Over the long period of time covered in this survey, the theatre represented for the French, to a greater degree probably than for any other nation, a unique focus of collective interest. Down to the end of the nineteenth century no other form of entertainment, engaging the attention of every class of people throughout the length and breadth of the land, had arisen to challenge its supremacy. The one and only purveyor of excitement, amusement and pathos that the mass of the population knew, the theatre was also the one and only escape from their usually laborious and lacklustre existence. Pierre Giffard, in the introductory chapter of an account published in 1888 of the social impact of the theatre in his day, reckoned that 500,000 Parisians attended playhouses once a week, while those who went once a month numbered between a million and 1,200,000. In other words, he concluded, ‘the population of Paris lives at the theatre, of the theatre, and by the theatre’. And those domiciled in provincial towns were just as stagestruck, supporting their local theatre as well as travelling up to the capital in ever-increasing numbers to satisfy their craving for the glitter of the footlights and the excitement of a ‘first night’.

Now the various governments on whom devolved the task of administering the country over this period could not have remained indifferent to the phenomenon.