Most of the leading comic roles in the plays of Molière were written to be performed by Molière himself. The fact is well known, and no seríous study of Molíère as a man of the theatre has neglected to see that his development as a playwright is inseparable from his development as an actor, from the conventional intriguing valet of the earliest plays, through his humiliating failure as the heroic Dom Garcie de Navarre, to the title roles in le Misanthrope, l'Avare, and le Malade imaginaire.

On Wednesday, 4 December 1895, Edward Kilanyi died in New York without ever having witnessed the stage presentation which was to crown his short but spectacular career in America. That presentation, known as the “Glyptorama,” was a grandiose exhibition of tableaux vivants staged at Koster and Bial's famous music hall.

In the closing months of 1699, the winter of his discontent, an established London actor and occasional dramatist hit upon a plan to change his public image from comedian to tragedian; he would fashion for himself a leading tragic role in which his uncontrollable voice and ungainly figure might prove to be assets rather than liabilities; in this way he would demonstrate to himself and to the world that he was unquestionably a complete master of his art. The alteration of Shakespeare's Richard III, the effort by which Colley Cibber, dramatist, attempted to aid the career of Colley Cibber, actor, was for the adapter a decided failure; Cibber's portrayal of England's most notorious monarch was too comic to be convincing. Yet in reshaping Shakespeare's play to suit the taste of the contemporary playgoer, he unknowingly manufactured one of the greatest box-office attractions in the history of the theatre. His alteration was to be the most lasting of all the many revisions of the plays of Shakespeare and was to hold the stage in preference to the original for nearly two hundred years. Although Cibber never explicitly admitted the reasons behind his choosing the role of Richard III for his tragic bow, his motivations become clear to the reader who patiently follows his career through the intricacies of An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber.

The tradition of military theatre in America is one interwoven with the history of the United States. Members of the British army garrisoned in the Colonies before and during the Revolution performed plays for their amusement and for charity. The American military almost from the time of its inception also participated in theatrical productions, both as producers and as participants in non-military productions.

The production of Alfred de Vigny's Chatterton at the Comédie-Française, 12 February 1835, comes toward the end of the middle period of French Romantic drama. After the success of Hugo's Hernani in 1830 the French Romantics abandoned and were abandoned by the official theatre. Between 1830–1835, most of the works of Dumas, Hugo, and Vigny were produced at the Odéon or the Porte-Saint-Martin—with the notable exception of the fiasco of Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse at the Comédie in 1832. The conventions and tastes of the popular theatre audiences had not been favorable to the literary concerns of the Romantics. Dumas especially, and Hugo, to some extent, compromised their principles, while Vigny chose to remain silent. In 1835, however, Hugo and Vigny, with Angelo and Chatterton, were to return to the more literary atmosphere of the Comédie-Française. After these productions, both successes, the history of the Romantic drama in France moves into its final period with a series of failures which would culminate in the production of Hugo's Les Burgraves at the Comédie-Française in 1843, generally considered to be the terminal date in the study of French Romantic drama.