ABSTRACT
Theatre was reborn in the 15th to 16th centuries in Italy, and for a long time it was all but identical with Italian troupes playing all around Europe. Elizabethan England with Shakespeare and absolutist France with Molière were two striking local flowers grown from this foreign seed. Not surprisingly, both ended, and relatively soon, in an environment of Puritan-absolutist prohibition (1642 in England, 1697 in France), which lasted for decades and destroyed the possibility of significant art. The theatre returned as mere entertainment.
