The Theatre Francaise

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive it’s light and it’s inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition—from the great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping, but many in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which the Theatre Francais rests are a good deal like the common law of England—a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations which time and occasion have welded together, and from which the recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful precedent.