SOURCE: "Audiences," in Seventeenth-Century French Drama: The Background, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1979, pp. 76–98.

In the following excerpt, Lough discusses the changing social status of the theatre during the seventeenth century and the composition of theatre audiences, observing that the middle classes were strongly represented.

Even if the seventeenth-century playwright probably gave no thought to the spectators in the despised provinces, he had to bear in mind that he was writing for two rather different, if overlapping audiences—that of the court and that of the public theatres of Paris. From one end of the century to the other, the king and court took an interest in drama either by having plays performed in the royal palaces in Paris or Versailles or even occasionally in the provinces or else by attending the public theatres.

It is true that the interest shown by the king and court in drama...