten plays for the Comédie-Française, including a tragedy, Annibal (1720), and several comedies: La Seconde Surprise de l'amour (1727), Le Legs (1736), etc.		  

Marivaux
 

Foundation • Theatremania • Revolution • Romanticism
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