During this period comedy had likewise been influenced by classical models; but the distance was less between the national farces and Terence, than between the mysteries and moralities, and Seneca and the Greeks. _L'Eugène_ differs little in style from the more elaborate of the old farces; and while it satirizes the foibles of the clergy without any appreciable abatement of the old licence, its theme is the favourite burden of the French comic theatre in all times--_le cocuage_. The examples, however, which directly facilitated the productivity of the French comic dramatists of this period, among whom Jean de la Taille was the first to attempt a regular comedy in prose,[88] were those of the Italian stage, which in 1576 established a permanent colony in France, destined to survive there till the close of the 17th century, by which time it had adopted the French language, and was ready to coalesce with French actors, without, however, relinquishing all remembrance of its origin. R. Belleau, a member of the "Pleiad," produced a comedy in which the type (already approached by Jodelle) of the swaggering captain appears,[89] J. Grévin copied Italian intrigue, characters and manners;[90] O. de Turnèbe (d. 1581) borrowed the title of one Italian play[91] and perhaps parts of the plots of others; the Florentine F. d'Amboise (d. 1558) produced versions of two Italian comedies;[92] and the foremost French comic poet of the century, P. de Larivey, likewise an Italian born (of the name of Pietro Giunto), openly professed to imitate the poets of his native country. His plays are more or less literal translations of L. Dolce,[93] Secchi[94] and other Italian dramatists; and this lively and witty author, to whom Molière owes much, thus connects two of the most important and successful growths of the modern comic drama. The close conjunction between the history of a living dramatic literature and that of the theatre can least of all be ignored in the case of France, where the actor's art has gone through so ample an evolution, and where the theatre has so long and continuously formed an important part of the national life. By the middle of the 16th century not only had theatrical representations, now quite emancipated from clerical control, here and there already become matters of speculation and business, but the acting profession was beginning to organize itself as such; strolling companies of actors had become a more or less frequent experience; and the attitude of the church and of civic respectability were once more coming to be systematically hostile to the stage and its representatives. French tragedy and comedy in the 17th century before Corneille.