the venerated Comédie-Française, the "House of Molière", had fallen prey to the artificiality that he considered an obstacle to real artistic creation. He wanted to move the theatre to a simpler style, freed from the ornamentation that obscured even the finest texts. With his ideals intact, the platform provided by his editorial position at the NRF, the support of his friends, and the modicum of experience garnered from the several stagings of The Brothers Karamazov, he decided to found a theatre company. On the Left Bank, on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, he rented the old and dilapidated Athénée-Saint-Germain, an unlikely venue for the utopian ideals of Copeau, but its location at distance from the commercial theatre district gave a signal that he intended to pursue a new path. He named the theatre after the street so that it could be found more easily. In the spring of 1913, with the help of Charles Dullin in whose Montmartre apartment the auditions took place, Copeau started to assemble a company. Besides Dullin and Louis Jouvet, whom he took on principally as stage manager, he hired, among others, Roger Karl and Suzanne Bing. During the summer of 1913, Copeau took his troupe to Le Limon, his country house in the Marne valley. The return of the troupe to Paris at the beginning of September, coincided with the publication in the NRF of Copeau's Un essai de rénovation Dramatique: le théâtre du Vieux-Colombier ("Essay on Dramatic Renewal: The Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier"), in which he set forth the principles of this project: first, the choice of place far from the despised Right Bank boulevard in a district closer to schools and the center of artistic life where the new theatre might attract an audience of students, intellectuals and artists with a subscription system that would assure reasonable prices; second, a variety of productions—as many as three different productions a week, which would not only appeal to a wider public, but would offer the actors the opportunity to play several different sorts of roles in quick succession, maintaining the suppleness of their interpretive skills; third, a repertoire both classic and modern would mark the offerings of the company: the classic plays of Jean Racine and Molière—never put in modern dress to keep them à la mode—and the best plays of the previous thirty years. Copeau wanted to entice new playwrights, perhaps those who had despaired that