Voltaire

Beyond the biographical outline (1694 – 1778, European), what working theatre artists tend to want to know about Voltaire is structural: how does the playwright build a scene, what is the typical length of a beat, where does the writer place the silences, and how often does an act break do real dramaturgical work. On all of these counts, Voltaire repays close study. Scenes tend to begin with apparently low stakes and end with something irreversible, which is harder to write than it looks. The dialogue is calibrated for actors rather than for the page, so passages that read flatly often play very well indeed. Act breaks land where they need to land — at the moment when the audience's attention would otherwise begin to slip — rather than at the moments dictated by external symmetry.

For students approaching Voltaire for the first time, our recommended order is to begin with whichever play in the archive has the smallest cast, read it twice, and then read a longer work alongside a recording of any decent production. The contrast between page and performance is, with Voltaire as with all serious dramatists, the entire lesson.

Voltaire's influence on subsequent stage writing is impossible to overstate without veering into hagiography, so we will keep this short. Working actors learn the rhythm of the language by performing it. Directors learn structure by staging it. Translators learn the limits of their craft by trying to render it in another tongue. Drama students who study Voltaire early in their training tend to find that almost everything they read afterward is, in some measure, a response to what Voltaire did first. Our archive includes the works of Voltaire that are firmly in the public domain; for translations and adaptations made within the last century, you'll need to consult a rights-clearance service or your nearest university library.