In that day children in their nurses' arms were taken to see the play. A contemporary engraving depicts the royal family at the theatre in Richelieu's palace. The "hall" is in the form of an immense salon much longer than it is broad; at one end is the stage, raised by five steps; along the walls are two ranks of galleries for the invited guests. The women sit in the lower gallery, the men sit above them; seats have been brought into the centre of the hall, and on them sit Louis XIII. and his family. In the picture Monsieur is sitting on the King's left hand. On Anne of Austria's right hand, in a little arm-chair made for a child, sits the Dauphin, who must have been three, or possibly four, years old at that time. On the right hand of the Queen, beyond the Dauphin, stands a woman holding a great doll-like infant, the brother of the Dauphin.
The playgoing infantine assiduity, the custom of carrying children in swaddling bands to the theatre to witness comedies of every species, good or bad, assured the theatre of a position in public education; the children of the aristocracy drank in the drama with eye and ear--if I dare express myself thus--and at an age when reason was not present to correct the effect of impressions. The repertory of the theatre was one of the most dramatically romantic and sentimental ever known to France and the one of all others best fitted to turn a generation from sound reality to false and fantastic visions.
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.