Tag Archives: Byron

“Name not his name”: Poetic Identity and the Legacy of “Byron”

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Many of our posts have engaged with issues of media and mediation. Oftentimes, we set out to explore the relationship between the location of a given Romantic era text and the connection between that location and the work’s meaning. In the era following Kittler’s Discourse Networks, Paul Magnuson’s Reading Public Romanticism, and Siskin and Warner’s This is Enlightenment Volume, scholars are asking where we find a text, or “in what” does it occur.

With this brief frame in mind, I want to remobilize some of the questions currently being asked by scholars of the Romantic period in order to examine Lord Byron’s celebrity. In Elizabeth Barret Browning’s 1824 elegy “Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron,” the young poet explores the nature of poetic identity. This post will suggest that Barret Browning’s work shows another use, or perhaps a way to re-purpose, the larger issues currently being explored by scholars. Where does Barret Browning locate “Byron”? In what does his legacy reside? What work does “Byron” allow a young female writer to do?

Name not his Name

“ — I am not now

That which I have been.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning turns to these lines from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in order to begin her elegiac poem “Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron”.  While Barrett Browning’s poem re-contextualizes these lines from Childe Harold, it is also keenly aware of the impact grammatical intricacies can have on the construction and presentation of self.  As E.W. Orr points out, in this new context, Byron’s own words describe his “passage from this life”.[1]  However, Barrett Browning’s epigraph does far more than simply mourn the death of a fellow poet; it frames a work which can be seen as a meditation on the nature of poetic identity.  Barrett Browning, who was a young woman beginning to find her poetic voice at the time of composition, blurs the line which separates Byron the man from the “fictitious personage” he created: “He was, and is not!  Græcia’s trembling shore, / Sighing through all her palmy groves, shall tell / That Harold’s pilgrimage at last is o’er-”.[2]  Jane Stabler’s recent work claims that this passage reveals that, for Barrett Browning, Byron represents a “violent collision of presence and absence”.[3]  That is, the first line of the poem recognizes the ways in which Byron both occupies and distances himself from his work.  While it is indeed tempting to analyze the claim that Lord Byron “was” and “is not”, Barrett Browning complicates such a reading by suggesting that Childe Harold, not Byron himself, may be the referent for “He”.  Harold, as the imaginative creation of Byron the poet indeed “was” and “is not” alive in the same manner as Byron.  Yet, the idea that “Harold’s pilgrimage at last is o’er” brings Byron and his creation closer together.  I believe that Barrett Browning does not use these lines to state that Harold’s pilgrimage has ended because of the author of his journeys is now dead, but, rather to make a much larger point about Byron’s shifting identities – his “absence and presence”.

While Barrett Browning begins by linking  Byron and Childe Harold, the second and third stanzas move away from the discussion of the relationship between Byron and his poetic creations.  Within the second stanza, Barrett Browning recasts the poet as the champion of Greek independence.  The speaker calls upon the Greeks to mourn “That generous heart where genius thrill’d divine, / Hath spent its last most glorious throb for thee”.[4]  It is this selfless heart which spent “its last most glorious throb” fighting for the Greeks that the third stanza attempts to draw attention to: “Britannia’s Poet!  Græcia’s hero, sleeps! / And Freedom, bending o’er the breathless clay, / Lifts up her voice, and in her anguish weeps!”[5]  These lines simultaneously depict Byron as Greek freedom fighter and “Britania’s poet!”.  Despite his permanent departure from England in 1816, after his separation proceedings, as well as his desire to “shake the dust of England from his shoes”,[6] Barrett Browning attempts to renationalize Byron.

In the fourth and final stanza, the speaker begins to find the tenor of the poem too much to bear and describes the journey of Byron’s body back to England for burial: “Soon, ’midst the shriekings of the tossing wind, / The ‘dark blue depths’ he sang of, shall have bore / Our all of Byron to his native shore!”[7]  The emphasis on the term “all” reinforces the importance of Byron’s name and his physical body.  These lines mark the first and only time that “Byron” actually appears in the text.  However, as the previous stanzas and the varying identities which they describe reveal, Byron has already been embodied as a creation of his own imagination, as Greek liberator, and as the poetic voice of Britain.  Byron’s name and physical body – as well as his body of work – become sites of meaning which are susceptible to and, at times, court numerous different identities.

Barrett Browning’s interest in Byron’s name emerges again in“Stanzas Occasioned by a Passage in Mr. Emerson’s Journal, Which States that on the Mention of Lord Byron’s Name, Captain Demetrius, An Old Roumeliot, Burst Into Tears”.  This lengthy title performs two key functions.  First, it reveals just how far Byron’s fame spread.  Second, and more importantly, the title reveals Barrett Browning’s distance from the event which her poem attempts to capture.  That is, the poem is “occasioned by” her reading Emerson’s description of an old sailor’s reaction to the mention of Byron’s name.  Although Barrett Browning assumes the role of Captain Demetrius, the reader must recognize that she is still present within the poem.  Or, in other words, she is both present and absent.  The opening of the poem emphasizes the importance of “Byron”: “Name not his name, or look afar – / For when my spirit hears / That name, its strength is turned to woe – / My voice is turned to tears”.[8]  The speaker attempts to capture Captain Demetrius’ sentiments and expresses a desire to avoid emotional trauma by convincing others not to utter Byron’s name.  However, “Byron” holds so many significations precisely because the poet himself has been named.  Similarly to the numerous identities present in “Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron” describes, the speaker associates Byron with poetry, Greek independence, and British glory. In other words, “Byron” has become a designation that stands in for Byron the poet, Byron the Greek liberator, and Byron the celebrity.  Together the two poems show that Byron seems to have “become a name”.[9]

[1] Orr 34

[2] Stanzas to Lord Byron, lines 1-3

[3] Stabler Byron, Poetics and History pg 2

[4] Barrett Browning lines 16-17

[5] Barrett Browning lines 19-21

[6] Stabler Byron, Poetics and History pg 1

[7] Barrett Browning lines 30-32

[8] Barrett Browning Stanzas Occasioned lines 1-4

[9] Tennyson, Norton Critical Edition line 11

Gentlemanly Furnishings and Textual Liberation

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In our previous post, Veronica Goosey asked what place cleverness or scholarly play had in academic writing. As my title indicates, I have decided that play should have a more prominent role in my scholarly endeavors.

This post picks up issues of scholarly practice and continues the blog’s larger discussion of media by examining Percy Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo.

The central philosophic debate and its interruption by the figure of the maniac in Shelley’s poem have been the topics of much scholarly commentary. Raymond D. Havens argues that the argument is indeed forgotten and “although the poem continues for a hundred lines after the madman has ceased to speak,” there is “no word concerning the subject of discussion” (649). Charles Robinson claims that the poem displays the poets’ contrasting views regarding the human condition but does not pick a winner. I want to suggest that a close examination of the physical spaces of the poem alters how we are to adjudicate the central debate. The fatalistic Count Maddalo believes that the madhouse functions as a symbol of humanity’s fate. In order to assist the maniac, Maddalo offers gifts that attempt to recreate his own gentlemanly estate. Maddalo provides the maniac with the trappings of a gentleman in the hopes that he will be able to participate in gentlemanly discourse. Julian, on the other hand, offers the maniac something quite different. The narrative account of the maniac captures the madman’s words, allows them to circulate to a wider audience, and provides a type of textual liberation. I hope to show that the maniac’s interruption in Julian and Maddalo should be read as cautionary tale for poets like Maddalo/Byron.

Maddalo’s description of the madhouse plays a crucial role in understanding the central debate regarding free will and freedom in general. Looking out on the madhouse and its tolling belfry, Maddalo says, “And such . . . is our mortality / And this must be the emblem and the sign / Of what should be eternal and divine” (l. 120-122). As Robinson accurately points out, these lines echo Byron’s famous 1816 poem Prometheus. In Byron’s work, Prometheus the demigod functions as an “emblem.” Byron’s speaker calls Prometheus “a symbol and a sign / To Mortals of their fate and force; / Like thee, Man is in part divine, / A troubled stream from a pure source” (l. 45-48). Here, the concept of a divine and predetermined “fate” is at odds with the “force” that mortals possess. In Byron’s poem, Jupiter punishes Prometheus for taking knowledge to Earth and for refusing to tell him the secret of his downfall. The demigod emerges as a powerful representative of fallen mankind because he clings to his mortal “force,” his will. Byron’s speaker closes by claiming that the will can endure torture and never can be killed. Ultimately, the will becomes “Its own concenter’d recompense, / Triumphant where it dares defy, / And making Death a Victory” (l. 57-59). Despite being chained to a rock and tortured, Prometheus’s unwillingness to concede to the demands of Jupiter makes even “Death a Victory.” In Shelley’s poem, Maddalo projects the description of Prometheus onto the madhouse. It is important to recognize that his description comes before the reader has been introduced to the figure of the maniac. Therefore, there is not yet a representative for the madhouse. Instead, the characteristics of Prometheus are part of a particular space. Like the chains that bind Prometheus to the rock, the madhouse and its walls, for Maddalo, represent the “fate” of those who exert their mortal “force.”

The projection of Promethean features onto the madhouse alters the manner in which we should read Maddalo’s gifts to the maniac. Maddalo believes that a change in environment has the potential to improve the maniac. According to Kelvin Everest, “Maddalo attempts to alleviate the maniac’s suffering by creating the illusion of a gentlemanly normality” (682). By providing the maniac with the accoutrements of a gentleman, Maddalo hopes to foster the maniac’s inner gentility: “I fitted up for him / Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim, / And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers” (252-254). The “busts,” “books,” and “urns for flowers,” can help the maniac enter into the type of gentlemanly discourse that Maddalo and Julian represent. In actuality, however, the gifts seem to allow the maniac to play the part of a Byronic hero. Julian and Maddalo first encounter the maniac “sitting mournfully / Near a piano” in his room that overlooks the sea (l. 273-274). Further more, when the maniac starts to speak to himself, Julian claims that “his words came each / Unmodulated, cold, expressionless; / But that from one jarred accent you might guess / It was despair that made them so uniform” (l. 291-294). As the wind howls and a “gusty storm / Hissed through the window,” the maniac’s words acquire a type of uniformity thanks to his “despair” (l. 295-296). Despite the kindness of Maddalo’s gifts, nothing that he offers removes the maniac from the “emblem and the sign” of man’s degraded condition. Rather, Maddalo’s gifts help the maniac better play the part of the brooding and isolated Byronic hero.

If Maddalo gives the maniac the furnishings of a gentleman, what then does Julian offer the slighted lover? Julian’s gift to the maniac is a bit more difficult to locate. I want to suggest that Julian offers the poem itself, thus enabling the maniac’s words to circulate and reach new audiences. In other words, while Maddalo offers material objects to alter a problematic space, Julian’s narrative offers a type of figurative liberation. According to Everest, “The maniac has two audiences in the poem; the absent ex-lover that his speech is addressed to, and the unseen Julian and Maddalo who overhear him” (681). Julian and Maddalo the poem, on the other hand, has the potential to reach a much wider audience. Publication of the poem also undoes some of the maniac’s melancholic proclamations. The maniac can no longer speak his soliloquies or “hide” beneath “words like embers” (l. 503-504). Instead, his story circulates beyond the confines of the emblematic madhouse and functions as a type of cautionary tale. But who, then, is the target audience for Shelley’s words of warning? Interestingly, the largest clue comes from Maddalo. It is Maddalo who provides the concluding summation of the encounter with the maniac. After returning home, Maddalo says, “Most wretched men / Are cradled into poetry by wrong, / They learn in suffering what they teach in song” (l. 544-546). Maddalo seems to be describing a poet who, at least in part, resembles Byron. A poet who would compose a work that, like Prometheus, treats fate and the human will as competing forces and imagines confinement as fallen mankind’s inevitable lot. The maniac exhibits traits and inhabits a space that better reflect Maddalo’s situation than that of Julian.

Julian’s pledge to discover himself by studying Maddalo seems to collapse the two figures together and challenge the suggestion that the maniac’s story is a warning to poets like Maddalo/Byron. Everest argues that Julian chooses to “aspire” to “the life of Maddalo” rather than the life of the maniac (683). However, Julian’s final decision is not a simple binary with the maniac and Maddalo providing two different ways of proceeding. Before he makes his pledge to find himself in his friend, Julian imagines himself staying in Venice because “books are there, / Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair” (l. 554-555). It is important to recognize that this list of items is similar to the gentlemanly gifts that Maddalo gives to the maniac. Julian goes on to picture himself sitting alongside Maddalo in his “great palace” (l. 559). Julian does not simply want to emulate Maddalo but rather learn his ways in order to “reclaim him from his dark estate” (my emphasis, l. 574). In other words, Julian wants to remove Maddalo from the type of environment that he currently occupies. He believes that his presence and conversation have the potential bring about some change and “reclaim” Maddalo from his “dark estate.”

Maddalo offers gentlemanly gifts that simply recapitulate his own situation. While the markers of gentlemanly status help spruce up the maniac’s environment, they do not remove him from the confines of the madhouse. Julian, in contrast, creates a poem that allows the maniac’s words to escape the walls of the asylum. The poem transforms the maniac’s soliloquies into poetry and allows his words to circulate to a much wider audience. The absent ex-lover and the hidden Julian and Maddalo are not the only ones who are able to hear his woeful words. Julian sees the maniac’s story not as a warning against his own theories, but an exaggerated endpoint of Maddalo’s fatalism. Ultimately, Julian seeks to liberate both the maniac and Maddalo from the confines of their respective situations.

Works Cited

Everest, Kelvin. “Shelley’s Doubles: An Approach to Julian and Maddalo.” Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman & Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton, 2002. p. 675-683.

Havens, Raymond D. “Julian and Maddalo.” Studies in Philology 27.4 (Oct. 1930), 648-653.

Lord Byron. Lord Byron: The Major Works. Ed. Jerome McGann. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.

Robinson, Charles. Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight. Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP, 1976.

Shelley, Percy. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman & Neil Fraistat. New York: Norton, 2002.

R. A. Sessler

Review: Charm, or de casibus Literary Scholarship?

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Hadley J. Mozer “‘Ozymandias,’ or de Casibus Lord Byron: Literary Celebrity on the Rocks.” European Romantic Review 21.6 (2010):727-749.

Hadley Mozer’s article arguing that Shelley’s sonnet should be read as a lecture to Byron on the vanity of his celebrity won Article of the Year at the 2010 NASSR conference. I attended the conference, and heard several highly complimentary things said of the piece. So when I returned to the article to study its merits more closely, I was somewhat surprised.
The first surprise—a pleasant one—was finding the cleverness of the title recurring throughout the essay. The writing is playful, witty, and a pleasure to read. But despite the charm of Mozer’s wordplay, I found myself not only unconvinced by Mozer’s argument, but convinced that it was a stretch. Mozer’s argument that Shelley experienced a sense of inferiority to Byron in the late 18-teens was well-researched, well-argued, and not, I would think, particularly controversial. Locating in ‘Ozymandias’ an early start to Shelley’s poetic engagements with Byron seemed an intriguing prospect, but the evidence Mozer presents in letters and other poems provide at best circumstantial support. Mozer’s shift to critical interest in identifying the Shelley’s source for the “shattered visage” provides a wealth of historical detail and successfully engages it to disprove earlier claims, and support the interpretation that Shelley’s statuary remains are not based on any actual Egyptian statuary.
Mozer’s archival work is impressive, but the leap from “not based on Egyptian statuary” to “based on Byronic portraits” is questionable. Byron’s poetry, portraits, and bust, along with their reproductions, provide ample evidence that one public version of Byron, the arrogant, brooding Byronic hero, has features which resemble Shelley’s poetic description of the statue of Ozymandias. But Mozer’s claim that this resemblance is the result of Shelley’s attempt to “Byronize” the pharoah in order to critique the poet is problematic. The pharoah’s obessions with monuments to himself could plausibly evoke the image-management in which Byron engaged, but only if we accept Mozer’s claim that Shelley “Byronizes” the statue of Ozymandias, which I found to be the article’s weakest claim, seductive though it was.
Similarly, the genre argument that this ekphrastic sonnet should be read as a de casibus poem held some appeal initially, but the connections between “Ozymandias” and a form of history writing and moral instruction long associated with tragedy are not as strong as one woule hope. Perhaps further research will strengthen what appears in this article as an intriguing possibility. But by Mozer’s own acknowledgement, Shelley departs from de casibus tradition in so many ways, it seems as though any influence the genre might have had on the poem was not enough to merit the claim that the sonnet is a de casibus poem. Mozer’s argument that Byron at least may have read it in this fashion, as supported by the end of canto 1 of Don Juan, is excitingbut under-investigated.
Mozer’s essay demonstrates exemplary writing and research, and the argument itself is provacative, if not entirely persuasive. If “Ózymandias” is indeed “a veiled de casibus meditation on the vanity of Byron’s literary celebrity,” I would argue that the veil is quite thick (743). Yet if, as article of the year, this essay represents the work Romanticists want to see in journal publications, then there are several implications for graduate students. Here are a few: 1) Make a bold claim; 2) Integrate archival research; and, 3) Be playful.
A bold claim should be plausible and provocative, but needn’t necessarily be proven—or even provable. Our job isn’t so much to solve a problem, but to lay out a problem’s parameters and poke around its implications. The more boldly you do that, the more interesting the essay is to read, as long as you have sufficient support.
In answer to that caveat is point two: archival research. We all love it. Finding unusual or neglecting archival materials is a favorite tactic among scholars in the humanties. Applying such texts to a problem and integrating them into an ongoing scholarly debate is highly attractive. Half the seduction of Mozer’s article, for me at least, comes from the manner in which archival research is integrated into the argument.
Charm is also seductive. The more fun it is to read an article, the more seductive the argument appears. An argument may be rich in data supporting a claim which could change the course of literary scholarship, but the accessibility of the argument makes it readable and widens its circulation. In this case, I would argue that the wit and charm of the writing makes it a more appealing read than the argument merits, but this only showcases my own claim—that allowing yourself to be witty and playful in your writing will make your argument more attractive to your readership.

Veronica Goosey

If you have a response to Mozer’s article or our review, please do chime in.

Looking Back on Fall 2011 and What’s to Come . . .

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As this semester winds down, we’d like to recap some of our accomplishments from the past few months:

  • Our inaugural event in September on ‘Visionary Poetry and Romanticism’ featured a lively discussion of Blakean and Coleridgean takes on Visions, the Visual, the Visionary, and the aesthetic sphere. We were fortunate to have various GSAS students and fellow NYC-area Romanticists in attendance along with special guests Larry Lockridge and Maureen N. McLane.
  • In October, we held a Graduate School of Arts and Science-wide event on “Getting it Published,” a talk with William Germano and Cliff Siskin about the tricks of the trade to getting an article published or a dissertation converted to a book. We were pleased to host over 50 grad students and were able to sell copies of Germano’s two books, Getting it Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious About Serious Books and From Dissertation to Book.
  • After submitting a proposal for a staged reading of Byron’s Sardanapalus to the artistic directors of the Red Bull Theatre (http://www.redbulltheater.com/), they have agreed to collaborate with us on this potentially large event scheduled for next Fall 2012!  In addition to hosting a staged reading of the play at their venue with professional actors, we expect to turn this performance into a larger discussion among textual and performance scholars as well as performers and artistic directors. This conversation will conceive of Byron’s play as a mode of inquiry into the varied approaches these various players bring to a text. We imagine that a collaborative essay will arise from examining this complex process from the moment rehearsals begin at Red Bull through the discussion that follows the staged reading. More info to come shortly!
  • As a team, the organizers of our group are also working on a collaborative essay on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and Wordsworth’s  “Lines . . . above Tintern Abbey” based on some valuable discussion from our inaugural event on Romanticism and Visionary Poetry. More on this soon, too!
  • We have reached out to representatives from Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) to give a talk to our English department about their new software, Mediathread, an analysis tool (similar to Blackboard) that can import images and videos from a range of digital collections into a course-specific website. These visual objects can then be annotated, organized, discussed, and embedded into multimedia essays. Definitely very cool stuff! We expect to plan this talk for February 2012.

As we look ahead to next semester, we will naturally continue working on our “Kubla Khan”/”Tintern Abbey” paper, solidify our plans with Red Bull Theatre for the staged reading of Byron’s Sardanapalus (did we mention professional actors?), and set a date for Mark Phillipson’s talk on MediaThread for the faculty and grad students of our English Department.

However, we are hoping to organize some additional events. Ideally, we’d expand the ideas we considered with the visionary and visual from our inaugural event by looking into notions of prophecy and futurity. We are thinking about having a faculty panel focusing specifically on this rich and complex material; perhaps the structure would include one main talk and one faculty respondent.

We are also considering hosting one broader NYC-wide Romanticist event featuring some local scholars chatting about some cool Romantic-specific topics. We’ve only just begun thinking about this, but please stay tuned for more info soon!

On a final note (for now), we couldn’t be more pleased with the results this blog medium has helped produce; it has not only served as a record of our many conversations but has also helped generate additional thoughts and ideas. Moreover, we’re grateful to our many followers that we’ve been able to gather in such a short time. Excited for the new and multiple possibilities ahead, we hope you’ll continue to follow along, and, as ever, we encourage your contributions, responses, and attendance at our events!

Yours sincerely,

Veronica Goosey, Omar F. Miranda, and Randie Sessler

www.nyurrg.org

Coming Soon: Byron’s Sardanapalus?

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Lord Byron’s first drama Manfred was published in 1817. While the play proved a commercial success, it never made it to the stage. In 1820, however, Marino Faliero was published and began being performed at Drury Lane later that year. As Thomas L. Ashton points out, Byron’s play is severely edited. Therefore, like Coleridge’s Remorse, the scholarly critic has multiple objects of inquiry: the original version of the play, the staged production, and the text of that production.

But perhaps what is most interesting about the staging of Marino Faliero is Byron’s response. In 1821, Byron published a collection of dramas containing Sardanapalus, Cain, and The Two Foscari separately from his regular verse. Contemporary reviewer William Gifford and Victorian commentator Matthew Arnold see the collection as the poet’s attempt to distance his weak dramatic experimentations from the rest of his work. Yet the features of this volume demand more attention. The collection lacks the usual Byronic trappings; most notably there is no frontispiece of the poet himself. Also, in his 1821 review of Sardanapalus, John Gibson Lockhart asks why Byron and his publisher John Murray decided to release the new collection during the same week that John Constable released Pirate, the new Walter Scott novel (BVW 398). Byron fought Murray to have his three dramas published at the end of theater season, despite the fact that such a release date would make the collection a commercial rival with Britain’s other top selling writer.

What if one of the plays in Byron’s 1821 collection made it to the stage in the poet’s lifetime? What are the implications of staging a play that the author contends was not written for the playhouse? In other words, what happens when the play is remediated?

These are some of the questions that we are seeking to address by collaborating with a New York theater for a production of Sardanapalus. What would it mean to have a play that scholars have placed firmly under the banner of Mental Theater become part of a 21st Century New York theater’s repertoire? What insights could scholars gain by working with actors? Which aspects of the play would a theatrical production bring to the forefront and which would it make recede into the background? Can the stage be the new vehicle for reviving and teaching Romantic dramas? If so, we may very well have to redefine Romantic irony.

Romantic Drama: Experiments, Mental Theater, and Media

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In the introduction to the Cornell edition of The Borderers, Robert Osborne claims that William Wordsworth’s inability to find a theater manager willing to stage the 1797 early version of his play makes the poet’s dramatic effort a failure. Osborne notes that Wordsworth “justifiably attributed his failure ‘to the depraved State of the Stage at present,’ and was ‘underdetemin’d’ whether to wait for a change in theatrical taste ‘or publish it immediately’” (5). It is important to recognize that publication of the text of the play was not Wordsworth’s original intention. Only after his drama was rejected by the managers of both Covent Garden and Drury Lane did Wordsworth consider seeing whether his “experiment” was “adopted for the closet” (Letters 6).  Wordsworth’s own classification of his play along with the fact that he originally wrote with an eye towards the stage has led many critics to dismiss The Borderers as a dramatic experiment that ultimately failed. The success of the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, a collection that Wordsworth again called an “experiment,” therefore presents critics with a convenient transition from experimental failure to experimental success. However, such critical narratives depend upon the manner in which one defines success as well as where one locates Wordsworth’s experimentation. Is contemporaneous stage production or publication of a drama necessary for one to label it a success? Is Lyrical Ballads more successful than The Borderers because it made it to the press and thus reached a contemporary audience?

The Borderers begins to show the complex position Romantic dramas occupy in modern scholarly discourse. Wordsworth and Coleridge famously looked to the staged drama as the first vehicle that would help them create the taste by which they would be received. If, as I have proposed above, we define contemporary staging as the marker of success of a given Romantic drama, then only the 1813 production of Coleridge’s Remorse and the 1821 staging of Lord Byron’s Marino Faliero would qualify for such distinction. Alan Richardson’s landmark study A Mental Theater argues for a new understanding of the Romantics’ foray into drama. According to Richardson, “Whether condemned for his elitist pose and disdain for the public, or defended as a well-meaning but anachronistic reformer, the Romantic poet as dramatist is judged against his alleged “retreat” from the theater, rather than for the invention of a fundamentally new poetic form” (3). While Richardson’s work does a tremendous amount of valuable work to resuscitate the dramatic efforts of the second generation Romantics, his book, as the preceding passage makes clear, places Romantic dramas in the larger genre of poetry. The mental drama, a phrase that first appears in Byron’s letters, or closet drama becomes part of a greater poetic history. Building on Richardson’s foundational work, Daniel P. Watkins’s A Materialist Critique English Romantic Drama attempts to implement a materialist methodology that will allow scholars to more accurately engage with the dramas of Byron, Shelley, and other prominent Romantic figures. Watkins creates what he calls the “drama – theater distinctions” (4). That is, the text of a play is a drama while its staged production is an entirely different object of study.

Together, the work of Richardson and Watkins shows the rich areas of inquiry that demand further examination. Watkins is right to recognize the medial distinction between a staged production and a text of that production. If we follow his formulation, studying Coleridge’s Remorse involves much more than simply looking at the text of the play. Scholars should ask where does each iteration of the play occur – in what can it be found? In order to examine Coleridge’s drama fully, we need to look at the original 1797 written version of the drama, titled Osorio, the excerpts that appear as poems and are retitled in the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads, the context and response to the 1813 production of Remorse at Drury Lane, and the publication of the text of that production.

The example of Remorse raises a series of crucial questions: What is the relationship between media and meaning? Where did major Romantic dramas originally appear? What role did the poet himself play in the appearance/placement/presentation of a particular drama? What we can learn from that placement? And, how do we negotiate artistic intent?