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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron, was the son of a profligate guardsman
and an eccentric Scottish heiress. He was born in London on January 22, 1788,
educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and came into prominence
with the publication of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (1809), a satire
provoked by an adverse criticism of his youthful "Hours of Idleness" in the
"Edinburgh Review." After two years of travel on the Continent, he published
the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," and in 1815 married Miss Milbanke, a
prospective heiress. She left him a year later, and in the scandal which
accompanied the separation Byron became very unpopular. He left England never
to return, and spent most of his remaining years in Italy.
[See Lord Byron]
It is unnecessary to follow in detail the history of his life abroad. In
spite of great irregularities in conduct, Byron continued to write copiously,
seldom with care or attention to finish, but often with brilliance. His
Oriental tales, which made him the hero of the sentimental readers of the day,
"The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," had been written in the
years preceding his marriage; "Manfred," his first and in many respects his
most interesting drama, appeared in 1817; "Don Juan" came out at intervals
from 1819 to 1824; and during the same period he produced with extraordinary
rapidity a group of plays of which the so - called mystery, "Cain," is the
most important. "The Vision of Judgment," a merciless satire on Southey`s
apotheosis of George III, followed in 1822.
Byron had been interested in revolutionary politics in Italy, and when
the Greeks revolted against the Turks in 1823 he joined them as a volunteer;
but before he saw fighting he died of fever at Missolonghi, April 19, 1824.
His death at least was worthy of the noblest passion of his life, the passion
for liberty.
For dramatic writing Byron was not favorably endowed. His egotism was too
persistent to enable him to enter vitally and sympathetically into a variety
of characters, and the hero of his plays, as of his poems, is usually himself
more or less disguised. Yet some of his most eloquent lines are to be found in
his dramas, and "Manfred" is an impressive and characteristic product of one
of the most brilliantly gifted of English poets.
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