Throughout the entire stretch of time we are considering, there was no more contentious issue arising in state–theatre relations than that of the censorship of dramatic works, a duty which the various successive governments in France were on only rare occasions prepared to shrug off. Under the ancien régime the machinery of censorship was designed only for the control of dramatic works produced at the three royal theatres in Paris; the boulevard theatres escaped by and large the censor's attention, however coarse the theatrical fare they occasionally offered: this was presumably because there was general agreement that their repertoire was beneath notice. But the Comédie-Françfaise in particular was regarded as the state theatre, bound to uphold the dignity of the monarchy and the inviolability of the Catholic Church. In addition it was at the Théâtre-Français, or as it came increasingly to be called by writers in the closing years of the ancien régime, the Théâtre de la Nation, that audiences, more quick-witted and better informed than elsewhere, were most liable to pick up references to matters of state. Before the outbreak of the Revolution, however, the existence of the dramatic censorship appears to have been regarded, even by progressives, as no more than a minor irritant. This was in part due to the fact that the main thrust of liberal resistance during the Enlightenment was directed against the censorship of books and pamphlets; in part also because the censors at this period, being for the most part playwrights themselves or at any rate men of letters, were not perceived as being closely implicated in the machinery of state authority.