The lVORI1S of VOLTAIRE "Be/wan two servants oj Humanzl)', who appi!ared eighteen hundred years apart, thEre is a 11Z)stLT101tS rciation. * *" Lo,t US sav 11 wzth a sentimen: of profound rcspert : 'JESUS' H-EPT: VOLT.·lIRE SJIII.l:D OJ t,~al arrune trar and oj that human smzle ZScomposed tIlL'sweetness of Ih,' fin' fen! cIvilIzation" VIeTUR H UCiU. College of Du Page Instructional Resources Center Glea Ellp, lIIiaois --0- Presented by ~1r. & Mrs. Henry A. Diekmann A CRITIQVE. B BIQGRAPtt( lOY ~E HVNDRED&'ilIXlY-El(ilil DE51GNS, (Ot-iVRI5iNG R[PRO(NcnON~ OF RARE. OLD ENGRAVTNG5, 5TEEl PLATE~; PHO- TOURAVURE5 & CURIOU:; fAe-SIMILES, 0JOO~~o~~o~~~o o1IrU\I)~~~~~ 0 iNSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES CENTER COLLEGE OF DU PAGE COPYRIGHT, 1901, By E. R. DuMoNT OWNED BY THE ST. HeBERT GUILD NEW YORK I., THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF VOLTAIRE VOL. X - PART I CONTENTS ZAIRE: DRAMATIS PER;,OX/E 4 DEDICATION ~ ACT I 23 C.t£S.\R: DRA~lATlS PERSOXJE 96 ACT I 'J7 THE PRODIGAL: DRAMA11!- PERSON.", I~-! AC1 I 145 PREF \CES TO PLAYS: J\IAKIAMNE ORE;,TES • CATILINE :NIEROPE • THE PRODIGAL NANINE • SOCRATES MAHOMET ] ULIUS C£SAR LIST OF PLATES PART I PAGE THE OATH OF CIESAR'S ENEMIES Frontispiece OSMAN AND NERESTAN 90 THE DEATH OF CIESAR 142 ZAIRE DRAMATIS PERSONlE. OSMAN, Sultan of Jerusalem. LUSIGNAN,A Prince of the Blood of the ancient Kings of Jerusalem. ZAiRE, } FATIMA, Slaves of the Sultan. NERESTAN,} French Gentlemen. CHATILLON, ORASMIN } 'Officers of the Sultan. MELlDOR, A SLAVE. ATTENDANTS. SCENE,the Seraglio at Jerusalem. "Zaire" was written and produced in 1732. Dur- ing its composition Voltaire wrote to a friend: "Everyone here reproaches me that I do not put more love into my pieces. There shall be love enough this time, I swear, and not mere gallantry. My desire is that there may be nothing so Turkish, so Christian, so amorous, so tender, so infuriate, as that which I am now putting into verse for the pleas- ure of the public. The names of Montmorenci, Saladire, Jesus, Mahomet, will be in it. There will be mention of the Seine and Jordan, of Paris and Jerusalem. We shall love, we shall baptize, we shall kill, and I will send you the outline as soon as it is done." The piece was a great success, despite J. B. Rousseau's adverse criticism. It was played at Berlin, and Geneva; and at Rome on the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's death. 4 ZAIRE. AN EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO MR. FALKENER, AN ENGLISH MERCHANT, SINCE AMBASSAOOR AT CONSTANTINOPLE, WITH THE TRAGEDY OF ZAIRE. You, my dear friend, are an Englishman, and I am a native of France; but lovers of the fine arts are fellow-citizens: men of taste and virtue have pretty nearly the same principles in every country, and form one general commonweal: it is no longer, therefore, matter of astonishment to see a French tragedy dedicated to an Englishman, or an Italian, any more than it would have been, in the days of antiquity, for a citizen of Ephesus, or of Athens, to address his performance to a Grecian of some other city; I lay this tragedy before you, therefore, as my countryman in literature, and my most intimate friend. I shall, at the same time, have the pleasure of informing my brother Frenchmen here in what light traders are looked upon among you, what regard the English have for a profession so essential to the welfare of their kingdom, and the honor which they have to represent their country in parliament, in the rank of legislators; though trade is despised by our petits-maitres, who, you know as well as myself, both in England and France, are the most con- temptible species of being that crawl upon the face of the earth. My further inducement to correspond with an Englishman, rather than any other man, on subjects of literature, arises from your happy freedom of 5 6 Zaire. thought, which never fails to inspire me with bolder ideas, and also with more nervous expression.1 'Whoever converses with me has, for the time at least, my heart at his disposal; if his sentiments are lively and animated, he inflames me: if he is strong and nervous, he raises and supports me: the cour- tier, who is all dissimulation, makes me insensibly as affected and constrained in my behavior as him- self; but a bold and fearless spirit gives me senti- ment and courage: I catch fire from him, just as young painters, brought up under Lemoine or Ar- giliere, catch the freedom of their masters' pencils, and compose with their spirit: thus Virgil admired Homer, followed his steps, and, without being a plagiarist, became his rival.' You need not be apprehensive of my sending you, with this piece, a long apology and vindication of it : I might indeed have told you why I did not make Zaire more determined to embrace Christianity be- fore she knew her father; why she keeps the secret from her lover; but those who have any judgment, or any justice, will see my reasons without my pointing them out; and as for those critics that are predetermined not to believe me, it would be lost labor to give them any reasons at all. All I can boast of is that the piece is tolerably simple; a perfection, in my opinion, that is not to be despised. 1The passages marked thus ' , are, in the original. written in a familiar kind of verse, consisting of eight syllables, which M. Voltaire is, in most of his letters, fond of intermingling with his prose: the reader will easily perceive that, however agreeable those rhymes might be to a French ear, both the subject and style, in the greater part of them, are of such a nature, as not to admit of poetical translation into English. ZaIre. 7 'This happy simplicity was one of the distinguish- ing beauties of learned antiquity: it is a pity you Englishmen don't introduce this novelty on your stage, which is so filled with horror, gibbets, and murders: put more truth into your dramatic per- formances, and more noble images: Addison has endeavored to do it: he was the poet of the wife, but he was too stiff: and, in his boasted "Cato," the two girls are really very insipid characters: imitate from the great Addison only what is good; polish a little the rude manners of your mild muse; write for all times, and all ages, for fame, and for pos- terity, and transfuse into your works the .simplicity of your manners.' But I would not have your English poets im- agine that I mean to give them "Zaire" as a model: I preach simplicity to them, and easy numbers, but I would not be thought to set up for the saint of my own sermon: if "Zaire" has met with success, 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 Battered the taste of my audience; and he is gen- erally sure to succeed,who talks more to the passions of men than to their reason: if we are ever so good Christians, we must have a little love besides: and I am satisfied the great Corneille was much in the right of it, not to confinehimself, in his "Polyeucte;" merely to the breaking of the statues of Jupiter by the new converts: for such is the depravity of human kind, that perhaps 'the pious soul of Polyeucte would have but little impression on the audience, and even the Christian verses he declaims would have been received with contempt, if it had not been for his wife's passion for her favorite heathen, who was 8 Zaire. certainly more worthy of her love than the good devotee her husband.' Almost the same accident happened to Zaire; my friends, who frequent the theatre, assured me, that if she had been only converted, she would not have been half so interesting: but she was in love with the most perfect religion in the world, and that has made her fortune. I could not, however, expect to escape censure. 'Many an inexorable critic has carped at and slashed me, and many a remorseless jester has pre- tended that I only filched an improbable Romance, which I bad not the sense to improve; that I have lamed and spoiled the subject; that the catastrophe is unnatural: they even prognosticated the dreadful hiss with which a disgusted public salutes a miser- able poet: but I despised their censures, and risked my play upon the stage; the public was more favor- able than they expected, or I deserved: instead of hisses, it received shouts: tears flowed from almost every eye: but I am not puffed up with my success, I assure you I am no stranger to all its faults. I know very well it is absolutely indisputable, that before we can make a perfect work, we must sell ourselves to the devil, which was what I did not choose to do.' I do not flatter myself that the English will do "Zaire" the same honor they have done to "Brutus," a translation of which has been played at London i! they tell us here, that you have neither devotion enough to be affected by old Lusignan, nor tender- ness to feel for Zaire; you love a conspiracy better than an intrigue; upon your stage, they say the word 1 Voltaire was mistaken in this particular, as no trans- lation of his Brutus was ever exhibited on the English stage.