If one defines commercial theatre as that which is totally independent of financial backing from the public purse, and free therefore from the constraints and controls which such backing normally involves, then in France at least it clearly antedates state intervention; one can trace the beginning of commercial theatre back to when the earliest impresarios started journeying around the country with a scratch company of actors, paying them wages from the coppers extracted from their audiences, and pocketing what was over as their personal profit. The only control to which these itinerant companies were originally subject was the obligation, before they set foot in a town, to obtain permission from the police authorities to do so; this rule was enshrined in law by an edict dating back to 1706, and was rigorously enforced down to 1790.

Permission to put on performances was granted for short periods only – rarely for longer than three months. Before a manager embarked on a tour, he would normally take the precaution of writing to the various localities he proposed to visit, asking for permits to be delivered. Once he arrived in a particular town, he found himself obliged to conform to all manner of occasionally vexatious local regulations: performances had to start and finish at stated times; he had to agree not to admit certain categories of spectators – notably domestics in livery and even, in certain areas, members of the Jewish confession – and to close the theatre altogether on Sundays and public holidays, which were precisely when he might have expected the largest audiences.