The aged Belus, king of Babylon, thought himself the first man upon earth. His palace and his park, extended between the Euphrates and the Tigris. His vast house, three thousand feet in front, almost reached the clouds. The platform was surrounded with a balustrade of white marble, fifty feet high.

But what was more admirable in Babylon, and eclipsed everything else, was the only daughter of the king, named Formosanta. It was from her pictures and statues, that in succeeding times Praxiteles sculptured his Aphrodita, and the Venus of Medicis. Heavens what a difference between the original and the copies King Belus was prouder of his daughter than of his kingdom. She was eighteen years old. It was necessary she should have a husband worthy of her; but where was he to be found? An ancient oracle had ordained, that Formosanta could not belong to any but him who could bend the bow of nearly-mythic Nimrod.

Three kings came to try to bend Nimrod's storied bow -- rulers from Egypt, and India, and Scythia -- but also came a young man not of royal mien, upon a unicorn. . . .

M rope produced in 1743, is the greatest of Voltaire's tragedies and a perfect literary performance. Frederick the Great amused himself by turning it into the libretto of an opera. Its success was great and the author was called before the curtain, an honor until then unknown in France.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Included in this omnibus edition are seventeen of Voltaire's most important plays including Brutus, Socrates, Alzire, Orestes, Catiline, S miramis, Pandora, The Scotch Woman, Nanine, The Prude, M rope, Olympia, The Orphan of China, Mahomet, Amelia, dipus, and Mariamne. During his life time Voltaire was far and away the most successful French playwright, these are the plays that cemented his popularity and made him a household name during his own lifetime.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Alzire first appeared on the stage in 1736 to great acclaim and success. Alzire is set Lima, Peru, at the time of the Spanish conquest. Don Gusman, a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and just; he had spent his life in endeavoring to soften the cruelty of his countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. It is in vain that Don Alvarez reminds his son that the true Christian returns good for evil and as a result tragedy insues.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

I don't belong to the house, sir; but I spend most of my time in the coffee-room; write news, politics, and so forth, and am always ready to do an honest gentleman service. If you have any friend you want to have praised, or any enemy to be abused; any author you want to protect or to decry; 'tis but one guinea per paragraph: if you are desirous of cultivating any acquaintance for profit or pleasure, sir, I am your man.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Don't imagine, my dear, that, by what I'm going to say, I mean to exercise the authority of a mother, always ready as you know I am, to listen in my turn to your reasons when I think them good; my intention is not to lay my commands on you, but to give you my advice; it is my heart which speaks to you, and that experience I have had in the world makes me foresee evils which I would endeavor to prevent: you have been at court, I think, not above two months; believe me, 'tis a dangerous situation: the perfidious group of courtiers always look on a new-comer with an eye of malevolence, and soon find out all his imperfections: from the first moment, they condemn him, without pity or remorse; and, which is still worse, their judgment is irrevocable: be guarded against their malice: on the first step we take in life, the rest of it must in a great measure depend: if you once make yourself ridiculous, the world will think you always so: the impression will remain: it is in vain, as you advance in years, to change your conduct, and assume a more serious behavior: you will suffer a long time from old prejudices: even if we do grow better, we are still suspected; and I have often known men pay dearly in their old age for the errors of their youth: have a little regard therefore to the world, and remember you ought to live now more for that than for yourself. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Yet it is too soon. When I possess the crown, your faithful eyes Shall be the witnesses of all my deeds. Stay in this porch, the priestesses to-day Present Olympia to the powers divine: This day in secret she must expiate, Sins which are even to herself unknown. This day a better life I shall begin. O! dear Olympia, may you never know The heinous crime that's hardly yet effaced, To whom your birth you owe, what blood I've shed.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This tragedy was produced in 1730. It marks Voltaire's spirit of daring in treating a subject from which Shakespeare shrank as, perhaps, too painful for representation. When revived during the Revolution it was enthusiastically applauded.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This powerful work was read by Voltaire to Frederick of Prussia in 1740, to the king's great delight. The play was withdrawn after the fourth representation, under pressure of Church authorities who professed to see in it a bloody satire against the Christian religion. Almost three hundred years later critics are still unclear if this play is a rebuke of Islam or of Christianity or, perhaps, both.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

It is enough: the power of Salome, By all acknowledged, and by all obeyed, On its firm basis stands immovable: I fled to Azor, with the lightning's speed, Even from Samaria's plain to Jordan's spring, And quick returned: my presence there indeed Was needful, to cut off the aspiring hopes Of Israel's moody race: thy brother Herod, So long detained at Rome, was almost grown A stranger in his kingdom; and the people, Ever capricious, turbulent, and bold, Still to their kings unjust, aloud proclaimed, That Herod was condemned to slavery By haughty Rome; and Mariamne, raised To the high rank of her proud ancestors, Would from the blood of our high-priests select A king, to rule o'er conquered Palestine.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

The aged Belus, king of Babylon, thought himself the first man upon earth. His palace and his park, extended between the Euphrates and the Tigris. His vast house, three thousand feet in front, almost reached the clouds. The platform was surrounded with a balustrade of white marble, fifty feet high.

But what was more admirable in Babylon, and eclipsed everything else, was the only daughter of the king, named Formosanta. It was from her pictures and statues, that in succeeding times Praxiteles sculptured his Aphrodita, and the Venus of Medicis. Heavens what a difference between the original and the copies King Belus was prouder of his daughter than of his kingdom. She was eighteen years old. It was necessary she should have a husband worthy of her; but where was he to be found? An ancient oracle had ordained, that Formosanta could not belong to any but him who could bend the bow of nearly-mythic Nimrod.

Three kings came to try to bend Nimrod's storied bow -- rulers from Egypt, and India, and Scythia -- but also came a young man not of royal mien, upon a unicorn. . . .

Included in this omnibus edition are Candide, Zadig and seventeen of Voltaire's most important plays including Brutus, Socrates, Alzire, Orestes, Catiline, S miramis, Pandora, The Scotch Woman, Nanine, The Prude, M rope, Olympia, The Orphan of China, Mahomet, Amelia, dipus, and Mariamne. During his life time Voltaire was far and away the most successful French playwright, these are the plays that cemented his popularity and made him a household name during his own lifetime.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This tragedy is founded on historical truth. A duke of Brittany, in the year 1387, commanded the lord of Bavalan to assassinate the constable of Clisson: Bavalan, the day after, told the duke it was done: the duke becoming sensible of the horror of his crime, and apprehensive of the fatal consequences of it, abandoned himself to the most violent despair: Bavalan, after giving him time to repent, at length told him that he had loved him well enough to disobey his orders.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

"This Comedy is called in the French Nanine, ou le Prejuge Vaincu (Nanine, or Prejudice Overcome). It is written, as we are told in the title-page, in verses of ten syllables. The absurdity of comedies in rhyme I have already remarked. The original begins thus: Il faut parler, il faut, Monsieur le Comte, Vous expliquer nettement sur mon Compte. The reader cannot but observe, what villainous rhymes Comte and Compte are, and perhaps will more readily forgive my reducing this comedy into plain prose. It was produced in 1749."-Voltaire Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Socrates is a play in three acts about Socrates and the events of his trial and eventual death. Satirical in nature it takes aim at government authority and organized religion. Voltaire's contempt for government and religion come through clearly in this play.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

dipus was written when Voltaire was but nineteen years of age. It was played for the first time in 1718, and ran for forty-five nights. Du Fr sne, a celebrated actor, and of the same age as the author, played the part of dipus; and Madame Desmar ts, a famous actress, did Jocaste, and soon after quitted the stage. In this edition, the part of Philoctetes is restored, and stands exactly as it was in the first representation.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This comedy is partly imitated from an English piece, called the Plain Dealer. It does not suit very well for the French stage; the manners are too rough and bold, though much less so than in the original. The English seem to take too much liberty, and the French too little. -Voltaire Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

The Chinese tragedy, which they call "The Orphan," was taken out of an immense collection of the theatrical performances of that nation, which has cultivated this art for about three thousand years before it was invented by the Greeks, the art of making living portraits of the actions of men, establishing schools of morality, and teaching virtue in dialogue and representation. For a long time dramatic poetry was held in esteem only in that vast country of China, separated from and unknown to the rest of the world, and in the city of Athens. Rome was unacquainted with it till above four hundred years afterwards. If you look for it among the Persians, or Indians, who pass for an inventive people, you will not find it there; it has never yet reached them. Asia was contented with the fables of Palpay and Lokman, which contain all their morality, and have instructed by their allegories every age and nation.-Voltaire Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

In his preface to this play Voltaire says: "The learned will not here meet with a faithful narrative of Catiline's conspiracy: a tragedy, they very well know, is not a history, but they will see a true picture of the manners of those times: all that Cicero, Catiline, Cato and C sar do in this piece is not true, but their genius and character are faithfully represented: if we do not there discover the eloquence of Cicero, we shall at least find displayed all that courage and virtue which he showed in the hour of danger. In Catiline is described that contrast of fierceness and dissimulation which formed his real character; C sar is represented as growing into power, factious, and brave; that C sar who was born at once to be the glory and the scourge of Rome."Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Orestes was produced in 1750, an experiment which intensely interested the literary world and the public. In his Dedicatory Letters to the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire has the following passage on the Greek drama: "We should not, I acknowledge, endeavor to imitate what is weak and defective in the ancients: it is most probable that their faults were well known to their contemporaries. I am satisfied, Madam, that the wits of Athens condemned, as well as you, some of those repetitions, and some declamations with which Sophocles has loaded his Electra: they must have observed that he had not dived deep enough into the human heart. I will moreover fairly confess, that there are beauties peculiar not only to the Greek language, but to the climate, to manners and times, which it would be ridiculous to transplant hither. Therefore I have not copied exactly the Electra of Sophocles-much more I knew would be necessary; but I have taken, as well as I could, all the spirit and substance of it." Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Her eyes are sunk in darkness: help the king And guard his life. Learn from her sad example, That heaven is witness to our secret crimes: The higher is the criminal, remember, The gods inflict the greater punishment; Kings, tremble on your thrones, and fear their justice.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Fate would make us wretched here, But hope shall dry up every tear; In sorrow he shall give us rest, And make us even in anguish blest: Love shall preserve us from the paths of vice, And strew his flowers around the precipice.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Candide, a pampered nobleman, is suddenly thrust out of his sheltered life into a cold uncaring world that does not care about his gentle upbringing. Candide witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world and must depend on his wits and quick actions to survive.Candide is sarcastic, erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving. This wonderful novel parodies many adventure and romance clich?'s Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Zadig is a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. Voltaire did not attempt historical accuracy with this book. Many of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day. Zadig is philosophical in nature, and presents human life as being beyond human control. It is a story of religious and metaphysical orthodoxy, both of which Voltaire challenges with his presentation of the moral revolution taking place in Zadig himself. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.