SOURCE: "Comedy," in Dramatic Theory and Practice in France: 1690–1808, 1921. Reprint by Benjamin Blom, 1968, pp. 6–43.

In the following excerpt, Jourdain discusses the development of comedy by Molière's successors.

It would have been difficult for any successors of Molière to avoid the dangerous homage of imitation of his methods. Molière had succeeded in making the theatre national in France, and in popularising the painting of manners in the middle classes of society. Now the whole tendency of the drama in the eighteenth century was to throw more light on the middle classes, and it is important to notice that from the days of Corneille onwards they had become regular playgoers in Paris. The early efforts of eighteenth-century comedy were therefore on Molière's lines, though at first of the nature of caricature of his methods. When writers of comedy began to reflect their own time more exactly...