ZAÏRE Tragédie en cinq actes, en vers Représentée pour la première fois à la Comédie-Française le 13 août 1732 ZAIRE Tragédie en cinq actes, en vers Représentée pour la première fois à la Comédie-Française le 13 août 1732 VOLTAIRE Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), a bold, inquisitive mind, of unusual suppleness, was born in Paris, November 21, 1694, and died there in 1778. He carried on his studies under the Jesuits, frequented the society of the Temple, and was thrown into the Bastille for a satire that was unjustly attributed to him. On his . release he spent more than two years in England (1726-29), during which time he mastered the language and devoted himself to the study of English literature and philosophy. Returning to France, he went to live at Cirey at the home of Mme. du Châtelet (1734-49). In 1750 he went to Berlin at the invitation of Frederick II, but quarreled with him and returned to France (1753); thereafter he spent the greater part of his life at Ferney, near Geneva. Here even up to an extreme old age he poured forth literary productions hardly if ever equaled by any other writer in amount and variety. On March 30, 1778, while he was in Paris by invitation to witness the performance of his tragedy Irène and his ́comedy Nanine on the stage of the Comédie-Française, an actor placed a crown of laurel on his head in his box at the theatre. During the intermission between the two plays, the bust of the author was placed on the stage and crowned by all the artists. The strain of his receptions and honors was too much for his strength, and he died in Paris on May 30. His remains were transferred to the Panthéon in 1791. He cultivated all types of literature, and was hardly mediocre in any so far as the standards of his century are concerned. In tragedy he produced Zaïre, la Mort de César, Mérope, Mahomet, etc.; in history, Histoire de Charles XII, le Siècle de Louis XIV, Essai sur les mœurs, etc.; in the conte, Candide, Zadig, l'Ingénu, Micromégas, etc.; in literary criticism, le Temple du goût, Remarques sur les pensées de Pascal, etc.; in the epic, la Henriade, Poème de Fontenoy; in philosophy, Lettres philosophiques, Dictionnaire philosophique, etc.; and in his correspondence we have more than twelve thousand letters. His literary and social influence was enormous, as well as the energy that he expended in fighting against intolerance. No writer was more French in the limpidity, the elegance. the witty precision and the purity of his style; none more human in the general tendencies of his philosophy: respect for conscience and individual liberty, shakable belief in progress. un Towards the end of the seventeenth century a few attempts were made to employ modern and French historical material in tragedy. These efforts met with such an unfavorable reception that during the first thirty years of the eighteenth century no French tragedy was written based on national historical material. Voltaire in Zaïre (first performance August 13, 1732) was the first to reintroduce French history into French tragedy. He, like Crébillon, was convinced that tragedy needed reinvigoration through the infusion of new elements. He observed how opera and comedy were profiting by the new interest in the exotic to employ an element of the spectacular and colorful. How to reconcile such elements with classical tragedy, to whose forms he was ever loyal, was a problem of which Vol |