Let us now return to the Palais Royal, and to the theatre which adjoins it. The Comédie Française, or Théâtre Français, as it is also called, was never, as the first of these names might suggest, devoted exclusively to comedy. The word "comedy" was used in France in the early days of its stage to denote any kind of theatrical entertainment. The famous "Ballet Comique de la Reine," produced towards the end of the 16th century, was, in fact, a dramatic entertainment with singing and dancing, strongly resembling what would now be called an opera; and the author of the work explains, in his preface, that he calls it "ballet comique," instead of "ballet" alone, because it possesses a dramatic character. Volumes innumerable have been written on the origin of the French theatre, which had as humble a beginning as the theatre in all other European countries; with the exception, however, of opera, which in the earliest days of the musical drama enjoyed the special patronage of kings, princes, cardinals, and great noblemen. In Italy, during the Renaissance period, the musical drama was invented by popes, cardinals, and other illustrious personages bent on restoring in modern form the ancient drama of the Greeks. The spoken drama of France, as of other European countries, had humbler beginnings, and the first regular troop of the Comédie Française had its origin in a combination of wandering companies. At the end of the sixteenth, and during the early part of the seventeenth century, the English stage, with Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other dramatic poets of the Elizabethan period, was far superior to the stage of France, which scarcely indeed existed at the time. But towards the end of the seventeenth century the French theatre enjoyed the supreme advantage of possessing simultaneously the three greatest dramatists that France even to this day has produced: Corneille, Molière, and Racine. [Illustration: THE PUBLIC FOYER, COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.]