On November 21, 1670, Parisian spectators could attend the premiere of Racine’s Bérénice and, one week later, watch the premiere of Corneille’s Tite et Bérénice on a rival stage. Over the course of the following weeks, the two most famous French playwrights vied for box office success via a duel of twinned plays based on a common subject. My talk considers the theatrical joust through the lens of age and ageist language, and how Corneille and Racine’s rivalry was shaped by the notion that they belonged to different times. I examine how the persistent label of “Old Corneille” emerged, and how critics, in the period of the theatrical duel to the present day, have pitted the 1670s Corneille against a projection of his past self, with many then and now, wishing he had retired earlier. A return to the critical commentary on the rivalry between the sixty-four-year old playwright and a man half his age, enables us to grasp how Corneille’s loss in the realm of box office competition turned into a narrative of decadence and mourning for an author deemed to have outlived himself.