One of the most significant developments over the last fifty years has been the study of Molière in performance. His plays have been a major box-office success in France, and a fixture in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française, thereby justifying its historic entitlement to the popular designation as the ‘Maison de Molière’ (House of Molière). This chapter looks at the contribution directors have made over the last 120 years to a fresh understanding of the plays. The diversity of approaches maps the broad shift in theoretical perspectives, from the largely historicist attempts to recreate the early staging to some of the many rereadings that reflect the changing cultural, social and political agendas, which transcend the original context of the first performances. The productions studied raise interesting questions with regard to Molière’s stagecraft, highlight the divided critical opinion regarding generic specifications, and show the richness of Molière’s work that continues to resonate with each new generation of theatregoers.

This chapter explores what was distinctive about the French response to Ibsen. It discusses key points and examples that illustrate Ibsen’s complex relationship to France and French history, politics, and culture, and how Ibsen and French culture have subtly influenced one another for nearly 150 years. To Ibsen, France stood for revolutionary idealism. The chapter gives an overview of Ibsen’s breakthrough in France in a succession of modes, from realist to naturalist to symbolist, and discusses the theatrical and cultural contexts that shaped the translations, productions and reception of his plays. Examples of specific productions reveal there was another side to the French Ibsen, as he was often adapted to the boulevard theatres in ways that radically altered the plays, for instance by dampening their feminism.