SOURCE: Knapp, Bettina L. “An Innovative Theatre Traditionalist.” In Voltaire Revisited, pp. 80-102. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

[In this excerpt, Knapp gives an overview of Voltaire's theatrical career, focusing on his influences and his tragedies. Knapp notes that Voltaire was predominantly influenced by the French classical tradition of Corneille and Racine, but was also taken with the very unclassical freedom of Shakespeare. Knapp suggests that Voltaire was conflicted about the form and formality of the drama, leading to works that sometimes manifested his confusion. His works also reveal the antidogmatic and antiestablishment themes of his Englightenment philosophy.]

From the outset of his career as playwright (Oedipus, 1718), to his last stage piece (Irene, 1778), Voltaire was considered one of the finest dramatists of his era. Although his talents did not measure up to the genius of Corneille or Racine, the thrust, style, multiplicity of thematics, and, paradoxically, the innovations that this traditionalist brought to theater and to staging are noteworthy.

Voltaire's subtle circumvention of the sacrosanct unities of time, place, and action; his manipulation of the conventions of bienséance (or decorum) and verisimilitude; his attempts to change the longtime French practice of allowing spectators to sit on the stage during performances; and the importance he accorded to costume design and acting techniques—all these, though seemingly paltry in comparison with the advances in the performing arts today, were in his era considered acts of courage.

He militated to abolish the practice of allowing spectators onstage, begun in 1636 with Corneille's Le Cid. Not only did spectators' ongoing conversations throughout the performance prevent them from hearing the lines, but their unruliness impeded the actors' play, to the point of denying them the opportunity of creating realistic interpretations of their roles. By diminishing, almost obliterating, the possibility of audience identification with the characters and the grandiose actions portrayed, performances frequently fell, so to speak, on deaf ears. Among Voltaire's verbal onslaughts is his “Dissertation on Ancient and Modern Tragedy” (1748), in which he stated that “one of the greatest obstacles to the presentation of any grand and moving action in our [French] theaters is the crowd of spectators mingled pell-mell on the stage with the actors.”¹ It was not, however, until 1759, when Count de Lauraguais paid 60,000 francs to the Comédie-Française to reimburse the company for excluding theatergoers from their high-priced onstage seats, that abstract notions were transformed into concrete terms. His magnanimous act finally cleared the French stage of spectators.

Voltaire was one of the first to base some of his tragedies on French national history, looked upon at the time as too sacred a subject for theater. To heighten a play's emotional appeal, he took great pains to emphasize the spectacle side of performance. To be sure, his heroic tragedies for the most part followed well-worn modes and facile stage techniques: coups de théâtre, recognition scenes, and surprises, as well as borrowings from the Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, and, of course from his seventeenth-century predecessors. Nonetheless, his use of multiple melodramatic elements in his tragedies leads us to consider him an important transitional man of the theater, linking Racine's classical dramas to Hugo's romantic theater. Furthermore, he may be seen as a precursor of the writers of pièces à thèse (Henri Becque, Oscar Méténier), as well as of the adapters of novels by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Émile Zola, and others.

Though a remarkable craftsman, deftly inserting suspense, excitement, and visual stage activity to stir his dramatic unfoldings, Voltaire lacked the imagination and psychological depth to create full-blown characters. Rather than reach into the heart of his protagonists and to extract their uniqueness, he placed emphasis on external situations, attitudes, and objects. The creatures of his fancy were frequently unidimensional and stereotypic. His melodramatic plots were often predictable and derivative. Although vacillating between new trends in theater—the choice of prose for its naturalness, for example—he opted for the 12-syllable alexandrine that had ruled French tragedy as a medium of expression for a hundred years. Pitfalls frequently beset traditionalists, and Voltaire was no exception. Although he prided himself on the high quality of his verses, his poetics were divested of the stark, visceral, and searing images that characterize Corneille's and Racine's peerless dramas. Interlaced as Voltaire's were at times with heavy, redundant, and banal overtones, his tragedies more often than not drew tears from his audiences.

Voltaire, the polemicist and moralist, authored 52 plays. Of these, 27 were tragedies, the rest comedies.² The former, more or less thesis dramas, waxed in high-wrought sequences, each in its own way attempting to rectify the protagonists' duplicitous relationships, to spiritualize their base intents, to transform their fanaticism into tolerance, and their xenophobia to xenophilic attitudes.

A passionate devotee of drama, as attested to by the theaters he built wherever he lived for any length of time—Cirey, Les Délices, and Ferney—Voltaire not only wrote plays, but, as has been mentioned, directed and performed in them. He involved himself in the creation of their sets and costumes as well and worked closely with his performers, namely, Adrienne Lecouvreur (1692-1730); Marie-Françoise Marchand, called Dumesnil (1713-1802); Claire-Josèphe Leris de la Tude, spoken of as Clairon (1723-1803); and Henri-Louis Cain, referred to as Lekain (1729-1778). He knew exactly how to pry the best out of his artists, illustrating how to communicate emotions via gestures, facial expressions, and props and teaching them to distill the essence of their lines.

Voltaire was grateful to Lecouvreur for having substituted simplicity, naturalness, grace, and nobility for the traditional French custom of exaggerated and affected declamation and chanting. So impressed was he by the authenticity of her speech that after her death he wrote: she had “almost invented the art of speaking to the heart, and of showing feeling and truth where formerly had been shown little but artificiality and declamation.”³

While training Dumesnil in her role for Mérope (Mérope), Voltaire was so insistent that she express greater passion that in desperation she cried out: “Really, one ought to have le diable au corps to strike the note you want.” He responded: “Just so, mademoiselle, le diable au corps in all art, if you want to attain perfection” (Cole and Chinoy, 173).

Always meticulous and conscientious in the preparation of her roles, Clairon was praised by Voltaire for her arresting acting—its polish, its finesse, and the nobility needed to achieve the grandeur required for her portrayals. In Clairon's “Reflections on Dramatic Art,” she wrote of the special emphasis she placed on voice training: “In order that she [the actress] may be enabled to give the necessary shade to the picture she means to represent, her voice must be clear, harmonious, flexible, and susceptible of every possible intonation” (Cole and Chinoy, 170). Arduous work was required in the preparation of such roles as Mérope in the play of the same name, or Aménaïde in Tancred. Clairon referred to the naiveté of some actors who believed

that the author had done all that was necessary; that to learn the parts, and to leave the rest to nature was all the actor had to do. Nature! How many use this word without knowing its meaning. The difference of sex, of age, of situation, of time, of countries, of manners and of customs demand different modes of expression. What infinite pains and study must it not require to make an actor forget his own character; to identify himself with every personage he represents; to acquire the faculty of representing love, hatred, ambition, and every passion of which human nature is susceptible,—every shade, every gradation by which these sentiments are depicted with their full extent of coloring and expression.

(Cole and Chinoy, 171)

A great admirer of Clairon's “natural” acting style, Voltaire was not loath to convey his feelings on the subject:

Who, before Miss Clairon, would have dared to play the scene of the urn in Orestes as she had? Who would have imagined nature portrayed in this manner; of falling in a faint holding the urn in one hand, while letting the other fall down immobile and lifeless?

(Ridgway, 173)

Nor did Lekain, who used his vocal skills and silences to convey the conflictual nature of his characters, deliver the traditional turgid and exaggerated declamatory tirades. Having trained him since youth, Voltaire may have been instrumental in teaching him the art of infusing his lines with tragic power, and of instilling in him the willpower and discipline needed to become a great performer. Commenting on the superb acting techniques of Lekain and Clairon, he compared their stage tableaux to a Michelangelo painting. Voltaire also underscored Lekain's “audacity” as he emerged from Ninus's tomb in Sémiramis with bloodied arms, and he lauded the acting techniques of the “admirable” Clairon as the dying Sémiramis, dragging herself onto the steps of the very same tomb (Ridgway, 173). Had Voltaire not benefited from the genius of the preceding performers, he perhaps might not have enjoyed a lifetime of great theatrical successes.

VOLTAIRE AND THE FRENCH CLASSICAL THEATRICAL TRADITION

Voltaire was not only a skilled playwright but a true man of the theater, expert in every branch of this art, be it directing, acting, lighting, decors, or costume design. Judging from his many writings on the theater—prefaces, articles, essays, correspondence—his cardinal rule was to invest each of his tragedies with powerful emotional appeal. Fire, not ice, was the sine qua non of his tragedies. Instinctively he knew that he would reach his audiences through feeling, not didacticism. “Tragedy must speak to the heart,” he stated over and over again. “Whether tragic or comic, theater is a living depiction of human passions.”⁴

Voltaire's stay in England had opened him up to a remarkable period in the creative arts, sciences, and philosophy. The Restoration (the return of the Stuart dynasty to England in 1660) was marked not only by an overt reaction to Puritan austerity, but also by the introduction of broad-mindedness in matters of religion and mores. The closing of the theaters in 1642 by an act of Parliament, and their reopening 18 years later, had created a void in the arts. Two forms of Restoration drama filled this vacuum: the heroic play, which owed a great deal to Corneille; and the comedy of manners, with its ultraromantic moments and exceedingly complex plots. Some of the best-known playwrights of the period—Dryden, Congreve, Wycherley, Cibber, Farquhar—were instrumental in the development of prose drama.

Voltaire's energy and sense of commitment to the arts, as well as his exposure to Shakespeare and the dramatists already mentioned, served to broaden his understanding and vision of theater. Although lacking Shakespeare's genius, he was stirred by the breadth of the English bard's emotionally explosive stage personalities, and by the loftiness of their epic grandeur. “Shakespeare's brilliant monsters,” he wrote in the 18th of his Philosophical Letters, [hereafter referred to as PL] “are a thousand times more pleasing than modern-day wisdom” (Mélanges, 84). Unable to experience or to understand the profound psychological depths of a Hamlet, a Macbeth, or an Othello, Voltaire wrongly attributed their haunting power to external factors, such as the rapidity with which Shakespeare's scenes unfolded, the shock value of violence and gore in the stage spectacle, the frenzy of supernatural encounters, and so forth. That English national history had been considered food for dramatization, as opposed to the traditional interdict on staging moments in the lives of “sacred” French heroes and heroines, added yet another allure for Voltaire.

Shakespeare remained a source of inspiration for him throughout his life, despite the fact that French taste, taken with manners, courtly ways, and repression of instinct, was frequently jarred by Shakespearean creatures. Voltaire himself referred to Shakespeare as “barbaric,” but he explained his genius as he saw it to the uninformed in France, who had rejected Shakespeare outright for what they considered to be his crudities:⁵

It is Shakespeare, barbaric as he was, who injected this power and this energy into English; something no one else has been able to heighten since that time, without exaggerating, and consequently weakening, its thrust. What is the origin of this great poetic effect that forms and finally fixes the genius and language of peoples?

(Mélanges, 244)

Voltaire conveyed his admiration for English theater in the following metaphor:

The poetic genius of the English until now has resembled a thick-spreading tree planted by nature, lifting its thousand branches as it pleases, and growing irregularly and with vigor. Prune it against its nature to the shape of a tree in the gardens of Marly,⁶ and it will die.

(PL, 89)

Upon his return to France, Voltaire, the polemicist with a smattering of hubris, even suggested ways, simplistic to be sure, of enhancing English theater:

In England, tragedy is really an action; and if the authors of this country joined to the activity which enlivens their plays a natural style combining decency and regularity, they would soon surpass both the Greeks and the French.⁷

Although remaining under the spell of Shakespeare—and herein lies the dichotomy—Voltaire nonetheless saw himself as the continuator of French classical theater. As the protector of Corneille and Racine, he struggled to uphold the alexandrine, considered by him as representing the highest artistic form.

Numerous playwrights, and especially Houdar de La Motte, favored prose over verse for tragedy; Voltaire vacillated, but opted always for verse, convinced that it was crucial to the maintenance of artistic interest. The alexandrine alone had the power to convey the nobility, refinement, and elegance of aristocratic passions.

Voltaire upheld the sacrosanct rule of the three unities (time: the play's plot is to be spun out in 24 hours; place: the play is to be performed in a single location; and action: the play is to have only one central plot). Staunchly chauvinistic in this regard, he refused to allow French classical tragedy to become polluted by anarchical and audacious theater, Elizabethan or otherwise.

Despite his fine resolutions, however, Voltaire was conflicted on the subject of theatrical rules. Although imprisoned in traditional modes, he dreamt of staging spectacular tragedies that would rouse the audience's visual, aural, and emotional universe. When he felt his story line required the circumvention of the strict regulations imposed on French tragedy, he disregarded the unities of time, place, and action—and even those of verisimilitude and decorum.

His misreadings of Shakespeare, certainly not uncommon in the eighteenth or even the nineteenth century in France, led him to believe that he could both broaden and modernize the scope of French theater by simply injecting it with certain Shakespearean techniques. He saw these, as has been mentioned, in terms of shortening the habitually lengthy tirades of French theater and of speeding up its scenic action by having recourse to patheticism and coherency in plot and ideology.

Needless to say, the French classical tradition in eighteenth-century France was in a state of flux. Many playwrights sought a different type of theater to fulfill a changing society's vision of the world. With Corneillian and Racinian tragedy on the decline, the artifices of a refined court reacted favorably to Philippe Quinault's polished but insipid Romanesque tragedies. The paltry theatrical pieces of Jean-Galbert de Campistron, Joseph Lagrange-Chancel, and Longpierre flooded the market. Although attempting to break new ground, these imitators, devoid of psychological depth and imagination, had to resort to clever repartee, surprises, and other minor titillations to foment interest.

Mediocre playwrights filled the rosters. Having grown lax, many disregarded the once stringent seventeenth-century theatrical code. Whether or not a tragedy had five acts, as tradition dictated, depended on the whim of the dramatist. Many considered reality better served by blending genres, such as tragedy and comedy, rather than by rigorously separating them, as during the classical era. Some dramatists even went so far as to disregard the once-sacred rules of verisimilitude and of decorum, not to mention the unities of time, place, and action. Whimsically treated as well was the requirement concerning the subject matter of tragedy: that it must be drawn from antiquity, either classical or biblical. Also dismissed by the derivative dramatists of the period was the classical code regarding characterization: emphasis must not be placed on a protagonist's specific traits, but rather on his or her archetypal nature. To universalize and thereby eternalize human characteristics would enable audiences the world over to better identify with them.

Was Voltaire's advocacy of classical form due perhaps to a love for and dependency on tradition? Or did he unconsciously feel insecure as a playwright, resulting in a fearfulness to venture too far in new directions? Could his writings on the preservation of the unities have been motivated by a need to denigrate the doctrines put forth by such rivals as Houdar de La Motte? Yet he had been touched by the sentiments expressed in La Motte's tragedy Inès de Castro (1723). Perhaps he was jealous of its success. Inès de Castro had been one of the earliest examples of the drame larmoyant (tearful drama), a genre Voltaire was to emulate not in name but in content. La Motte, pointing up the glorious sentiments of conjugal tenderness in his play, championed the cause of modern drama freed from classical restrictive and fixed traditions, including those of the three unities and the conventional alexandrine. But the breaking of rules advocated by La Motte did not add a sense of inexorability and tragedy to his drama, although it did indicate a change in the direction of French tragedy. Voltaire realized that despite La Motte's successes, his rival's talents were far from great.

The abbé Dubos had advocated (Discours, 1730) that tragedy draw tears from its audiences. A dramatist could achieve this, he noted, by increasing the realism of his staged tableaux, thus adding to the intrinsic pathos of the extravaganzas. The underscoring of sentiment and feeling, rather than the emphasizing of self-analysis, heroic grandeur, and character building, as evidenced in Corneille's strong-willed hero types, was to make inroads in Voltaire's theatrical agenda.

Nivelle de La Chaussée's comédies larmoyantes (tearful comedies) brought a new genre of theater to public attention. By combining tragedy with stage pieces in which preeminence was given to tears, pathos, and sentimentality, the playwright had divined the perfect recipe to elicit the audience's sympathy for the misfortunes of others.

Denis Diderot's The Illegitimate Son (1757) and Father of a Family (1758) constituted an even newer vintage: the drame bourgeois, which set aspects of “tearful comedy” in situations mirroring contemporary life in its sorrows and its joys. Recognition of their own problems not only would help viewers cope with their needs in the real world but also would pave the way for social reform, as in the late-nineteenth-century naturalist dramas of Zola, the Goncourts, and Becque.

Despite the rush toward theatrical modernity in eighteenth-century France, Voltaire stood firm in his position against the prose dramas advocated by La Motte, the oversentimental works of La Chaussée, and the bourgeois banalities of Diderot's plays. Adamant in retaining the tried and true forms of “our great masters,” he defended the unities, despite his own frequent nonobservance of them. Although justifying his desire to maintain tradition as a means of instilling into audiences rightful philosophical, moral, and psychological notions, he may also have chosen to adhere to its dicta because it had proven to be an effective way to catalyze their emotions. Voltaire's ground rule for theater reads as follows: “I consulted my heart alone; it alone directs me; it has always inspired my actions and my words” (Moland, 5:295).

VOLTAIRE'S TRAGEDIES

THE MODERN HERO: OEDIPUS (1718)

Even before his exposure to English drama, Voltaire had injected his Oedipus with a new identity. It deviated markedly in its psychological approach not only from Corneille's ego-centered protagonist but also from the “inexorable brutalities” interwoven in the tragedies of Sophocles.

Although he was an admirer of Corneille's Oedipus, Voltaire maintained that the liberties Corneille had taken with the plot of the Greek myth, coupled with the aridity of his poetry, had depleted the play of its intrinsic energy.⁸ Nor did Voltaire concur with Corneille's character-building approach to Oedipus, nor with his introduction of the question of free will. Corneille underscored Oedipus's growing awareness of his inability to transcend his destiny, which simply encouraged him to rise up in indignation against the gods—a ploy, Voltaire reasoned, that gave him the possibility of earning both his punishment and the means by which he could test his mettle. Accordingly, an individual would need only to discipline his or her will in order to rise above a sense of excoriating guilt.

Although cognizant of the “contradictions, absurdities, and useless declamations” in Sophocles' Oedipus, Voltaire confessed that without this work he could never have begun to really understand the protagonist's searing hurt, nor would he have undertaken the writing of a play on the same subject. He admired Greek tragedy for its powerful passions and for the starkness of its poetry but criticized some of its technical aspects: its stasis, its lack of suspense, and the raw and coarse situations it dramatized (Pomeau 1969, 87). He also took great umbrage with Sophocles' emphasis on the crimes of incest meted out to both Jocasta and Oedipus, and the latter's additional one of parricide. These, he maintained, predestined them to suffer and sacrifice in order to earn redemption.

Oedipus's deep-seated self-abhorrence in Voltaire's play neither stemmed from an innate sense of culpability nor resulted from punishment of the gods. Since he had disobeyed their dicta unwittingly and in all innocence, he viewed himself as guiltless of any criminal act, and, therefore, disculpated:

O no! I am not; this destructive hand
Hath broke the sacred tie, and deep involved
Thy kingdom in my ruin. O! avoid me,
Fear the vindictive God who still pursues
The wretched Oedipus; I fear myself,
My timid virtue serves but to confound me.(9)

Voltaire's very human Jocasta even more overtly believed in her son's innocence:

Do not accuse, do not condemn thyself;
Thou art unhappy, but thou art not guilty;
Thou didst not know whose blood thy hand had shed.

(Oedipus, 4.3.195)

About to die, she rejected any burden of guilt: “I have lived virtuous, and shall die with pleasure” (5.6.209). And in her last utterance, she again cast out all culpability for her sinful acts: “for heaven alone / Was guilty of the crime, and not Jocasta” (5.6.209).

While according to Jansenist credo mother and son had been predestined to commit crimes of incest and murder, Jesuit doctrine saw them as sinless, their acts having been perpetrated unconsciously and involuntarily. Their faultlessness absolved them of all accountability for their acts (Pomeau 1969, 87).

Voltaire's interpretation of the Oedipus myth was both modern in concept and in keeping with his own Deistic views of God. Not only was Oedipus stainless, but he had never, as in the case of Corneille's hero, suffered from hubris. Voltaire's Oedipus could never conceive that he—or anyone else—might ever triumph over, and thus alter, his destiny:

Heaven led me on to guilt, and sunk a pit
Beneath my sliding feet: I was a slave
Of some unknown, some unrelenting power,
That used me for its instrument of vengeance:
There are my crimes, remorseless cruel gods!
Yours was the guilt, and ye have punished me.
Where am I? what dark shade thus from my eyes
Covers the light of heaven?

(Oedipus, 5.4.205)

In keeping with Voltaire's strong anticlerical stand and his own natural forthrightness, his Jocasta mocked the gods and oracles—all those who claimed to discern the wishes of what was beyond human understanding:

These priests are not what the vile rabble think them,
Their knowledge springs from our credulity.

(4.1.187)

Mortals entertaining the idea of dominating their fate, or trying to read into the Book of Destiny, would be a theme Voltaire would later probe in such works as Zadig and Candide.

Although Oedipus had brought the 24-year-old Voltaire his first great success, a minority of spectators were understandably scandalized by what they believed to be his outrageous attacks on organized religion.

THE LOVE MOTIF IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Voltaire believed that amour galant love motifs were more appropriate to comedy than to tragedy. To avoid simplistic and effete “gallantry” sequences on stage, amorous motifs were to be omitted, or to be melded directly into the inner workings of the drama, or developed into full-fledged passions capable of fomenting jealousies, crimes, or other extremes. Nor was love to be used to hyperemotionalize audiences.

In such tragedies as Zaïre and Alzire, Voltaire claimed to have deleted all traces of sentimental, flaccid, and Romanesque relationships, only retaining great passions, reminiscent of Corneille's Polyeucte and Racine's Phaedra. As theatrical celebrations of blind love, the visceral appetites dramatized in Zaïre and Alzire not only impacted on the protagonists' psyches but were indelibly linked to the situations as well. Nor was love used as an excuse for long analytical discussions on the subject, nor to firm up a plot, which would have detracted from the poetic, philosophical, and psychological vigor and nobility of the tragic form per se. Had Voltaire not respected these principles, critics would have likened his works to the trivia served to audiences by Thomas Corneille, Philippe Quinault, Prosper J. Crébillon, and Alexis Piron.

ZAïRE (1732)

Zaïre, identified as a tragédie tendre, was, Voltaire noted, “the first play which I wrote in which I dared yield to my heart's great sensibility” (Besterman, 517). In the throes of experiencing his own deep love relationship with Mme Du Châtelet, Voltaire knew well how to inject a very special brand of tenderness into his stage relationships. That he wrote Zaïre in 22 days seems to confirm the thought that he had been moved by a flood tide of emotions.

Adhering to the traditional five acts and to the unities as well, Voltaire equipped his Racinian protagonists not with specific character traits, so popular in the theater of his day, but with the required collective qualities demanded by classical drama. That he borrowed neither his subject matter nor his characters from legendary material or from past dramatists was an innovative step on his part. He had not set out to demonstrate, in the manner of a Corneille, the superhuman willpower or emotional strength of the creatures of his fantasy; uppermost in his mind was the depiction of his heroine's tragic universe in a way that would elicit tears from his spectators.

The subject of Zaïre lies in the period of Saint Louis (1214-1270) and the Crusades. While many in Voltaire's day erroneously considered the Crusades to have been great and noble endeavors, he, the historian, emphasized the brutalities, pillagings, persecutions, killings, and violations of human rights that marked these Christian military expeditions. Understandably his foray into national history was deemed a transgression of sacred material.

Historical references in Zaïre, such as the sailing of Saint Louis's fleet on May 30, 1249, for the Holy Land, were few and far between, the bulk of the material being pure invention on Voltaire's part. As in most of his theatrical works, Voltaire had an agenda and a mission. To this end, he highlighted the issue of religious toleration. Making audiences aware of the crimes that had been committed against humanity in the name of religion was to educate believers and bigots as to the deviously persuasive methods used by established religions to indoctrinate their followers. It also served to increase their understanding and compassion for those of other faiths.

Zaïre's complex and tragic plot revolves around the mutual love of Orosman, the sultan of Jerusalem, and Zaïre, a Christian. Much to her joy, Orosman has agreed to give up the custom of polygamy by making her his only wife. Although converted to Islam after having been taken captive as a child by Orosman's followers, Zaïre had, unbeknown to her, been born a Christian. In time she discovers that she is the daughter of the imprisoned Crusader Lusignan and the sister of Nérestan, a Christian zealot, who is aghast to learn that Zaïre has embraced Islam. So great is Lusignan's joy upon learning that his children are alive that his heart gives out and he dies, but not before Zaïre, although hesitant, promises to be again baptized as a Christian. Unaware of Zaïre's secret and unable to fathom her reasons for delaying the marriage ceremony, Orosman wrongly believes Nérestan to be in love with her. Like Shakespeare's Othello, he suffers such jealousy that when he learns that Zaïre and Nérestan are to meet, he stabs his beloved offstage. Once informed of Nérestan's true identity, Orosman not only releases all the Christian prisoners, but suffers such extreme guilt that he commits suicide onstage.

Voltaire's stage techniques are evident. The role of his Orosman is in keeping with Racinian passion as it culminated in the murder of Bajazet, in the play of the same name. Voltaire inserted melodramatic highs and lows, borrowing from Shakespeare's Othello, among other sources. What was strictly Voltairean, however, was his emphasis on religious intolerance. Lusignan and Nérestan, having rejected all conciliatory steps toward understanding Zaïre's terrible dilemma, were to blame for her death and for Orosman's suicide. The latter's genuine love for Zaïre, the guilt experienced after his crime, and his act of clemency at the play's conclusion were reminiscent in their depth and power of Corneille's Polyeucte. In keeping with Voltaire's philosophy as well is the larger picture that comes through in Zaïre. By opposing the Muslim's virtues and the Christian's ignominies, he once again proved his two fundamental truths: morality is both natural and universal, whereas dogma is inculcated in the child via education, as Zaïre iterates.

Our thoughts, our manners, our religion, all
Are formed by custom, and the powerful bent
Of early years: born on the banks of Ganges
Zaïre had worshipped Pagan deities;
At Paris I had been a Christian; here
I am a happy Musulman: we know
But what we learn; the instructing parent's hand
Graves in our feeble hearts those characters
Which time retouches, and examples fix
So deeply in the mind, that naught but God
Can e'er efface: but thou were hither brought
A captive at an age when reason joined
To sage experience had informed thy soul.(10)

Not as all-consuming as the passion of Racine's Hermione, Zaïre's somewhat reasoned and controlled emotions caused critics to liken her to an “Oriental Frenchwoman.” Nonetheless, she touched her audiences by arousing their pity rather than simply exciting their admiration. Because she was weak, submissive, and naive, some considered Zaïre to be the paradigm of the born victim—ready to sacrifice herself for a superior cause. Her idealism and purity of purpose transformed her into a paragon of virtue.

Orosman, a complex stage character, proudly aristocratic yet sensitive, punctilious, broad-minded, and endowed with the authoritative ways of a Saladin, was a fusion of Romanesque passion and the moral elegance of “the gallant man.” His mood swings, ranging through fear, rage, love, and pain, and concluding in his act of self-violence, combined a roster of melodramatic traits. Having decided to adhere to the rules of decorum, Voltaire had Zaïre stabbed in the wings and not onstage.

To diminish the very real possibility of offending his audiences, Voltaire created his own recipe for success: he served them a great passion garnished with all types of artificial seasonings—rapid scenic changes, recognition scenes, coups de théâtre, less talk and more action, and a dialogue filled with exclamations designed to arouse feeling and tears. Most important, Voltaire explained:

I owe it not so much to the merit of the performance, as to the tenderness of the love scenes, which I was wise enough to execute as well as I possibly could: in this I flattered the taste of my audience; and he is generally sure to succeed, who talks more to the passions of men than to their reason.¹¹

He did not, however, stoop to violence. Although his characterizations were shallow and his situations mainly contrived, with pathos/bathos reigning, Zaïre's conflict between love and religion was believable, stirring, and in some ways unforgettable. La Harpe, one of the century's best-known critics, considered Zaïre “the most touching of all existing tragedies.”¹² It may also be claimed that Voltaire's Zaïre finely integrated French national history and the stage. Immensely successful, it was performed in France, England, Germany, and Italy. Voltaire's own production and direction of the play at Cirey, and his performance in the role of Orosman, must have been memorable.

ALZIRE (1736)

By transforming passion into a weapon for tolerance and understanding, Alzire's love motif was considered to have ennobled passion. Its Rousseauesque implication was that the simplicity, purity, and integrity of the so-called uncivilized Peruvians made them superior to the hypocrisy, lies, and murderous intents of their patently “civilized” Spanish conquerors.

The action takes place in Lima, Peru, following the Spanish conquest of this land. Alzire, truth and integrity incarnate, is the youngest daughter of an Inca king referred to as an “infidel” by the so-called righteous and God-fearing Christians, one of whom, Guzman, loves the native princess. Alzire's concept of honor, so deeply inculcated in her since birth, keeps her from joining her fiancé, Zamor, a Peruvian chieftain, who has been fighting the Spaniards for the past three years and whom she now believes has been killed. Her passion for Zamor reinforces her inborn sense of righteousness and aversion to deception, betrayal, and duplicity—the former characteristics, Voltaire inferred, virtually unknown to Spanish conquerors. Aware that Guzman has been responsible for her beloved's torture, Alzire resists his advances. Finally, and for reasons of state, she reluctantly agrees to marry him. Her conflict, however, is so acute that she confesses to him her still-passionate love for her Incan chieftain.

Guzman, the odious, intolerant, and brutal colonizer, is placed in opposition to Alvarez, his tolerant and charitable father, who has chosen his son to succeed him as governor of Peru. Whereas Alvarez is a spokesman for idealistic Christianity, Guzman distorts its meaning, as is demonstrated by his following words:

For so our laws require, they must be Christian;
To quit their idols, and embrace our faith,
Alone can save them; we must bend by force
Their stubborn hearts, and drag them to the altar;
One king must be obeyed, one God adored.(13)

Zamor suddenly reappears on the scene and, although imprisoned and sentenced to die, succeeds in mortally wounding Guzman. Believing Alzire to have been guilty of encouraging Zamor's act, Guzman has her sentenced to death. Only after he fathoms the loyalty and love she bears for Zamor does his hatred and fanaticism transform itself into kindness and charity. Before dying, he forgives the lovers, urges them to marry, and asks Zamor to convert to Christianity.

Despite Alzire's great success, the so-called Incas on the French stage gave the impression of being transplanted Europeans. Alzire's ultra-noble character, deep-seated conflict, and plentiful tears were effectively used to sustain emotional highs. As for the stereotypic “noble savage,” Zamor, although diverted from goodness by his obsession for vengeance, turns into a loving individual at the play's conclusion. For some, however, he came across as absurd. That the melodramatic monster of a Guzman, in his predeath conversion to idealistic Christianity, is suddenly transformed into a compassionate and loving being adds yet another artificial note to the drama.

Yes Zamor,
I will do more, thou shalt admire and love me:
Guzman too long hath made Alzire wretched,
I'll make her happy; with my dying hand
I give her to thee, live and hate me not,
Restore your country's ruined walls, and bless
My memory.

(Alzire, 5.7.61)

Finally, Voltaire's use of hackneyed theatrical devices, coup de théâtre, recognition, and other scenes, to increase suspense, as well as his paucity of psychological depth, are ever evident.

OLYMPIA (1763)

Written in six days but reworked several times, as was Voltaire's habit with regard to most of his writings, Olympia dramatizes the shocking manner in which the female lead settles her love dilemma. Daughter of Alexander and Statira, Olympia had been asked by her dying mother to marry Antigonus, rather than Cassander, the king of Macedonia, whom she loves but who has murdered her father. Unable to muster sufficient strength to counter her mother's desire, the love-torn Olympia stabs herself, then throws herself onto her mother's burning pyre as an aghast audience looks on.¹⁴

BANISHING THE LOVE MOTIF

Voltaire sought to instill notions of morality and virtue in his protagonists without having recourse to agonizing scenes of unrequited or impossible love. Rather than relying on pity and terror as the sine qua non of tragedy according to Aristotle's Poetics, he affirmed that terror, compassion, and tears should be aroused for loftier purposes.

In his “Discourse on Tragedy,” published with his Brutus (1730), Voltaire declared:

For love to be worthy of the tragic theater, it must not be used to simply fill a void in English or French tragedies most of which are too long anyway, but rather made the very crux of the drama itself. Passion must be truly tragic, considered a weakness, and struggled against via remorse. Such a love must either lead directly to the misfortunes and crimes of the heroes and heroines, thereby demonstrating how dangerous it truly is, or that virtue be triumphant, thereby dispeling all notion of its invincibility. Otherwise its power is reduced to the love levels implicit in eclogues and comedies.¹⁵

The techniques advanced by Voltaire to arouse audience anticipation and participation during polemical thrusts in Brutus, The Death of Caesar, Adelaïde Du Guesclin, and Mérope were relatively straightforward. Tirades were slimmed down so that the situation revolving around the play's politically idealistic arguments would become sufficiently abrasive to further irritate and bloody the spectators' already raw nerves.

BRUTUS (1730)

French audiences were stunned by the power of Brutus's patriotic passion for both the city of Rome and the liberty with which it was associated. Equally invincible was Brutus's profound hatred for the kingship, which, if it had been restored in Rome, would have put an end to the republic.

Rome already knows
How much I prize her safety and her freedom;
The same my spirit, and the same my purpose. …(16)
Stop, and learn with more respect
To treat the citizens of Rome; for know,
It is the senate's glory and her praise
To represent that brave and virtuous people
Whom thou hast thus reviled: for ourselves,
Let us not hear the voice of flattery,
It is the poison of Etrurian courts,
But ne'er has tainted yet a Roman senate.

(Brutus, 1.2.242)

Brutus was Voltaire's “republican” play, imbued with the power and energy that inspires noble freedom of thought, and the ring of authenticity sounded loud and clear each time the hero condemned the kingship in order to defend freedom of speech and a popular government. The very thought of possible repression not only energized Voltaire's moralistic credo but also replicated his own all-too-well-founded fears. Addressing the Senate at the play's outset, Brutus declaims:

At length, my noble friends, Rome's honored senate,
The scourge of tyrants, you who own no kings
But Numa's gods, your virtues, and your laws.

(1.1.239)

Nor did Voltaire cease his attacks on political despots and the priesthood, guilty of developing and maintaining a slave mentality in the people:

Etruria born to serve,
Hath ever been the slave of kings or priests;
Love to obey, and, happy in her chains,
Would bind them on the necks of all mankind.

(1.2.245)

Memorable is the concluding scene, spotlighting Brutus standing proudly defiant, embracing his son, Titus, whom he then sends with infinite but controlled sorrow to be executed for having conspired against republican Rome in a moment of weakness. Maintaining the beauty of his noble cause, Brutus speaks out yet again:

Ye know not Brutus who condole with him
At such a time: Rome only is my care;
I feel but for my country: we must guard
Against more danger: they're in arms again:
Away: let Rome in this disastrous hour
Supply the place of him whom I have lost
For her, and let me finish my sad days,
As Titus should have done, in Rome's defence.

(5.8.307)

Until the early part of the eighteenth century, little attention had been paid to sets, props, costumes, and accessories. With Brutus Voltaire opened up French taste to stage issues, choosing apparel befitting the characters and their times. The brilliance of the full-toned red togas worn by the senators standing starkly outlined against the semicircular altar of Mars was electrifying. Equally memorable was the austere but magnificently proportioned house of the Roman consuls on the Tarpeian cliff, with the temple of the Capitol in the background. Because its doors opened onto an apartment upstage, Voltaire was accused—and rightly so—of violating the classical unity of place.

Brutus's powerful idealism may explain why this play was briefly revived in 1789, at the outset of the French Revolution. The renowned actor Talma performed in the role of Proculus in a costume considered revolutionary for the time: he appeared onstage without powdered hair, with bare arms and legs, a red toga covering his torso.

The least performed of Voltaire's plays, Brutus was nonetheless translated into more languages than all of his other stage dramas. It had been begun as a prose piece during his stay in England, but the traditionalist Voltaire opted for poetry and transformed the play to suit his inclinations. To abandon the alexandrine, he affirmed, would diminish the spectators' pleasure. Nonetheless, his innovative side drove him to begin seeking ways of clearing the stage of spectators, for how, he admonished, could Brutus's genius be effectively experienced amid talkative, and even rowdy, spectators seated right next to him?

THE DEATH OF CAESAR (1735)

Voltaire's The Death of Caesar (La Mort de César), although treating grosso modo the same thematics as Brutus, is unusual for its psychological twist. Unlike Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Voltaire's play focuses on additions by Suetonius and Plutarch, to the effect that Brutus was Caesar's son by Servilia. The heart of the drama, then, no longer revolved around the conflict between the ideal and the real, but between the ideal and the filial. Voltaire reasoned that the affixation of a subjective conflict to the political crisis increased the poignancy of the situation. Caesar's revelation to Brutus that he was his son, born from a secret marriage, broadened the play's motif: parricide was added to the assassination. The more agonizing Brutus's conflict, the more determined he was not to allow his republicanism to be swayed, nor his duty toward his country to be impeded. The pursuit of his cause in no way diminished his efforts to persuade Caesar not to seek the throne, but rather to content himself with the honor of being the first citizen of the Republic. Following Caesar's refusal, Brutus unabashedly revealed his filiation to the senators, declaring his obligation toward Rome unchanged:

O Rome,
My eyes are ever open still for thee;
Reproach me not for chains which I abhor.
Another paper! No: thou art not Brutus:
I am, I will be Brutus; I will perish,
Or set my country free: Rome still, I see,
Has virtuous hearts: she calls for an avenger,
And has her eyes on Brutus; she awakens
My sleeping soul, and shakes my tardy hand:
She calls for blood, and shall be satisfied.(17)

Stoic to the extreme, Brutus placed his country above his family, thereby remaining a man of ideals—in many ways a Voltairean hero.

Attending a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar during his stay in England, Voltaire, it was reported, had gasped at the gory scenes unfolding before him. The sight of Brutus standing on the tribune explaining his act, holding his dagger still dripping with blood in front of his friends, remained indelibly engraved in his mind's eye. Not surprisingly, Voltaire attempted to avail himself of similar shock effects. Following Caesar's murder, while a teary-eyed Antony mounts the tribune to discourse on this great leader's virtue and his will, a curtain is drawn upstage to reveal Caesar's body covered with a bloodied robe. Unlike Shakespeare, however, Voltaire, incapable of digging deeply into a personality, failed to penetrate beyond surfaces; thus he fell short of understanding the profundity and universality of creatures in turmoil. Tragic situations, he erroneously believed, could be evoked onstage by a mere sleight of hand—by accelerating the speed and the horror of the staged scenes. He was sensitive to Shakespeare's shattering visualizations but was unable to imitate the power and energy implicit in the works of this “tasteless genius … this English Barbarian,” as he had referred to him in his “Discourse to the Academy” (Mélanges, 244).

ADELAïDE DU GUESCLIN (1734)

Voltaire's Adelaïde Du Guesclin (1734) not only featured highly prized French historical figures—Guesclin, Vendôme, and Nemours—but violated the sacrosanct rule of decorum as well. Taking his cue from Shakespeare, or perhaps from Crébillon's Atreus and Thyestes (1707) or Rhadamiste and Zenobia (1711)—dramas replete with horrific scenes—Voltaire allowed full sway to the shock factor in Adelaïde Du Guesclin, which focused on war, passion, and jealousy.¹⁸ When, for example, Nemours entered the proscenium with bloodied face and a blood-soaked arm in a sling, audiences were aghast. Even more provocatively, instead of beautifully turned phrases to bear evil tidings, a cannon shot resounding offstage announced the death of Nemours's brother, Vendôme. It earned jeers from the spectators, who were equally disgusted by Voltaire's attributions, without support, of criminal acts to Du Guesclin (c. 1315-1380), a prince of the blood and one of the great heroes of the Hundred Years' War. Voltaire yielded to public taste on those issues and offered a new version of Adelaïde Du Guesclin in 1752, entitled Duc de Foix. With Lekain playing Vendôme, Du Guesclin's role clarified, and the blood scenes and cannon shots deleted, his play was well received. By 1765 taste had so altered that another version of Adelaïde Du Guesclin was again performed, this time successfully.

MéROPE (1743)

Voltaire's highly prized Mérope, although not the first play featuring this heroine to reach the French stage (Maffei, Gilbert, La Chapelle, Lagrange-Chancel, etc.), was divested of a traditional love plot. Focusing instead on the heroic love and devotion of a mother, Mérope, for her son, Aegisthus, Voltaire affirmed that the theme of maternal affection in all of its purity was both the core of the drama and the motivation of his protagonist.

Mérope, the widow of Cresphontes, the slain king of Messenia in southern Greece, senses that her son, Aegisthus, who had been reported dead, is still alive. She lives for the day that he will become Messenia's crowned head. Although the faithful Narbas, who had fled with the child following the king's assassination, had written to Mérope during their years of separation, his letters had been intercepted. When Mérope learns that Polyphontes, the present tyrant of Messenia, hopes to win the kingship by marrying her, she is overcome by feelings of revulsion for him. Unknown to her, he has posted soldiers at Messenia's borders with orders to kill any young man attempting to enter the land. Although ignorant of his lineage, Aegisthus is wise for his years. Upon setting foot in Messenia, he confronts the border guards who attack him, kills one, and routs another. But then he is arrested for “murder,” and Polyphontes announces falsely that he has died at the hands of a nameless and now-incarcerated stranger. He promises Mérope that if she marries him, he will allow her to avenge Aegisthus's death by killing the mysterious prisoner. Although Mérope agrees, she plans to kill herself immediately afterward. A memorable moment in French theater now occurs. Just as Mérope raises her hand to carry out her act, Aegisthus's old guardian, Narbas, comes forth and stays it, secretly informing her of the young man's identity and of the fact that Polyphontes had murdered her husband and two of their sons.

Lavish praise was heaped on Dumesnil for her portrayal of Mérope. Most striking was the scene in which she advances toward her son, whom she is about to ax; “her eyes and voice broken with tears, [she] raises her trembling hand,” which, when she learns his identity, remains fixed in midair. Moments later, just as a soldier is about to kill Aegisthus, she cries out “Stay, barbarian, / He is—my son,” crossing the stage to embrace him:

                                                                                                                                                      “Thou art:
And heaven, that snatched thee from this wretched bosom,
Which now too late hath opened my longing eyes,
Restores thee to a weeping mother's arms
But to destroy us both.”(19)

Polyphontes, master of the situation, gives her a final choice: marry him or witness her son's death. Falling to her knees, she agrees to the former. In time, however, we learn from Mérope's confidante, Ismenia, how Aegisthus took hold of a sacred ax and killed the tyrant, after which he was proclaimed king.

The beauty, lyricism, and poetry of the stage sets used in the 1763 production of Mérope were particularly impressive. Act II, for example, featured “a wooded grove outside the city, consecrated as a royal burial ground. It is filled with a number of ancient tombs and different forms, cypress trees, obelisks, pyramids, everything that characterized the pious veneration of the ancients for the dead. Among these tombs can be seen that of Cresphontes, adorned with everything precious that Mérope could provide” (Quoted in Lanson, 90).

The influence of Antony's “Friends, Romans, and countrymen” in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was all too obvious in Mérope's final words to her people:

Priests, warriors, friends, my fellow citizens,
Attend, and hear me in the name of heaven.
Once more I swear, Aegisthus is your king,
The scourge of guilt, the avenger of his father,
And yonder bleeding corpse, a hated monster,
The foe of gods and men, who slew my husband,
My dear Cresphontes, and his helpless children.

(Mérope, 5.7.97)

As the curtain installed downstage opened, Mérope pointed to Polyphontes's bleeding corpse covered with a bloodied robe. Shocked, the audiences looked on, aware that they had once again been exposed to another of Voltaire's transgressions.

Notes

1. Voltaire, “Dissertation on Ancient and Modern Tragedy,” in Moland, 4:499; hereafter cited in text as “Tragedy.”

2. With some exceptions—The Scotsman, The Prodigal, and Nanine—Voltaire's social comedies, farces, and satires are not sufficiently noteworthy to be mentioned in this book. One of the earliest comedies, however, The Indiscreet (1725), although performed only six times, was produced at Fontainebleau at the marriage of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska. Some time later, Voltaire participated in his own light satire, Belebat's Feast, performed at the Castle of Belebat.

   The Scotswoman (1760), a comic satire, was written by Voltaire to avenge himself against the despised Fréron, editor of the infamous defamatory sheet L'Année littéraire. Using all of his art and artfice to persuade the censors to allow his play to be performed, he finally won his case on the grounds that permission had been granted for Palissot's brutal satire Les Philosophes (1760).

   The year 1736 saw the production of The Child Prodigy, a comédie larmoyante. The actress Mlle Quinault, who had happened upon the theme of the prodigal son at the Théâtre de la Foire St. Germain, was about to suggest it to the playwright, Philippe Néricault Destouches, when Voltaire asked her to allow him to use it. After 30 consecutive performances, one was given at court with Mme de Pompadour playing the role of Lise, the virtuous lover of the prodigal son.

   Voltaire's Nanine ou le préjugé vaincu (1749) was his second foray into the sentimental comedy. His defense of this kind of comedy in his preface was made all the more palatable by his inclusion of a cluster of witticisms. Although Voltaire made no mention of the work that had inspired his play's theme, it was seemingly drawn from Richardson's Pamela (1740). In Voltaire's adaptation, however, the emotional outbreaks and freethinking teachings were rendered virtually innocuous to fit the standards of French taste. Rather than allow the play to drag, he used his dramatic skills to create a sense of urgency and excitement, and 10-syllable verse rather than the alexandrines, to accentuate plot and movement.

3. Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy, Actors on Acting (New York: Crown Publishers, 1949), 148; hereafter cited in text.

4. Voltaire, “Discourse on Tragedy,” in Moland, 2:323; hereafter cited in text as “Discourse.”

5. Although a playwright of no consequence, Jean-François Ducis (1733-1816) was one of the earliest to adapt, basing his work on very poor French translations, some of Shakespeare's well-known tragedies. His script of Hamlet (1769) was used for the first production of this play in France.

6. Voltaire is referring to a castle, 10 kilometers from Versailles, constructed by Mansart for Louis XIV.

7. Voltaire, “Essay on Epic Poetry,” in Moland, 8:307.

8. Voltaire, “Letters on Oedipus,” in Moland, 2:26.

9. Voltaire, Oedipus, in vol. 8, pt. 2 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 4, scene 3, line 195; hereafter cited in text as Oedipus by act, scene, and line numbers.

10. Voltaire, Zaïre, in vol. 10, pt. 1 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 1, scene 1, line 27; hereafter cited in text as Zaïre by act, scene, and line numbers.

11. Voltaire, “An Epistle Dedicatory to Mr. Falkener,” in The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), 10:7.

12. Colbert Searles, ed., Seven French Plays (New York: Henry Holt, 1935), 70.

13. Voltaire, Alzire, in vol. 9, pt. 1 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 1, scene 1, line 9; hereafter cited in text as Alzire by act, scene, and line numbers.

14. Henry C. Lancaster, French Tragedy in the Time of Louis XV and Voltaire, 1715-1774, 2 vols. (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950), 2:422; hereafter cited in text.

15. Virgil W. Topazio, Voltaire: A Critical Study of His Major Works (New York: Random House, 1967), 92.

16. Voltaire, Brutus, in vol. 8, pt. 1 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 1, scene 1, line 240; hereafter cited in text as Brutus by act, scene, and line numbers.

17. Voltaire, The Death of Caesar, in vol. 10, pt. 1 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 2, scene 2, line 112.

18. Crébillon believed that impetuous passions were “capable of driving people to the greatest of crimes and to the most virtuous of actions” (Crébillon, Preface to Oeuvres, quoted in Jacques Morel, La Tragedie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1964, 72).

19. Voltaire, Mérope, in vol. 8, pt. 1 of The Works of Voltaire, trans. William F. Fleming and others, 22 vols. (New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), act 4, scene 2, line 78; hereafter cited in text as Mérope by act, scene, and line numbers.

Selected Bibliography

Primary Sources

Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire. Ed. Louis Moland. 52 vols. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1883. Nendeln/Lichtenstein, Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967.

The Works of Voltaire. Trans. William F. Fleming and others. 22 vols. New York: The St. Hubert Guild, 1901. Reprinted by Howard Fertig, New York: 1988.

Mélanges. Texte établi et annoté par J. Van Den Heuvel. Paris: Pléiade, 1961.

Seven Plays. [Mérope, Olympia, Alzire, Orestes, Oedipus, Zaïre, Caesar]. Trans. William F. Fleming. New York: Howard Fertig, 1988.

Philosophical Letters. Trans. Ernest Dilworth. New York: Macmillan, 1989.

Secondary Sources

Besterman, Theodore. Voltaire. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969. A thought-provoking volume by one of the foremost Voltaire scholars.

Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy. Actors on Acting. New York: Crown, 1949. A wonderful history of performers writing on their art.

Lancaster, Henry C. French Tragedy in the Time of Louis XV and Voltaire. 1715-1774. 2 vols. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1950. The most complete discussion of eighteenth-century French theater to date.

Lanson, Gustave. Voltaire. Trans. Robert A. Wagoner. Introduction by Peter Gay. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966. A classic work on Voltaire.

Morel, Jacques. La Tragédie. Paris: Armand Colin, 1964. An outline-type volume on the philosophy, rules, and regulations of French tragedy.

Pomeau, René. La Religion de Voltaire. Paris: Nizet, 1969. Voltaire en son temps. 2 vols. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985. All of Pomeau's works on Voltaire are first rate and should be consulted.

Ridgway, R. S. Voltaire and Sensibility. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1973. A highly poetic volume.

Searles, Colbert. Seven French Plays. New York: Henry Holt, 1935. A well-done anthology.

Topazio, Virgil W. Voltaire. A Critical Study of His Major Works. New York: Random House, 1967. Especially excellent on Voltaire's theater.