• 1 Archives nationales (AN), T/1031, letter from the city of Nice’s society of artists to the citizens (...)

“Prompt justice – that is the wish of artists”1

• 2 Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) Arsenal, Ms 13002, years 1782-1792. It is specified that art (...)

3In this context, entertainment entrepreneurs have been described as the “nerve centre of the revolutionary entertainment economy” (Cot 2021: 359), because they had to manage fluctuating revenue (takings from the audience), while spending large fixed sums, primarily to pay their artists. The ledgers of the Théâtre de Nicolet, which opened in Paris in 1759, indicate that the artists’ salaries systematically constituted the largest item of expenditure, around 40%.2 The matrix of this economic exchange was the theatre engagement contract. This tool served the delicate purpose of setting a financial amount for services whose quality was both uncertain beforehand and impossible to measure precisely afterwards.

• 3 I wish to thank Anne Conchon for suggesting that I should look into postal and mail-coach archives.

4No single archival holdings gather the employment contracts signed by actors in the eighteenth century. Under the Ancien Régime, these documents were often mentioned, but only extremely rarely preserved. For the revolutionary decade, I was able to gather seventeen of them by exploring very different archival holdings, at the Bibliothèque-musée de la Comédie-Française, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra et Arsenal), and the Archives nationales (BB, AJ, F⁷, and T series). Their presence there is due to various circumstances, from the police intervening at a theatre to someone forgetting their documents in a public carriage.3 Seven of the engagement contracts collected concern shows in Paris and ten in the rest of France; their main characteristics are summarized in the Appendix.

• 4 Juges de paix were local judges involved in small claims, who played a significant role in mediatio (...)

5The article aims to analyze theatres’ contractual practices through a detailed description of these sources. Jean-Christophe Balois-Proyart used such an approach to study reports written up by the juges de paix4. The documents must be “organized in series and all examined using the same criteria, to go beyond their apparent dryness” before proceeding with a qualitative analysis (Balois-Proyart 2014: 39). The goal is to grasp the “social and intellectual conditions of the implementation of an economic calculation,” which covers, among other things, drafting legal documents (Coquery, Menant & Weber 2006: 12). Adopting such an approach should make it possible to model the labour agreement, while studying the logic of the pre-existing professional interactions and those that arose from drafting it. All the contracts in my corpus are private agreements that were not legally certified by a notary or by any third-party legal professional. Therefore, what resources did theatre management and artists resort to when drafting the contracts and then using them? Work conflicts involving contracts may prove instructive in this respect, which is why I will also refer to several police sources that mentioned them.

• 5 The individuals concerned by these contracts are listed in the table in the Appendix.

9In my corpus, the documents vary according to several criteria: the medium on which the contract was signed, each theatre’s reputation, and the number of individuals concerned. Thus, two contracts out of seventeen hired a couple (one in Paris and the other in Niort) rather than a single artist. In seven other contracts, the actor did not deal with a single director, but with a company of entrepreneur-directors such as Mages et C^ie in Aix and Nice, for one François Chalbot, or with the company of artists of the Opéra-Comique national (formerly the Comédie-Italienne) for Nicolas Joseph.5 The Paris theatres involved in the contracts were more or less prestigious. Thus, the little-known Théâtre du Lycée des Arts was created at the beginning of the revolutionary period, while the Ambigu-Comique was one of the emblematic playhouses on the boulevard du Temple (founded in 1769). Finally, from a formal perspective, the contracts can be classified into two categories. Four out of seventeen were printed forms with blank spaces, which were filled in by hand.

• 6 “Approuvé l’ecriture cy dessus, Molé”; “J’aprouve l’ecriture ci dessus f[emme] Lacombe”. BnF Arsena (...)
• 7 AN, T/1001, contract signed on 14 Nivôse Year IV (4 January 1796).
• 8 BnF, BMO, TH OC-123, f. 35 r.

10Comparing the hand of the signatures allows establishing that most often it was artists who filled in forms, while fully handwritten contracts were penned by a member of the management. The document was initialled by the two parties at the end, an essential feature of the ritual effectiveness of contracts (Coquery et al. 2006: 28). In two cases, the artist’s signature even followed a brief formula: “Approved the writing above, Molé”6 for the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris and “I approve the writing above w[oman] Lacombe”7 for the Grand Théâtre de la République in Nantes. All these contracts were drafted internally and ended with a formula such as “we want this document drawn up in duplicate amongst ourselves to have as much force and value as one drawn up before a notary.” Joseph thus signed his directly “in the artists’ assembly hall at the Opéra-Comique national,”8 rue Favart in Paris.

• 9 Claude Pocquet de Livonnière, Règles du droit françois, Paris, Despilly, 1768, p. 300–454.
• 10 This was the term used for instance in Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Lettres patentes pour entretenir (...)
• 11 Allouage was a form of short-term temporary engagement, which did not aim to train, unlike apprenti (...)
• 12 These account books were registers of domestic accounting, which were often kept by fathers. They a (...)

12How can the homogeneous nature of these theatre contracts be explained? First, it is necessary to recall the main contractual practices in force in all labour markets. In the great legal treatises of the eighteenth century, such as the Règles du droit françois by Claude Pocquet de Livonnière,9 the section devoted to the typology of agreements (marriages and sales) did not include employment contracts. In the legal field, the expression “employment contract” did not appear until the mid-1880s (Cottereau 2002). In the eighteenth century, the documents signed between theatre artists and a show director were called “engagements.” This term was also used to refer to the hiring of workers who did not belong to corporations, within which relations were regulated by a community’s specific statutes. Workshop workers thus entered into “engagements”10 just like sailors with merchant ship masters, for a period of between one and six years (Grancher 2015: 191–200). These private agreements were not legally certified and there are no longer any direct traces of them (Cabantous 1991: 38–39). On the other hand, for shop employees, notaries recorded allouage contracts11 that were actually highly standardized, because they were modelled on apprenticeship contracts: engagement duration, amount of remuneration, possible material benefits (room and board), tasks to be performed, and employer obligations (Crowston, Kaplan & Lemercier 2018; Kaplan 1993). As for servants, while it has been said that hiring only resulted from spoken agreements (Maza 1983: 97-98), masters had incentives to put them in writing (Castelluccio 2021: 57–58), and family account books12 included numerous traces of hiring (Zeller 1992). In a few lines, each servant’s entry was recorded, mentioning their name and date of arrival, their specialty, and the amount of the remuneration. This brevity has led Olivier Zeller to speak of “engagement formulas” or “engagement notes” rather than contracts, especially since these formulas were unilateral: they did not feature servants’ signatures.

• 13 The letters patent issued for Pierre Perrin on 28 June 1669 granted him the privilege of founding a (...)
• 14 This was a printed form to be completed, in the form of a commitment from the artist (“I, the under (...)

13In the entertainment sector, the contractualization of work was a European phenomenon that was even more developed in other countries. The case of Italy is particularly well documented. In Florence, by the late sixteenth century, musicians called salariati received a monthly payment to play at the Medici court (Kirkendale 1993: 33–43). Then, the development of public shows from the seventeenth century onwards was organized around impresarios. They hired singers and actors through yearly scritture teatrali, which mentioned the duration of the engagement, the types of roles played, and the amount and dates of remuneration, as well as the arrangements for termination (Hubrecht 1988; Rosselli 1992). These types of documents spread in the eighteenth century, whether in Naples (Traversier 2009) or Rome (Oriol 2021). Given the intense circulation of artists in Europe (Beaurepaire, Bourdin & Wolff 2018; Markovits 2021 [2014]), there is no doubt that these work practices travelled along with them. At the Opéra de Paris, founded in 1669, singers were actually employees of the director.13 Upon arrival, they filled in a printed form entitled “engagement,” including clauses pertaining to dramatic roles (the types of roles they would sing), internal discipline, and remuneration.14

• 15 Among others, see the following documents: AN, MC/ET/XXXVII/76, 8 and 21 February 1713; AN, MC/ET/X (...)
• 16 Among others, see: BnF, 4-FM-13300, Mémoire pour le sieur Gaudon, entrepreneur de spectacles sur le (...)

14The seventeen theatre contracts at my disposal for the revolutionary period were therefore not innovative. Different contractualization processes, involving individuals renting out their services to an employer for a duration of one or several years, may have directly or indirectly provided resources to define the parties’ obligations. In France, such written employment agreements (different from standard partnership contracts) had existed since the late seventeenth century. In Paris, on the occasion of the great Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent fairs, actors, musicians, and acrobats signed documents called “engagements” at the notary’s office that were valid for several consecutive fairs with the same entrepreneur (Paul-Marcetteau 1983; Sakhnovskaia-Pankeeva 2013). The reciprocal obligations seem very close to those featured in my corpus of contracts. They recorded the artistic functions, the number of fairs concerned, the salary per fair that the directors committed to paying, and finally the damages and interests to be paid by whoever terminated the contract prematurely.15 The permanent theatres on the boulevard du Temple since the 1760s also paid their artists salaries, generally for the entire theatre year (which began at Easter).16 However, these were private agreements that were not legally certified by a notary, just like those that actors outside Paris had been entering into with their management since the beginning of the eighteenth century (Clay 2013).

• 17 These six documents can be found with the following reference code: AN, T/1040.
• 18 AN, T/1040, contract dated 20 April 1794.

15In this codification process, the differences, however subtle, found in the contracts can say a lot about underlying changes. This is the case for the six contracts signed in 1798 for the shows in “Niort and other cities.”17 The management intended to travel from one place to the other across the Poitou region, since the system of privileges that regulated the movement of troupes outside Paris under the Ancien Régime had ended: a municipal authorization was sufficient to set up (Triolaire 2022: 91–95). The first four contracts were concluded on the same day in La Rochelle, 9 Germinal Year VI (29 March 1798). They all featured the usual clauses: dramatic roles, costumes, discipline, travel, remuneration, and conditions for signing (engagement duration and withdrawal clause). On the other hand, the two acts signed in Rochefort six months later were shorter and contained only three of the main clauses: dramatic roles, remuneration, and travel. Two hypotheses, which can be combined, may explain this shortening. In September 1798, Dominique Lancelin and Alphonsine Porcher were hired to supplement the workforce during the theatre season. Their remuneration was listed in months, without specifying the engagement duration, whereas the four previous artists had been hired from Easter to Easter, with their remuneration listed for the year (and a monthly payment specified). The more succinct form of the contract can also be explained by the association of the director with a new partner. In March 1798, Pierre Lorreau (known as Saint Amand) was the sole director. Six months later, the artists signed a contract with “Pierre Lorreau known as St Amand and Aimé Guillaume Petitain, associate directors,” the latter probably having penned the Rochefort contracts. Many show directors were former actors and they could therefore rely on their own experience as contracting artists to draft employment agreements. Pierre Lorreau had thus began his career in Niort as an actor, and signed a contract on a printed form on 20 April 1794 featuring all the usual clauses.18

• 19 In the case of the Ambigu-Comique in Paris, the theatre costume store was responsible for providing (...)
• 20 BnF, BMO, TH OC-123, f. 33 v.-35 r.
• 21 AN, T/1001, contract signed on 15 Thermidor Year V (2 August 1797).
• 22 AN, AJ/13/1044, “Autographes et documents” file, contract signed on 1^st Frimaire Year IV (22 Novemb (...)

16What is more, subtle differences can be observed within the same clause, as in that regulating the financing of costumes. From the mid-eighteenth century, a reform of stage clothing had been underway, aiming to dress actors as closely as possible to the historical context and the geographical area represented. These aesthetic changes had economic implications. The newly valued verisimilitude required expensive clothing and accessories that artists did not have in their everyday wardrobe. A clause concerning costumes can be found in fourteen of the seventeen contracts. Twelve of them mentioned that it was the actors’ responsibility to obtain the “attire” necessary for their roles. The only exception was the clothing provided by the show’s costume store, which it was “imperative to be satisfied with.”19 However, most often, the contract did not specify the type of clothing included. And when it did, it was necessary to carefully read the contractual stipulations. At the Opéra-Comique national, Joseph could count on the store to “provide foreign costumes,”20 most likely the specific, expensive outfits meant to evoke “a revisited Antiquity and Orient” (Bourdin 2022: 87). On the contrary, at the Nantes show, Claire Lacombe was entitled to request a financial contribution for costumes that were “foreign” to her dramatic role, that is to say, that did not pertain to it.21 The vagueness surrounding the store’s responsibilities may explain the addition of a note at the bottom of the contract drawn up on a printed form for Sophie Des Arnaux by the Théâtre du Lycée des Arts in 1795. The note specified that the term “outfit” referred to “all clothing and ornaments worn in the Republic, without distinction” and that the latter “remain[ed], without exception, the Artists’ responsibility.”22 On the other hand, the costumes, in the sense of clothing specific to the theatre environment, were all provided by the store. Reading the clauses in more depth can allow better understanding what these engagement contracts say about the nature of the work thus contracted and whether they took its specificities into account.

• 23 For instance, in 1784, when the show at the Variétés-Amusantes in Paris changed directors, it was s (...)
• 24 AN, AJ/13/1044, “Autographes et documents” file, contract signed on 1^st Frimaire Year IV (22 Novemb (...)
• 25 BMCF, personal file of Baptiste l’aîné, contract dated 14 January 1793.

18The theatre contracts in my corpus did not specify working hours at a show, nor did they provide a unit of measurement for these working hours (whether daily, weekly, or yearly) or a minimum number of performances for the duration of the contract. Nonetheless, on pain of fines, artists had to attend “exactly” all rehearsals where their presence was required by theatre management, as well as all meetings, whether weekly assemblies during which the repertoire was decided upon or more occasional gatherings. Contracts therefore aimed above all at regulating the work carried out backstage, both at an organizational level (collective administrative tasks) and at an artistic level (employees had to know their lines precisely in rehearsals, which implied continually investing in memorization work to prepare for them). Here again, these stipulations were inherited from those in theatre contracts from previous decades.23 The obligation to attend shows where actors were to perform was only made explicit by means of restrictive time indications. Nicolas Le Bel was required to be present “exactly […] for performances at five o’clock sharp in the evening”24 at the Ambigu-Comique. At the Théâtre de la République, the Baptiste couple had to “perform either during the day or at night, whenever required by the company.”25

• 26 BnF, 4-FM-20911, Mémoire à consulter et consultation pour le sieur Martin, acteur du spectacle de M (...)

19In this contractual relationship, artists put their skills in the service of theatre management and, indirectly only, in that of the audience. The vagueness regarding the extent of the service owed to the audience on the one hand and to the company on the other nevertheless generated conflicts. The question of availability crystallized tensions. On 26 July 1790, the Théâtre de Monsieur directors had their actor Martin arrested by the Paris police, because he was spending the day in Nemours with a female friend. According to the actor, the management overstepped its rights since he was not supposed to perform between 24 and 27 July, according to “the Repertoire established by the Entrepreneurs, & made public by the Newspapers.”26 In a legal brief, Martin stated that he was ready for his role on 27 July and claimed the right to organize his free time as he saw fit:

• 28 BnF, 4-FM-20911, Mémoire à consulter et consultation pour le sieur Martin, op. cit., p. 10.

20Martin, or rather the lawyer who wrote the legal brief, distinguished two conceptions of availability in the acting profession. To that affirmed in employment contracts, namely actors made available to their management without precise time limits, he opposed the “commitment” to the audience, which consisted in attending the performances on whose bill they were listed and providing a quality performance. Actors “must not be shackled in their actions any more than any other citizen,”28 the brief stated. The terms used echo debates that arose in the mid-eighteenth century, a time when “the question of work was linked to that of the natural rights of man through discussions around slavery and lifelong domestic service” (Stanziani 2020: 112). The author of the brief thus used the revolutionary vocabulary and principles now enshrined in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Just a few months after actors’ full citizenship was confirmed, in December 1789, the commercial link between actors and their audience was presented as more emancipatory than that established with directors through contracts, which were tinged with subordination. In fact, the injunction to permanent availability had been subverted for several decades by Paris boulevard theatre artists. Absences and tardiness were vectors of contestation of their professional conditions and signified the refusal to put themselves fully in the service of a show’s management (Rochefort 2024: 97–99).

• 29 Robert-Joseph Pothier, Traité du contrat de louage, Paris, Debure l’aîné, 1764.
• 30 Ibid., p. 10–12: “il n’y a que les services ignobles et appréciables à prix d’argent qui soient sus (...)

24The second half of the eighteenth century, up until the proclamation of the Code civil in 1804, was a time of theorization of such service activities. The Traité du contrat de louage, published in 1764 by Robert-Joseph Pothier,29 was the cornerstone of such thinking. A magistrate at the Orléans court of law and a law professor at the city’s university, Pothier was one of the main jurists of the eighteenth century. Due to his constant quest for unification, this theoretician and practitioner of law is considered one of the inspirations for the Code civil (Monéger, Sourioux & Cheynet de Beaupré 2001). In his treatise, which is nearly five hundred pages long, he compiled case law and the opinions of doctors of law on the different types of rental contracts, whether relating to things (land or objects) or to human services. The hiring of work (louage d’ouvrage) concerned the result of the work and remunerated a given task or a material good produced, while the hiring of services (louage de services) concerned carrying them out and required unlimited availability. The case of artistic professions was not covered by Pothier’s treatise. According to him, “only ignoble services and those appreciable at the cost of money [were] susceptible to the hiring contract, such as those of servants & maidservants, labourers, craftsmen, &ct.”30 For reasons of honour, lawyers and clergymen were explicitly excluded from this category. The 1804 Code civil took up the distinction between the hiring of work and that of services, by limiting the duration for the latter: it was impossible, according to article 1780, to commit for life. This minimal specification indicates to what extent great temporal availability was central in this type of professional relationship (Didry 2016).

• 32 BnF Arts du spectacle, fonds Nicolet, Fol-Mw-183 (1), contract signed on 29 May 1788.

The two-year employment contract signed by Parisian actor Louis Ribié in May 1788 with the Théâtre de Nicolet suggests that the situation in the entertainment sector was more favourable. Indeed, it specified that “in the event of illness, the salary [would] be discontinued, unless it was an injury that occurred at the theatre.”32 However, it is impossible to generalize, since the contracts signed during the revolutionary decade, both in Paris and in the rest of France, failed to mention artists’ health, with the notable exception of one, signed with the Ambigu-Comique, located on the boulevard du Temple. Between March 1793 and April 1798, the contracts signed on printed forms by Nicolas Le Bel and Louise Gardin featured very few differences, but one change is noticeable. In 1793, Article VI of Nicolas Le Bel’s contract mentioned that:

• 34 AN, F/7/3491, contract signed on 20 April 1798.

26In 1798, Article VII followed in order to specifically deal with health issues. From then on, “all illnesses resulting from accidents occurring at the Theatre, or arising from fatigue recognized as being the result of the work thereof, [would] be paid; to the exception of all other illnesses.”34 The scope of acceptable work stoppages was therefore broadened compared to Ribié’s contract ten years before. The acknowledgement of fatigue ailments, which were characterized more and more precisely during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is noteworthy (Vigarello 2022 [2020]).

• 35 An eighth contract, Dominique Lancelin’s, signed in Rochefort, granted “an advance of 150 livres wi (...)

27In the case of contract termination, the stipulations regarding the definitive interruption of remuneration seem to have been favourable to artists, who bore no criminal liability in the event of disputes, a significant aspect at the heart of the mechanisms of power-making in the workplace. In England, the tightening of the Masters and Servants laws in the years 1770-1820 led to more frequent criminal sanctions for workers, which contributed to reinforcing inequalities between employees and employers in the contractual relationship (Minard 2006). In my corpus, there are only mentions of equal damages to be paid by the first party to withdraw at the end of the contracts. Nonetheless, artists also had to reimburse any advances that they had been paid upon signing. These advances, which were not mentioned in the Paris contracts, were featured in seven out of the ten contracts for the rest of France, certainly to make sure that the artists would come.35 Granting advances was a centuries-old practice, which was common in many labour markets (Maitte & Terrier 2020: 248–249). This constrained workers and “bound workers’ bodies,” since these advances were debts that had to be repaid gradually (Mayade-Claustre 2005). In the case of actors outside Paris, these advances represented approximately 10% of their yearly salary and were deducted from the salary equally every month, for the entire duration of the engagement.

• 36 Robert-Joseph Pothier, Traité du contrat de louage, op. cit., p. 165: “le maître peut les renvoyer (...)

28In France, the notice period for both parties became the same in the years 1789-1791 (Cottereau 2002: 1537). Previously, an asymmetry of termination clauses had been common for employees and employers, the former rarely managing to avoid heavy damages, while “the master [could] dismiss them whenever he please[d], & without giving the reason, by paying them for their service until the day he dismisse[d] them.”36 However, in the theatre world, this equality had already been the rule. Deeds signed at the notary’s office in the early eighteenth century included damages for both parties, without specifying the amount of money or the length of the notice period. The contract signed by Ribié in 1788 was more precise. It mentioned a mandatory three-month notice, for both parties, and the payment of 560 livres by the offender (i.e. 10% of the amount of his yearly salary).

• 37 AN, BB³73, document 195.
• 38 “pourra être resilié sur la demande de l’une des deux parties qui l’ont souscrit, en s’avertissant (...)
• 39 “seront tenues les parties contractantes de s’avertir trois mois d’avance par acte extra-judiciaire (...)

29The enforcement of a notice period for the termination of employment was an effective way to prevent professional disputes (Maitte & Terrier 2020: 245). This explains why the clause was the subject of backstage negotiations. In March 1794, two members of the Supervisory Committee of the Paris Department went to the Ambigu-Comique “on the subject of difficulties that arose between the directors and some of the Theatre’s actors.”37 The theatre year was coming to an end and some of the actors were refusing to renew their contracts. The reason for this was that the management had added an article stipulating that contracts “[could] be terminated at the request of one of the two parties who signed it, by providing each other with one month’s notice and paying the amount of one month’s salary to the party who did not request the termination.”38 The artists obtained the removal of this article, because they felt threatened by the possibility of being dismissed with this short one-month notice, instead of the usual three months. They managed to have the following terms added at the end of the contract: “the contracting parties will be required to provide each other with three months’ notice by extrajudicial act to avoid any dispute upon expiry of the contract.”39 In exchange, the artists agreed to renew their contracts without demanding a raise. The group of employees was able to weigh in on the negotiations with management because they were the “main artists” at the Ambigu-Comique, as mentioned in the Supervisory Committee’s report, though it did not name them. Indeed, while the employment contract regulated each artist’s place within the entertainment company, the content of many clauses depended on external factors, such as an artist’s position on the labour market and their popularity with the audience.

• 40 AN, T/1001, contracts dated 14 Nivôse Year IV (4 January 1796) and 25 Germinal Year V (14 April 179 (...)
• 41 On 2 September 1793, the Comédie-Française closed down for several years by order of the Committee (...)
• 42 BMCF, 2 AG 1400-14071, account statement dated 15 Frimaire Year VII (5 December 1798); BMCF, 2 AG 1 (...)

31Despite a homogenization process, theatre engagement contracts were not fixed supports, but rather transaction tools that evolved over time, due to collective (sometimes) or individual (very often) negotiations. Each contract reflected the unique relationship between an actor and the entertainment company which hired them. The remuneration clause, with highly variable incomes, is the first indication that the contract was guided by an artist’s position in the labour market. The phenomenon has already been examined in the world of opera in Italy (Oriol 2015; Traversier 2015). In my corpus, the yearly remuneration outside Paris varied between 1,500 and 3,000 livres. Only Claire Lacombe’s remuneration in Nantes was higher. After a first year spent earning 2,200 livres, the actress signed a contract for 5,000 livres for the following year.40 In Paris, the amount of the salary was much more heterogeneous, between 1,200 and 24,000 livres per year. These strong inequalities were due in large part to the sudden arrival in salary transactions of former members of the Comédie-Française, whose theatre was closed in September 1793.41 These highly sought-after actors obtained comfortable employment conditions. As indicated in the summary tables presenting the salaries at the Théâtre de la République and the Théâtre de l’Odéon for the 1798-1799 season, a remuneration above 10,000 livres per year concerned former members of the Comédie-Française.42

• 43 BMCF, personal file of Florence, contract dated 10 April 1797: “les rôles de confidents dans la tra (...)
• 44 “tous les roles qui lui seront distribués dans la comedie, pantomimes, pieces a spectacle et enfin (...)
• 45 AN, F/7/3491, letter from the General Police Minister to the central administration of the Seine De (...)

32Nevertheless, to understand what was covered in a favourable contract, the remuneration clause must be compared to that concerning the dramatic roles that the artist agreed to perform. Generally speaking, the higher the salary, the more precisely defined the artist’s tasks. This concerned individuals who were renowned or even famous in acting circles. Florence, a former member of the Comédie-Française, was thus hired for 13,000 livres per year to play “the roles of confidants in tragedies, reasoners, fathers, and third lovers in comedies,”43 roles that he had performed at his previous theatre. On the other hand, Louise Gardin, one of the least known actresses at the Ambigu-Comique, was only paid 1,200 livres per year to play “any role in comedies, pantomimes, and stage plays that she would be cast in, and finally to lend all her talents to anything that could be useful for the good of the company.”44 However, this subordinate status also allowed her greater freedom. In April 1798, ten days after signing the contract, the director of the Ambigu-Comique, Picardeaux, accepted Louise Gardin’s request to terminate the contract without damages in order to allow the actress to join the Spectacle français of the Batavian Republic. The latter’s management, knowing that a contract was in progress, had supported the request by arguing that the actress only played “minor roles” and was “not included among those artists whose removal [could] be feared to prove disastrous for the French stage.”45

• 46 “financiers, paysans, grimes & manteaux.”
• 47 AN, T/1040, contract dated 28 Fructidor Year VI (14 September 1798): “dans la tragédie tout rôle de (...)
• 48 AN, BB/3/73, contract dated 10 March 1793: “qu’il prêtera généralement tous ses talens pour le bien (...)
• 49 When a play was created, whoever was principal was cast, unless the playwright wished to have a say (...)
• 50 BMCF, personal file of Baptiste l’aîné, contract dated 14 January 1793: “l’emploi des premiers rôle (...)

33The clauses concerning artistic functions reflected certain negotiations between the management and artists regarding the terms of their exposure to the audience. In 1798, Bernard Évremond was hired in Niort to play the roles of Trial (light tenor) and Laruette (high countertenor) in light opera, as well as those of “financiers, peasants, & old men”46 in comedies. It was then specified that he would interpret “in tragedies any role that suit[ed his] good will, without being able to force [him] to do so, not wanting to commit to playing in this genre.”47 This addition made it possible to go against the custom according to which the management had the last word in casting, because artists had to meet the requirements of the show. Article IV of Nicolas Le Bel’s contract with the Ambigu-Comique stipulated for example “that he [would] generally lend all his talents for the good and service of the company, when required.”48 Certain negotiations concerned precedence, that is to say the hierarchy between performers who played the same types of roles. Being the principal meant having priority when it came to deciding whether or not to play a role associated with this typecasting when a play was put on.49 Baptiste l’aîné’s contract with the Théâtre de la République in 1793 specified that he would be “the principal for leading roles in comedy, and share leading tragic roles.”50 The terms of this sharing were specified further, to his disadvantage. Choosing whether or not to play a role was first left to his peer François-Joseph Talma, thus reflecting and producing a hierarchy between the two artists. Although Talma was not the most famous tragic actor at the time, he had enjoyed great success since his debut at the Comédie-Française in 1787, while Baptiste l’aîné had only performed outside Paris before being hired at the less prestigious Théâtre du Marais in 1791.

• 51 “l’emploi des premiers rôles et reines dans la tragédie & ceux de grandes coquettes et premiers rôl (...)

34Given that leading roles had longer stage appearances and a more significant place in the plot, those who played them benefitted from greater visibility and were able to establish their reputation with the audience. Backstage tensions over precedence for these roles were therefore numerous throughout the eighteenth century, whether in France (Clay 2013: 146–147; Rochefort 2024: 326–331) or Italy (Traversier 2009: 417–422). Contracts can be seen as tools to prevent disputes on this matter, in particular thanks to the a posteriori addition of new clauses. In April 1797, Claire Lacombe had signed on to perform at the Grand Théâtre de la République in Nantes “leading roles and queens in tragedies & great coquettes and leading roles in comedies, as principal or shared.”51 Four months later, director Danglois added a few lines by hand at the end of the contract (which was written in the hand of a third party):

• 53 AN, T/1031, contract dated 14 Ventôse Year V (4 March 1797).

35In other words, Claire Lacombe’s demotion to the rank of “understudy” of a peer was financially compensated by a performance given for her benefit, from which she would pocket the takings. A performance for the artist’s benefit was mentioned in eight out of the seventeen contracts. Specifying the season, which was the case in half of them, proved crucial since the winter period was the most conducive to high revenue. The artists hired in Niort were thus entitled to the revenue of two half-performances each, one in summer and the other in winter. These performances concerned new plays, which were more likely to draw audiences. In Aix-en-Provence, François Chalbot only benefitted from a single half-performance, but he “would be sole master to choose the show and the directors would give him the means to do so.”53

• 54 Molé did not sign a contract with the management of a specific theatre, but rather with Sageret, wh (...)
• 55 BnF Arsenal, Ms 13 914, document 48, contract dated 1^st Ventôse Year VI (19 February 1798): “si le (...)

36In a salary-type employment contract, it is common to find a clause for the benefit of the employee contractualizing an advantage that often arises from the professional environment (Bevort et al. 2012: 137), such as performances for an artist’s benefit. However, the introduction of leave for artists was rarer. Only one document mentioned it, signed by François-René Molé in 1798 with entertainment entrepreneur Charles-Barnabé Sageret.54 The celebrity of Molé, who had been one of the stars of the Comédie-Française since the 1760s, is evident in the contract stipulations. He signed a contract with very favourable remuneration conditions (24,000 livres per year) for a long period (three years). The actor was granted six weeks of leave during the first and last years of his engagement. Furthermore, “if Cⁿ [citizen] Molé [did] not take his leave, Cⁿ Sageret [would undertake] to pay him the sum of two thousand four hundred livres per year in addition to his salary.”55 The contract also stands out because it did not include any obligation to attend meetings, rehearsals, and readings. Finally, the absence of an exclusivity clause left Molé free to occasionally work at other theatres and thus increase his income.

• 56 BnF, BMO, TH OC-123, f. 33 v.-35 r: “[s]es talents appartiendront exclusivement a la dite société [ (...)
• 57 BMCF, personal file of Baptiste l’aîné, contract dated 14 January 1793: “aucun rôle sur un autre th (...)

37The exclusivity clause was a specific feature of contracts signed in Paris, where there were more work opportunities nearby. Four out of the seven Paris contracts mentioned it, in more or less detail. In the case of Joseph, it was stated that “[his] talents [would] belong exclusively to the aforementioned company [of the Opéra-Comique national],”56 while the contract of Baptiste l’aîné and his wife with the Théâtre de la République specified that they could not play “any role in another theatre, whether public or private, paid or not, inside or outside the city, without the company’s express written consent.”57

• 58 AN, T/1031, contract dated 14 Ventôse Year V (4 March 1797).
• 59 AN, T/1040, contract dated 28 Fructidor Year VI (14 September 1798).

38In the rest of France, the stake for employers was to ensure the geographical mobility of their artists, given that the troupes were often required to move from city to city. All contracts outside Paris included a specific clause concerning travel, stating that the actors had to follow the troupe “wherever the director please[d] to have it go.” Nevertheless, this obligation, which was favourable to entrepreneurs, did not prevent economic arrangements for the artists’ benefit. Since travel and baggage expenses were paid by management, everyone tried to obtain adjustments to their personal situation. François Chalbot, who was hired by associated entrepreneurs for the cities of Aix and Nice, was driven with his wife and child at management’s expense.58 In the Poitou region, the travel expenses incurred by Alphonsine Porcher’s mother and cousin were included in her contract, since her cousin “would act as her dresser.”59 These favours undoubtedly had a significant financial weight for François Chalbot and Alphonsine Porcher, who were respectively hired for 2,400 and 3,000 livres per year. This demonstrates the ability to act of these little-known artists from outside Paris, and their understanding of the contractual process, which was based on multiple micro-negotiations, both before and after signing.

• 60 BnF Arsenal, Ms 13 914, letter dated 12 Ventôse Year VII (2 March 1799), document 54.
• 61 Among others, see: Archives de Paris, D6U1_39, 30 April 1791.

39There were many disputes concerning the proper execution of employment contracts. In March 1799, Molé assured the commissioner of the Executive Directory that he had not received his whole salary.60 Dozens of actors went before Parisian juges de paix during the 1790s, due to late payments (Cot 2021: 383–392; Rochefort 2024: 135–139), which testifies both to the fragility of these agreements and their importance in professional regulations. While the management of the show, when it attended the hearings, brandished salary receipts to prove their good faith,61 the existence of contracts, which were presented by the artists, protected the latter in other cases. Most often, the juge de paix recorded the financial claim and established a payment schedule for the defendant, similarly to conflict resolution in the craft industry or in trade (Margairaz 2014).

• 62 Jacques Fitère, Le Droit comique (dans ses rapports avec la direction théâtrale), Toulouse, C. Marq (...)
• 63 Ibid., p. 15–17.

40Like the words in the reports written by the juges de paix, the terms of actors’ contracts “[were] the result of negotiations between a logic native to the labour market and a logic native to the legal world” (Balois-Proyart 2014: 59). Studying these contracts allows understanding artistic work as a complex economic and social object, whose specificity is difficult to grasp. Throughout the nineteenth century, legal specialists struggled to define the nature of theatre engagement contracts.62 Gaston de Vaux suggested that they were to be considered as a “special kind of employment contract,” in which “intelligence is hired or talent is hired.”63 The definition that he proposed corresponds well to the work that was contractualized in various contracts behind the scenes of shows in the late eighteenth century. Today, the notion of talent refers to non-standardized, unusual qualities in a field in which success is highly uncertain (Menger 2018: 20). However, in the second half of the eighteenth century, it referred to the result of acquiring skills specific to dramatic art, which were to be distinguished from innate qualities (Rochefort 2024: 288-292). Through contracts, artists made their specific skills, as well as their public image, available to their employer—all characteristics that were absolutely not interchangeable with those of others. At the same time, theatre artists’ engagement contracts shared many features with other professional environments, in which the daily management of personnel was increasingly structured around the goals of profitability and availability.