With Guy Spielmann’s chapter, the collection shifts to eighteenth-century theatre, the common vision of which has rested until recently on a limited number of neo-Aristotelian ‘regular’ dramas staged at the Comédie-Française and Théâtre-Italien. Spielmann accounts for the huge theatrical activity taking place in fairgrounds and domestic spaces during this period. Acrobatic entertainments at Parisian fairgrounds grew into fully-fledged dramas, violating the privilège granted to the official troupes who pursued, in vain, every legal avenue to stop them. The Académie Royale de Musique’s monopoly was also compromised when fairground entrepreneurs bought the right to stage musical plays, giving rise to the opéra-comique (fanciful shows influenced by commedia dell’arte). A further illustration of the circumvention of monopolies was afforded by amateur théâtre de société, already mentioned in this Introduction. Spielmann presents a vast field, characterized by extreme diversity, although he argues that its allegedly subversive quality was more aesthetic, than political.

In his Négligent (1692), Charles Dufresny has an aspiring playwright exclaim: ‘Molière has spoiled the theatre all right. Follow his example and immediately critics cry out that you pilfered his work; deviate from it in the slightest, and they complain that you are not staying close enough to Molière!’ – an ironic but fitting encapsulation of the ‘post-moliéresque’ era, when authors, facing increasingly challenging conditions, still somehow managed to reinvent comedy. The growing aura of commedia dell’arte and opera influenced productions of the newly formed Théâtre-Français, which for almost twenty years struggled in the shadow of the hugely successful Théâtre-Italien, then allowed to stage plays partly in French. When the latter was shut down by royal decree in 1697, the taste for ‘irregular’ comedy remained dominant, ultimately leading to the emergence of a new venue – the fairgrounds – and a new genre: the opéra-comique. Contrary to a long-standing negative vision, the Fin de Règne (1680–1715), with dramatists like Dancourt, Dufresny, Regnard and Lesage, was an apex of comedic innovation that never forgot or betrayed what Molière had accomplished.