Théâtre

9 volumes in 9 octavo volumes of: I/ (3) ff., 430 pp., (1) p., 1 portrait as frontispiece and 4 plates; II/ (2) ff., 380 pp., (2) ff., 5 plates; III/ (2) ff., 423 pp., (1) p., (1) f., 5 plates; IV/ (2) ff., 427 pp., (1) p., 5 plates; V/ (2) ff., 441 pp., (1) p. 4 plates; VI/ (2) ff., 418 pp., (1) f., 5 plates; VII/ (2) ff., 425 pp., (1) p., 4 plates; VIII/ (2) ff., 510 pp., (1) p., 7 plates; IX/ (2) ff., 551 pp., (1) p., 5 plates. Red morocco, gilt panel roll on covers, gilt arms in the center, spine with false raised bands, decorated edges, inner roll, green tabis silk doublures and endpapers, gilt edges. Armorial binding of the period signed by Doll.

203 x 125 mm.

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet known as Voltaire. Theater.
Paris, Antoine-Augustin Renouard, 1809.

One of the luxury large octavo copies enriched with the beautiful set of 44 engravings drawn by Moreau le jeune and engraved by Delvaux, Simonet, Roger, Blot, Romanet…

The theater was, in the 18th century, the subject of an extraordinary trend and enthusiasm among the privileged public of the time. Voltaire, consumed by this passion, was in turn an author, actor, and director. Everywhere he stayed for a prolonged period, he built or encouraged the installation of performance halls.

Voltaire's Theater brought him fame and fascinated his contemporaries. Voltaire was the greatest dramatic author of the eighteenth century and reigned over the stage of the Comédie-Française from 1718 until his death. He wrote about fifty tragedies which, according to René Pomeau's estimate, were applauded, and rarely booed, by around two million spectators. In Paris, his greatest successes are, in order: Zaïre (1732); Alzire (1736); Mérope (1743); Sémiramis (1748), Œdipe (1718); Tancrède (1760); L'Orphelin de la Chine (1755) and Mahomet (1741).

“Zaïre” was first performed on August 13, 1732 at the Théâtre-Français, and published in 1738. It is the most famous and almost the only surviving tragedy by Voltaire. Deeply imbued with the sensitivity of the time, it met the aspirations of its era, where “the French soul appears to gain a degree of warmth.” Love is treated as guilty only occasionally; it ceases to be presented as a weakness or a danger, and almost becomes a virtue. By broadening the dramatic subject matter, by its boldly veiled ideas, by the intelligence of its staging, it is characteristic of the Voltairean style.

Voltaire used Christianity as a dramatic device, the strongest he believed could oppose and triumph over love; the famous adjuration of Lusignan even has an emotional power that seems drawn from the sources of conviction and fervor. Apart from Christianity, Shakespeare’s theater inspired Voltaire; he said so himself in his dedicatory epistle to Mr. Falkener: it is to the English theater he owes “the boldness he took in placing on the stage the names of our kings and old families”; the action, in effect, seeks to revive history, set during the time of Saint Louis. But the author’s debt goes further, and it is hard to believe he did not take some elements of Zaïre from Othello, if only for the plot. As for the style of the play, to conform it to the subject, Voltaire “loosened the strings of his lyre”: vigor is deliberately lacking, though not a certain warmth; the prevailing impression is one of flexibility.

Zaïre, classic in subject, structure, and language (with numerous reminiscences of Racine), Voltairean in spirit and execution, already tends toward romanticism in its, as yet superficial, search for the picturesque and historical local color.

Precious and superb copy printed on fine Dutch paper sumptuously bound in contemporary red morocco decorated and signed by Doll with the arms of the Duchess of Berry.

Marie-Caroline-Ferdinande-Louise of Bourbon-Sicily, daughter of Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies, and Marie-Clementine, Archduchess of Austria, born in Naples on November 5, 1798, married on June 17, 1816, Charles-Ferdinand of Artois, Duke of Berry, second son of the future Charles X, who was assassinated on February 13, 1820. The Duchess of Berry, widowed at 22, devoted herself to the upbringing of her two children, Louise-Marie-Thérèse d'Artois and Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie Dieudonné, Duke of Bordeaux, born posthumously; very courageous, in 1832 she tried to foment a legitimist insurrection in the Vendée which failed; betrayed on November 7 of the same year by the converted Jew Deutz, she was imprisoned in the citadel of Blaye where she gave birth to a daughter fathered by Count Hector Lucchesi-Palli, whom she had secretly married in 1831; released in June 1833, she was kept at a distance by the royal family and was deprived of the responsibility for her son's education. She lived in Venice and died on April 17, 1870 at the Château de Brunnsee in Styria.

This princess, with highly developed artistic tastes, had built in her château at Rosny, near Mantes, a luxurious library remarkable as much for the choice of editions and the richness of the bindings as for the importance of the manuscripts it contained.