The general movement of that day may be classed as an aberration due to the fact that the drama was a new pleasure; the inconveniences attendant upon its influences had not been recognised, but it is probable that some of the condemnations uttered by the moralists and by the preachers of the seventeenth century in the name of religion and of decency were called forth by the presence of children at the play; the men who were most bitter in denunciations which amaze us by the excess of their hostility spoke from experience and had reason for their bitterness. The Prince de Conti, the brother of the great Condé, might have furnished unique commentaries on the criticisms of the day, had he cared to recall a treatise which he wrote (_The Plays of the Theatre, and Spectacles_) when he was emerging from a youth far from edifying. The treatise was written for the benefit of light-minded people, who saw no harm in playgoing. In the beginning of his work the Prince said: "I hope to prove that comedy in its present condition is not the innocent amusement that it is considered; I hope to prove that a true Christian must regard it as an evil." As his treatise progressed it became explicit; his arraignment was animated by _Astrée_; he declared that a play free from the sentimentality and the passions of love and from the thoughts and the actions of lovers was not acceptable to the public. Love forms the foundation of the play, and therefore it must be discussed freely from its first principles. Now a play, however fine its dramatic composition may be, can have no other effect than to disgust refined minds and to ruin the reputations of its actors, unless the love on which it is based is represented delicately, and in a tenderly impassioned manner. And as few actors are capable of producing a perfect representation of the most subtle and many-sided of passions, the general effect of our comedy is deteriorating. As its basis and its structure depend upon one single subject, it can have but one subject of interest. Our comedies are considered commendable according to their manners of discussing love; the divers beauties of our dramas consist in their various exposures of the intimate effects of love. Love is the theme, and the mind must either accept it and work upon it or rest unemployed; there is no choice; no other theme is given. When love is not the chief agent, it serves as an irritant to draw out some other passion and to make sensuous display not only possible but cogent, if not imperatively necessary; be the play what it may, love is represented as the "passion ruling the heart." Conti opposed to the popular "corruption of the drama" the grave lessons offered by the great tragedies. Segrais treated the subject in the same way; he said: "During more than forty years nearly all of the subjects of our plays have been drawn from _Astrée_, and, generally speaking, the dramatists have been satisfied with their work if they have changed