Comment – Celebrating Voltaire in the 1760s

Abstract

If the Seven Years' War (1756)(1757)(1758)(1759)(1760)(1761)(1762)(1763), according to Thomas M. Luckett, "precipitated a process by which the theater became more sensitive to popular demand," then one dramatist channeled the public's tastes better than any other: Voltaire. 1 He was so popular during the 1760s that, as Lauren R. Clay shows, Voltaire was responsible for nearly "one-third of daily ticket sale income" at the Comédie-Française during the seasons of 1760-61, 1761-62, and 1766-67. 2 What Pierre Frantz calls a "Moment Voltaire" was triggered by the philosophe's engagement with contemporary theatrical tastes for the drame (Le Café ou l'Écossaise, 1760) and his staging of French patriotism during wartime (Tancrède, 1760). 3 But also, as Frantz shows, the period was a veritable showcase of Voltaire's career, complete with popular revivals of his early masterpieces from the 1720s and 1730s. The 1760s, which saw Voltaire "at the peak of his popularity" (Clay), saw nothing less than the "canonization" (Frantz) of Voltaire as both a philosophe and homme de théâtre.For a while, it seems that Voltaire could do no wrong at France's most prestigious stage. He was at the height of an impressive arc during which he surpassed any other dramatic author of the eighteenth century in ticket sales, total performances, and revenue-per-performance. Voltaire, as Luckett points out, virtually saved the Comédie-Française from financial ruin with his lucrative tragedies and comedies and his keen ability to tap into current events and polemics. Despite such glaring proof of Voltaire's standing, many historians and literary scholars of the period still refuse to consider the sheer magnitude of Voltaire's moment, even downplaying, in many cases, "the full scope of Voltaire's popularity" (Clay). The three authors in this section each rectify in their own way this critical oversight. With different approaches, they converge on Voltaire's triumphs and ground their conclusions with tight analysis of quantitative data from the new online Comédie-Française Registers Project (CFRP). In what follows, I tease out the most crucial points in essays by Luckett, Frantz, and Clay in an attempt to weave together their diverse accounts of Voltaire's rise to fame, his diverse theatrical output, and then, the philosophe's crash in popularity after the French Revolution.In "Financial Difficulties and Business Strategies at the Comédie-Française during the Seven Years War," Luckett describes the theater's losses and gains in the late 1750s and early 1760s. Luckett, an economic historian of early modern and revolutionary France, proves that the theater's finances were linked to the effect of war and peace on the pocketbooks of Parisian patrons. He also shows that the Comédie-Française's