The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 5: PoetryByron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
General
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 5: Poetry
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
English drama; English poetry
In conclusion, he deals with two possible objections which may be
brought against his theory: (1) that Byron would not have incurred the
risk of detection at the hands of the owners of the duchess's MS.; and
(2) that a great poet of assured fame and reputation could have had no
possible motive for perpetrating a literary fraud. The first objection
he answers by assuming that Byron would have counted on the reluctance
of the "Ponsonby family and the daughters of the Duchess" to rake up the
ashes of old scandals; the second, by pointing out that, in 1822, he was
making "frantic endeavours to obtain money, not for himself, but to help
the cause of Greece."
(1) With regard to the marked inferiority of _Werner_ to Byron's other
plays, and the relative proportion of adapted to original matter, Mr.
Leveson Gower appears to have been misled by the disingenuous criticism
of Maginn and other contemporary reviewers (_vide_ the Introduction,
etc., p. 326). There is no such inferiority, and the plagiarisms, which
were duly acknowledged, are confined to certain limited portions of the
play. (2) There is nothing unusual in the fact that the rough draft of
_Werner_ cannot be found. In fact, but few of the early drafts of the
dramas and other poems written in the later Italian days ever reached
Murray's hands, or are still in existence. The fair copy for the printer
alone was sent home. The time had gone by when Byron's publisher, who
was also his friend, would stipulate that "all the original MSS.,
copies and scraps" should fall to his share. But no argument can be
founded on so insignificant a circumstance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account