Conclusion : Sixteenth-Century Société Mondaine and the Persistence of Entertainment Practices

The optics employed in this study are reviewed, including historical information about the groups discussed, the documents associated with them, the contemporary activities and reminiscences of Pasquier, and the literary activities of women writers such as Marie de Romieu, Isabella Andreini, and Marie de Beaulieu, who crafted works to entertain the proto-salonniéres of the sixteenth century. The social gatherings and entertainments of sixteenth-century French noble and royal women reveal women’s cultural leadership and influence on ludic literary society long before the famous salonnières of the seventeenth century were circumscribed as a unique phenomenon. Ultimately, enduring elements of sixteenth-century société mondaine that arise in the seventeenth century illustrate the ways that theorists of play have argued that play and culture are productively intertwined.