Utilizing archival and primary sources, it constructs a chronicle of the troupe's theatrical life, collects and evaluates biographical information about the actors, corrects hundreds of errors in previous scholarship, and introduces scenarios, dialogues, and stage business heretofore unavailable in English. It also traces the relationship of the troupe and the king who subsidized to - Louis X1V - and identifies a shift from personal patronage to institutionalized bureaucracy that had critical implications for all the Parisian theatres.