The Comedians of the King

In The Comedians of the King, Julia Doe traces the impact of Bourbon patronage on the development of French lyric comedy. The book presents the history of an understudied genre and the institutional structures that supported it, determining how changes in royal sponsorship, especially under Marie Antoinette, contributed to the genre's rapid evolution. The stylistic shift, coming at a time of tremendous cultural change, had sizeable political implications. Drawing on both musical and archival evidence, Doe demonstrates how comic theater was exploited in (and worked against) the construction of the monarchy's carefully cultivated public image. In essence, this book examines the aesthetic, institutional, and political tensions that arose when a genre with popular roots was folded into the Bourbon propaganda machine-and when actors trained at the Paris fairs became official representatives of the sovereign, or com?ediens ordinaires du roi--