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The Restoration Ethos of Byron's Classical Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

M. G. Cooke
M. G. Cooke*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
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Extract

It is conventional to take Byron as a veritable Janus of the romantic period, looking toward the classicism of the past even while facing away from it as an authentic figure of his time. The classical Byron himself is seen under two aspects, satirical and dramatic, and these are distinguished from each other on the following grounds: Byron's classical satires, such as English Bards, are traced back to Pope, but his classical dramas, such as Sardanapalus, are supposed to reflect Greek, French, or Italian antecedents; and the classical satires belong essentially to Byron's earlier career, the classical dramas to his later career. This paper focuses on the peculiar classicism of Byron's drama, the classicism of his maturer work, and that which, as far as his total work is concerned, he most stoutly defended.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 1964 , pp. 569 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1907

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References

1 The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero, 6 vols. (New York, 1898–1901), v, 217–218. Hereafter cited as LJ.

2 But it is to be noted that Byron credits the “German's Tale, Kruitzner” with a power over his imagination scarcely inferior to that of Aeschylus (see the Preface to Werner).

3 The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, authorized trans. with notes by Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, 1929), p. 313.

4 Byron here omits some of Dryden's words.

5 LJ, v, 284.

6 See Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, intro. by A. Waugh, 2 vols. (New York, 1946), i, 350.

7 (New York, 1958), p. 107.

8 See, for example, “A Parallel of Poetry and Painting,” Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1900), ii, 127. Hereafter cited as Essays.

9 Elsewhere in the “Heads of an Answer” Dryden does express an attitude comparable to the one with which Byron invests him: “The faults in the character of the King and No-king are not ... such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the violence of his love” (Johnson, i, 354).

10 LJ, v, 218. Only nine days after making this statement (4 January 1821), he “sketched the outline and Drams. Pers. of an intended tragedy of Sardanapalus,” which he had “for some time meditated” (LJ, v, 172).

11 Quotations from All for Love are taken from Selected Dramas of John Dryden, ed. George R. Noyes (New York, 1910).

12 Quotations from Sardanapalus are taken from The Works of Lord Byron: Poetry, Vol. v, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, (London, 1901).

13 “Lord Byron's Tragedies,” xxxvi (1822), 433, 424.

14 It is not a priest who utters the superstition in Sardanapalus. The “Chaldean and Soothsayer” Beleses does, however, deliver a soliloquy which compares with the “omens” of Serapion and Myris in All for Love.

The Sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,

Taking his last look of Assyria's empire.

How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,

Like the blood he predicts. If not in vain,

Thou Sun that sinkest, and ye stars which rise,

I have outwatched ye, reading ray by ray

The edicts of your orbs, which make Time tremble

For what he brings the nations, 'tis the furthest

Hour of Assyria's years. (ii.i.1–9)

15 The Works of Thomas Otway, ed. J. C. Ghosh, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1932), ii, 224.

16 See LJ, v, 167, 243.

17 Über Lord Byrons “Marino Fallero” und seine anderen geschichtlichen Dramen (Marburg, 1910), pp. 25, 18, 12.