ABSTRACT
Theatres were classified under three main headings: official, secondary and ‘forain’ or ‘spectacle de curiosité’, and these classifications applied officially until 1864, becoming increasingly blurred after 1830, as existing theatres moved outside their allotted repertoire and new theatres came into being. The concern of this book is with the second and third categories, which were those frequented principally by the popular classes. Quality in
these theatres lay in the skill of the performers and in the mise en scène, not in any notion of high culture, and success was judged principally by the box-office. For historic reasons, these theatres had built repertoires that avoided treading on the preserves of the big theatres. Initially, the secondary theatres and the forains had been indistinguishable, and certain ambiguities persist into the nineteenth century, notably in the case of some of the smaller theatres of the boulevard du Temple.
