Following the success of "The Lark", Hellman conceived of another play with incidental music, based on Voltaire's "Candide". Bernstein convinced her to develop it as a comic operetta with a much more substantial musical component. She wrote the spoken dialogue, which many others then worked on, and wrote some lyrics as well for what became the often-revived, "Candide". Hellman hated the collaboration and revisions on deadline that "Candide" required: "I went to pieces when something had to be done quickly, because someone didn't like something, and there was no proper time to think it out ... I realized that I panicked under conditions I wasn't accustomed to."