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Patronage, Profits, and Public Theaters: Rethinking Cultural Unification in Ancien Régime France*

In late 1774, residents of Le Mans, a city of about fifteen thousand located to the southwest of Paris, complained in the local newspaper that their city was now “the only [one] in all of the [region] that is deprived of the pleasure of a playhouse.”1 Many other French cities had recently dedicated public theaters, but those acting companies willing to travel to Le Mans rented space in a private house to stage their performances.2 Although a group of citizens had petitioned the city government in 1768 to build a municipal theater, they had been refused, with the explanation that Le Mans simply did not have the funds.3 Having exhausted all other avenues to get the theater they wanted, Mathieu Chesneau-Desportes and several other prominent residents decided upon a new plan—they would construct the theater through private investment. They organized the Society for the Playhouse of the City of Le Mans, a joint-stock company that proposed to sell 120 shares in order to raise the eighteen thousand livres needed to build a public theater.4 The city donated the land. The society would operate the theater, with members receiving a share of the proceeds made from renting the stage to traveling acting and opera troupes, as well as to popular performers. Over the next few months, more than a hundred investors came forward to purchase shares in the enterprise. The city celebrated the theater’s inauguration in 1776. Local residents began enjoying theatrical