Byron’s “Mental Theatre” and the German Classical Precedent

Byron’s “Mental Theatre” and the German Classical Precedent Frederick W . Shilstone British Romantic drama, and that of Byron in particular, is usually a victim of condescending treatment—an understand­ able, if unsatisfying critical fact. On the practical side, there can be no doubt that stage performances of the nineteenth century were not conducive to the production of a serious modem English drama; Byron himself was disgusted by the almost complete predominance of spectacle, what Aristotle calls the most obviously incidental tragic element. Revivals of dramatic classics and the flawed attempts of young playwrights were alike designed to satisfy the public desire for passion, glitter, and sheer magnitude. Aesthetic theorists declare the nineteenth century devoid of meaningful dramatic production because of the predominance of a “lyric norm.” Working from Croce, modem critics claim that poets of the Romantic period, com­ pletely devoted to personal, lyrical expression, simply could not write exoteric, stageworthy plays. This view, though incomplete in itself, is a first step in any attempt to deal fully and meaning­ fully with the dramas of Byron and of the nineteenth century in general. Treated as unique literary phenomena, conforming only to their own self-evolved structural and generic identities, these works provide insight into the entire Romantic tendency to experiment with and redefine traditional literary types for pur­ poses of unique expression. The age was indeed dominated by a “lyric norm,” but this domination did not omit attempts by various writers to manifest that norm in several types of literary art. Byron’s dramas are chief among those designed to expand the boundaries of Romantic lyric expression. Readers have gen­ erally presupposed a direct split between the “natural,” straight187 188 Comparative Drama forward, and unpretentious overflowing of the Romantic soul in Manfred and Byron’s more strained, atypical, and “artificial” attempts to write in a classical, historical mode. Critics feel comfortable with Manfred, rightly calling it a lyrical drama that makes no claims to being anything but an extended working out of the subjective physical and metaphysical problems forming the core of Romantic literary expression. But when confronted by The Two Foscari, Marino Faliero, or Sardanapalus, they lose this confidence and seem to become nervous about the appar­ ently traditional dramatic qualities and the ways in which these qualities clash with sentiments evident in Byron’s other works. Such discomfort, though not often directly stated, appears in many forms. The various readings of Sardanapalus (1821), which I use throughout this essay as my example of Byron’s historical plays, are indicative of the trend. The most common response to this work has been to ignore completely the fact that it is drama by retreating to the confines of the biographical and broadly thematic: “all critics must admit . . . that Sardan­ apalus is an autobiographic revelation.”l In making this assump­ tion, readers have sought relentlessly for a thematic and, by extension, biographical norm in the play. Until recently, it has generally been accepted that Myrrha, the voice of “selfless love,” represents a normative check on the sensual self-indulgence of Sardanapalus. Both Myrrha and Zarina, the wronged queen, “compel our homage,” in one view.2 In radical contrast with this widely accepted reading is Jerome McGann’s opinion that the nonviolent, generous “king of peace” (Sardanapalus) repre­ sents the true thematic norm.3 McGann’s reading is based upon direct biographical correlations between Myrrha and Teresa Guiccioli on the one hand, and Byron and Sardanapalus on the other; even love, it seems, cannot stand in the way of the poet’s self-esteem. While this entire thematic and biographical contro­ versy is certainly fascinating, it tends to obscure the more important formal implications of the experiment represented in Sardanapalus and the rest of Byron’s dramas. The play must be read in terms of its generic identity if it is to be treated as anything other than an artistic failure or oddity with deep thematic and psychological interest. The first notion to be abandoned in approaching Sardana­ palus is that of the positive split between the mode of Manfred and that of the historical piece. Thematic parallels have in a few Frederick W. Shilstone 189 instances been drawn among all...