Conclusion

Abstract

French theater, particularly during the first half of the nineteenth century, is wrought with a multitude of contradictions regarding the role it played in society and politics. On one hand, one could view theater purely as a lucrative industry,¹ a novelty for expanding audiences from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Audiences flocked to the theater, particularly those such as the Ambigu-Comique, Gymnase Dramatique, and the Variétés, for pure entertainment and distraction. As Eugène Scribe remarked in 1836 before the Académie Française, “Vous courez au théâtre non pour vous instruire ou vous corriger, mais pour vous distraire et vous divertir” [You run to the theater not to educate yourself or mend your ways, but to enjoy yourself and have fun] (13). The popularity of lower theatrical genres such as melodramas and vaudevilles bore witness to a population fatigued by revolution and political turmoil, audiences in need of an escape from their own disquieting reality. The limited, often single-act formats of the most popular plays imposed constraints of both time and structure upon the playwright wishing to make a profit. Often, these short pieces were instantly dismissed as holding little in the way of artistic merit.