Jeanne Quinault

[4] Over a period of several months beginning in December 1731, Jeanne-Françoise joined with a group of seven other friends to meet regularly and produce light-hearted, often parodic and satirical, theatrical entertainments, which they called lazzis, a term from the Commedia dell'arte meaning comic pantomime.

The Lazzistes were not the only such group that Jeanne-Françoise Quinault frequented in this period, but it stands out, both because the men continued to play an important part in her life for years afterward, and because they kept a record of their activities, which has recently been rediscovered and published.

[6] Voltaire, who often wrote to Mlle Quinault for advice, told Françoise de Graffigny that the actress "was constantly imagining subjects for comedies and tragedies, and offered them to authors, urging them to work on them.

"[7] She played a significant part in creating the vogue for comédie larmoyante (tear-jerking comedy), and it is not surprising that she later helped Francoise de Graffigny write her very successful example of the genre, Cénie (1750).

The fare was simple but good, and they entertained themselves by singing, acting skits, reading works in progress, and collaborating on anthologies of facéties, parodies of popular genres.

[12] By August 1752, the Bout-du-Banc was convening regularly again, with some new members like the playwright and songwriter Charles Collé and Charles-Just de Beauvau, a prince from Lorraine.

[14] For decades, this work, now called "pseudo-Memoirs of Mme d'Épinay", was regarded as authentic,[15] and because of it the Bout-du-Banc was thought to be a den of Encyclopédistes and a hotbed of Enlightenment philosophy and its hostess a shameless freethinker.