Letter to the Countess of T. on a Second French Theater in Paris

seeks gaiety, and the Anglomane an enthusiast of all things English demands the somber. It is the latter who have caused this sad change. I dare say they have torn the mask, the wit, and the playfulness from Thalie the Muse of Comedy, and have dressed her in the crepe of Anglomania; or rather, they have driven her away to replace her with the sad figure of a Catafalque a funereal scaffold. The mournful Drames funèbres funeral dramas owe their birth and their popularity to them; they have done their work so well that talent is no longer required to compose theatrical plays, says a Journalist: fragments of vague and heavy morality, and painful exclamations, with periods full of sentiment, that is the whole mystery. The Italian Stage was charming in the past for its Comédies Episodiques episodic comedies (*) and for its Parodies. The former are no longer performed, and the taste for the latter has passed, I know not why. The Public is thus deprived of two great pleasures; to repair this wrong, let us establish a Theater for Parodies and Episodic Plays.

It only remains for me to speak to you, Madame, about the two Spectacles of Nicolet and Audinot. I enter Nicolet’s: the location of his Theater, vast for that of a private individual, offers a fairly decent form of decoration.

(*) La Bagatelle, les Etrennes, la Frivolité, le Silphe, le je ne sais quoi; Agnès de Chaillot; les Billets doux, and Timon the Misanthrope, The Savage Harlequin.