Ergänzungsreihe: Schriften zur englischen Philologie
unter Mitwirkung von Hermann Collitz hrsg. von James W. Bright
Ergänzungsreihe 3. Heft

THE DRAMAS OF LORD BYRON
OF LORD BYRON

A Critical Study

by

Samuel C. Chew, Jr., Ph. D.
Associate in English Literature in Bryn Mawr College;
Sometime Fellow of the Johns Hopkins University.

UNIVERSITY O

ATCZIMMIN
YRASELI

Gedruckt bei Hubert & Co., G. m. b. H. in Göttingen.

A soul born active, wind-beaten but ascending.

Meredith.

Preface

Most people of culture have read Manfred and Cain; Byron's other plays are now almost unknown to that portion of the "general public" that reads poetry at all. Yet these plays deserve careful perusal, all but Werner, which is about as complete a failure as anything in literature. They are not absorbingly entertaining, but they are provocative of thought. Knowledge of them is essential, moreover, to the appreciation of Byron's entire achievement. There have been many monographs on the individual plays, but the whole group has never been studied with any degree of adequacy.1 Such a study is here essayed. It is introduced by a brief account of the chief characteristics of the drama of the romantic period, in order that Byron's plays too often regarded as a group of isolated phenomena may be related to the general history

of dramatic literature.

I planned to print as an appendix to this study a full Thought-Index to Byron's complete works poems, letters, journals, and scattered prose writings; but it outgrew the space provided for it and shall be published separately.

To record indebtedness is here a pleasure: to Professor J. W. Bright for constant encouragement and criticism; to Professor W. E. Leonard, of the University of Wisconsin, who has read my book in manuscript, for several valuable suggestions; to Mr. John Murray for permission to use the copyright material in the Coleridge-Prothero Byron; to Mr. Paul Elmer More and Mr. Richard Edgcumbe for courteous replies to queries; to Mr. George Shipley and Mr. Thomas DeC. Ruth for most welcome aid with the proofs; and to my earliest and best guide in poetry as in all things

2

my father.

S. C. C., Jr.

1 William Gerard, Byron Restudied in his Dramas, London, 1886, is almost worthless.

2 The abbreviations P. and LJ. are used throughout this book for the Poems, edited by E. H. Coleridge, and the Letters and Journals, edited by R. L. Prothero, respectively.