Crisis and Recovery.

The later sixteenth century in France had been punctuated by religious wars and economic and political instability. With the accession of Henri IV (r. 1594–1610) and his promulgation of the Edict of Nantes—a royal decree that granted a limited degree of religious toleration to French Calvinists—a new tenuous stability began to develop in the country. Although Henri IV was assassinated in 1610, France did not sink into civil war again as might have been expected. Instead under the regency of Henri's wife Marie de' Medici and the rule of her son, Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643), the country's political systems and economy gathered renewed strength and the way was prepared for France's rise to European dominance in the second half of the seventeenth century. Developments in the professional theater were very...