They say that Parisians are difficult to please, on these four benches there is not one discontent-It is true that all these Frenchmen are Romans

Theatrical performances were popular entertainments in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. In this lithograph, Daumier focuses on the audience; especially the members of the claque, a group hired to sit directly behind the orchestra to applaud the performance. Nearly every Parisian theater of this time employed a claque, and in this image, they are either genuinely fascinated by the show or quite successful in their own performance.