Manfred: A Dramatic Poem: “Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
By Lord Byron
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About this ebook
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, but more commonly known as just Byron was a leading English poet in the Romantic Movement along with Keats and Shelley. Byron was born on January 22nd, 1788. He was a great traveller across Europe, spending many years in Italy and much time in Greece. With his aristocratic indulgences, flamboyant style along with his debts, and a string of lovers he was the constant talk of society. In 1823 he joined the Greeks in their war of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, both helping to fund and advise on the war’s conduct. It was an extraordinary adventure, even by his own standards. But, for us, it is his poetry for which he is mainly remembered even though it is difficult to see where he had time to write his works of immense beauty. But write them he did. He died on April 19th 1824 after having contracted a cold which, on the advice of his doctors, was treated with blood-letting. This cause complications and a violent fever set in. Byron died like his fellow romantics, tragically young and on some foreign field.
Lord Byron
Lord Byron was an English poet and the most infamous of the English Romantics, glorified for his immoderate ways in both love and money. Benefitting from a privileged upbringing, Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage upon his return from his Grand Tour in 1811, and the poem was received with such acclaim that he became the focus of a public mania. Following the dissolution of his short-lived marriage in 1816, Byron left England amid rumours of infidelity, sodomy, and incest. In self-imposed exile in Italy Byron completed Childe Harold and Don Juan. He also took a great interest in Armenian culture, writing of the oppression of the Armenian people under Ottoman rule; and in 1823, he aided Greece in its quest for independence from Turkey by fitting out the Greek navy at his own expense. Two centuries of references to, and depictions of Byron in literature, music, and film began even before his death in 1824.
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Manfred - Lord Byron
Manfred by Lord Byron
A DRAMATIC POEM
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, but more commonly known as just Byron was a leading English poet in the Romantic Movement along with Keats and Shelley.
Byron was born on January 22nd, 1788. He was a great traveller across Europe, spending many years in Italy and much time in Greece. With his aristocratic indulgences, flamboyant style along with his debts, and a string of lovers he was the constant talk of society.
In 1823 he joined the Greeks in their war of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, both helping to fund and advise on the war’s conduct.
It was an extraordinary adventure, even by his own standards. But, for us, it is his poetry for which he is mainly remembered even though it is difficult to see where he had time to write his works of immense beauty. But write them he did.
He died on April 19th 1824 after having contracted a cold which, on the advice of his doctors, was treated with blood-letting. This cause complications and a violent fever set in. Byron died like his fellow romantics, tragically young and on some foreign field.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Hamlet, Act i. Scene 5, Lines 166, 167.
Index of Contents
INTRODUCTION TO MANFRED
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
ACT I
SCENE I - Manfred Alone. Scene, a Gothic Gallery. Time, Midnight
SCENE II - The Mountain of the Jungfrau. Time, Morning
ACT II
SCENE I - A Cottage Among the Bernese Alps
SCENE II - A Lower Valley in the Alps.―A Cataract
SCENE III - The Summit of the Jungfrau Mountain
SCENE IV - The Hall of Arimanes
ACT III
SCENE I - A Hall in the Castle of Manfred
SCENE II - Another Chamber
SCENE III - The Mountains―The Castle of Manfred at Some Distance―A Terrace Before a Tower. Time, Twilight
SCENE IV - Interior of the Tower
FOOTNOTES
LORD BYRON – A Short Biography
LORD BYRON – A Concise Bibliography
Manfred, a choral tragedy in three acts, was performed at Covent Garden Theatre, October 29-November 14, 1834 [Denvil (afterwards known as Manfred
Denvil) took the part of Manfred,
and Miss Ellen Tree (afterwards Mrs. Charles Kean) played The Witch of the Alps
]; at Drury Lane Theatre, October 10, 1863-64 [Phelps played Manfred,
Miss Rosa Le Clercq The Phantom of Astarte,
and Miss Heath The Witch of the Alps
]; at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, March 27-April 20, 1867 [Charles Calvert played Manfred
]; and again, in 1867, under the same management, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool; and at the Princess's Theatre Royal, London, August 16, 1873 [Charles Dillon played Manfred;
music by Sir Henry Bishop, as in 1834].
Overtures, etc.
Music to Byron's Manfred
(overture and incidental music and choruses), by R. Schumann, 1850.
Incidental Music,
composed, in 1897, by Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (at the request of Sir Henry Irving); heard (in part only) at a concert in Queen's Hall, May, 1899.
Manfred Symphony
(four tableaux after the Poem by Byron), composed by Tschaikowsky, 1885; first heard in London, autumn, 1898.]
INTRODUCTION TO MANFRED
Byron passed four months and three weeks in Switzerland. He arrived at the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Sécheron, on Saturday, May 25, and he left the Campagne Diodati for Italy on Sunday, October 6, 1816. Within that period he wrote the greater part of the Third Canto of Childe Harold, he began and finished the Prisoner of Chillon, its seven attendant poems, and the Monody on the death of Sheridan, and he began Manfred.
A note to the Incantation
(Manfred, act i. sc. 1, lines 192-261), which was begun in July and published together with the Prisoner of Chillon, December 5, 1816, records the existence of an unfinished Witch Drama
(First Edition, p. 46); but, apart from this, the first announcement of his new work is contained in a letter to Murray, dated Venice, February 15, 1817 (Letters, 1900, iv. 52). I forgot,
he writes, to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue (in blank verse) or drama ... begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind.
The letter is imperfect, but some pages of extracts
which were forwarded under the same cover have been preserved. Ten days later (February 25) he reverts to these extracts,
and on February 28 he despatches a fair copy of the first act. On March 9 he remits the third and final act of his dramatic poem
(a definition adopted as a second title), but under reserve as to publication, and with a strict injunction to Murray to submit it to Mr. Gifford and to whomsoever you please besides.
It is certain that this third act was written at Venice (Letter to Murray, April 14), and it may be taken for granted that the composition of the first two acts belongs to the tour in the Bernese Alps (September 17-29), or to the last days at Diodati (September 30 to October 5, 1816), when the estro (see Letter to Murray, January 2, 1817) was upon him, when his Passions slept,
and, in spite of all that had come and gone and could not go, his spirit was
uplifted by the majesty and the power and the glory
of Nature.
Gifford's verdict on the first act was that it was wonderfully poetical
and merited publication,
but, as Byron had foreseen, he did not by any means like
the third act. It was, as its author admitted (Letter to Murray, April 14) damnably bad,
and savoured of the dregs of a fever,
for which the Carnival (Letter to Murray, February 28) or, more probably, the climate and insanitary palaces
of Venice were responsible. Some weeks went by before there was either leisure or