Eighteenth-century comic theatre

Abstract

Two received ideas beset our vision of eighteenth-century French comedy. The first is that the comic stage was so haunted by the ghost of Molière that dramatists had little or no room for creative manoeuvre. Frequently performed and constantly cited, Molière's plays put eighteenth-century comic dramatists in an impossible situation, as the poet figure suggests in the prologue to Dufresny's three-act prose comedy Le Négligent, first performed at the Comédie-Française in February 1692, less than twenty years after Molière's death: ‘Molière a bien gâté le théâtre. Si l'on donne dans son goût: Bon, dit aussitôt le critique, cela est pillé, c'est Molière tout pur; s'en écarte-t-on un peu: Oh! ce ..