Harriman-Smith, James. ‘Zara’s Enthusiastic Passions’. Shadows of the Enlightenment: Tragic Drama during Europe’s Age of Reason, Ohio State University Press, 2022, pp. 76–98.

Hill presented his Zara (a translation of Voltaire’s Zaïre) as an “Experiment” intended to reveal something about attitudes to tragedy and acting in 1730s England. My contention here is that such an experiment is still useful for our understanding of eighteenth-century tragedy today on two grounds. Firstly, and most significantly, a close study of Zara’s inception, composition, and reception reveals how this work constitutes itself as an ‘enthusiastic’ tragedy, and, as such, also claims a status as an arena for testing new ideas about actors, audiences, and the role of the passions in the theatre. Such study will occupy the bulk of this chapter. Second, and by way of conclusion, I make use of the fact that, as modern critics, we are able to see more of Hill’s “Experiment” than he ever could. In the years after Hill’s death, first Covent Garden and then Drury Lane revived Zara. Under David Garrick’s management at Drury Lane, Hill’s play became, with Hamlet, one of only two tragedies to be performed in more than twenty consecutive seasons. The reasons for such success, and what it suggests about Zara’s importance for understanding eighteenth-century tragedy, are thus the subjects of my fourth and final section.