Renting a box at the Comédie-Française on the eve of the Revolution. Rare.

[Comédie-Française] / [Ephemera]. Comèdie Française. Loge a l’année. Je sousigné, chargé par procuration en date du 17 Mars 1776, passée devant Me. Boutet & son Confrere, Notaires au Châtelet de Paris, de la Recette Générale… Single sheet [23.0 x 17.2 cm], [1] f. letter press form filled in and signed in manuscript. Staining, folds, minor edge wear, small unobtrusive mend to verso, annotation to verso.
 
 
Very rare ephemeral item from the Comédie-Française, printed on the eve of the French Revolution. This letterpress form served during the late 1780s as a receipt for the rental of boxes at the theater, then located at the site of the present-day Odéon. This example, dated in manuscript 24 October 1788, relates to the box rented by the Comte Du Lau (Pierre Marie Du Lau d’Allemans [1752-1818]) for the full 1788 year at the price of 600 livres (for one quarter of Loge no. 12, 6 seats, located on the 3rd balcony on the King’s side of the theater). 
 
During the late 1780s the Comédie-Française came under scrutiny from royal officials for its radical productions, most famously Pierre Beaumarchais’ La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (debuted 1784), whose denunciation of aristocratic privilege has long been seen as foreshadowing the Revolution. Intriguingly, the Comte Du Lau noted this fact in his pseudonymous diary (published in 1850): “Beaumarchais, auteur très-populaire et hardi, avait déjà cherché à déconsidérer la noblesse dans sa comédie du Barbier de Séville, et dans le Mariage de Figaro, qui en étiat la suite. Cette dernière pièce, longtemps proscrite par l’autorité, obtint la faveur d’être jouée. La cour entire s’en divertit, c’était du délire …” (Le vicomte de Vormeuil, pp. 36). Du Lau’s receipt for the Comédie-Française is dated 24 October 1788, and it is known that Le Mariage de Figaro was staged there on 11 November 1788 (Registres de la Comédie-Française, R151 [1788-89]).
 
During the American Revolution Du Lau fought at Yorktown. In France he fought as a royalist during the French Revolution before leaving for Saint-Domingue where from 1794 to 1798 he fought during the Haitian Revolution. Thence he briefly moved to Jamaica before settling in London in 1798 where he remained until Treaty of Amiens (1802) ended the French Revolutionary Wars and allowed for his return to France. 
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate 1 example of this form, the copy at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, dated 1789 and recording a box rental by the marquis Du Chatelet.
 
*Le vicomte de Vormeuil: ou, Confidences d’un lieutenant général à son fils, suivies d’un appendice; Registres de la Comédie-Française, R151 (1788-89).