Introduction to Manfred. THE Overwrought mental excitement from which Lord Byron was suffering when he gave birth to the Third Canto of the "Childe Harold," also produced" Manfred." He wrote to his publisher from Venice in the early part of 1817:-"I forgot to mention to you that a kind of poem in dialogue (in blank verse) or drama, from which The Incantation' is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished. It is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons-but two or three-are spirits of the earth and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the Third Act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower, where he had studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt." The Third Act of this dramatic poem was written at Venice, when Lord Byron was worn-out both bodily and mentally. The manuscript was fortunately ordered to be submitted to Mr Gifford, who condemned it as feeble in execution, and unworthy of the first two Acts. It was therefore in greater part re-written, and "Manfred" in its present state will be ranked very high among the poet's works. Although Byron had never read Goethe's Faust (having, indeed, no knowledge of German), he had heard extracts from it translated by Monk Lewis, and his powers of assimilation and unconscious reproduction were wonderful. The great German poet, however, did full justice to his rival, as will be seen by the note printed in this edition. Byron himself had a very modest opinion of "Manfred," and, so far as he could, wrote it so as to be impossible for the stage. Yet "Manfred" was produced at Drury Lane Theatre not very long ago, with great success, and held the stage for a considerable time. And it is probable that we shall see "Manfred" and "Sardanapalus" revived on the stage sooner than some of the dramas professedly written by poets for representation, which have had all the chances of success that the prestige of great names can give, but have narrowly escaped entire failure. |