Byron's other dramas depart farther than any of these, not only from
fitness for the stage, but from likeness to any definite dramatic species.
Of the four, however, all of which deal with a world of spirits, "Manfred"
and "Cain" have tragic themes and protagonists. "It was," wrote Byron, "the
Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else much more than Faustus that
made me write Manfred." Nature, the ever-recurring theme of the romantic
poets, is here given something akin to dramatic treatment. The impassioned
descriptions create a presence, not one "that disturbs him with the joy of
elevated thoughts," but "the wild comrade of Manfred's antipathy to
men."[51] The mountains become sharers in the hero's tirades, though their
nights' "dim and solitary loveliness" is the only power that curbs his
fierce unrest. "Cain," less lyrical and far more distinct in its
presentation of dramatic conflict, may rightly be claimed by romantic
tragedy for its own. It is not merely Byron's own personality which finds
expression here, but the revolt against convention and creed, so
characteristic of the romantic movement. The demands of the individual man
against society and providence make up the tragic theme. The tragedy of
individual passion, leaping the bounds of history, romance, or actuality,
is here divorced from the theatre, divorced indeed from any semblance to
the models of tragedy; but in its symbolistic and allegorical presentation
of philosophical questionings still keeps close to the essentials of great
dramatic art, the searching of the motives and conflicts of human passion.
Cain is of the brotherhood of Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare's Hamlet
and other tragic heroes who chafe against finite limitations, greatly
seeking after knowledge and certainty, and finding the very curiosity of
their discontent the weapon of their own destruction. The theme is an
eternal one in tragedy, but it was left to the romanticists fully to
realize its meaning, and to Byron to give it isolation and grandeur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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