The theatre, my dear brothers, is a school for scandal, it is a place of perdition for the soul and the body. According to the testimony of the stage carpenters everything is faked in the theatre. Witches older than Morgane come there to pose as little girls of fifteen years.
How much blood is spilt in a melodrama! I say truthfully, though it be false, this blood will be upon the heads of the children of the authors, the actors, the directors, and the spectators, unto the seventh generation. Ne mater suam, the little girls used to say to their mothers. Nowadays they ask: "Are we going to the theatre tonight?"
I tell you frankly my friends. There are few shows which do not endanger the soul. Outside of the spectacle of nature I know of nothing that one may witness without fear. This last spectacle is Gallic and healthy, my dear friends. The sound dilates the glands, chases Satan from the stinking shades where he lies and thus the Fathers come in from the desert to exorcise themselves.
THE MOTHER OF AN ACTRESS
Are you p..., Charlotte?
THE ACTRESS
No, mama, I am roasting.
M. MAURICE BOISSARD
We have with us today the entrails of a mother!
AN AUTHOR WHO HAS A PLAY ACCEPTED BY THE COMEDIE-FRANÇAISE