Islam on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Voltaire's Mahomet as a Transatlantic Case Study in the History of Ideas

Denise Spellberg

Mahomet, as an intellectual vehicle, represents an interdisciplinary case study in the transatlantic dissemination of ideas about power and religion. The paper traces how Voltaire's original work of 1741 was transformed over time, both as text and performance, through the year 1782. French, British, Irish, and American versions of the play each reflect varied changes in language, title, characters, and actor/director intent. Prologues, which were added throughout the public performance of the work, preserve the changing interpretation of the play, as newspaper reviews, broadsides, and engravings record aspects of unique public responses to staged events. In this process, the fluidity of ideas in action, on and off stage, may be illumined according to specific historical contexts and conflicts. The circulation of ideas, ostensibly about Islam, would be transformed through one theatrical work into a forum for a series of dynamic polemics about faith, empire, and identity.

[WP # 00005]