The eighteenth century was the last period in France in which tragedy could be said to exist as a genre in any meaningful sense. In various respects, the spirit of the Enlightenment was fundamentally untragic; the period's increasing optimism in reason, progress, bourgeois values, natural religion, and later republicanism, sat increasingly uneasily alongside the traditional demands of tragedy. But while the spirit of ‘the tragic’ dwindled, tragedy as a genre proved surprisingly robust, with average audience numbers being some 50 per cent higher than for comedy. If, because of the overall expense required, the theatre has to reflect popular tastes and beliefs more than any other medium, then eighteenth-century tragedy can be seen as a gauge of the progression of Enlightenment ideas and ideals. Yet, as dramatists, theoreticians, and politicians alike increasingly recognised, tragedy can not only reflect public tastes, beliefs, and morality, but also play an active role in shaping them.

The eighteenth century was a period of both experimentation and conservatism. Setting the benchmark for eighteenth-century tragedy even as their popularity fluctuated, Racine and Corneille were a source of both pride and anxiety for France's new generations of tragedians. While few dramatic conventions went unchallenged, the broad formal framework of tragedy remained relatively constant; indeed, in certain formal and stylistic respects, a typical tragedy from the final decades of the eighteenth century differs relatively little from one from Racine's time.