Byron’s Manfred (1817) and Tragedy in the ‘Mental Theatre’

Abstract

This journal article presents a new interpretation of Byron’s work by setting out Byron’s approach to tragedy. Byron was a prolific tragedian, completing six tragic plays, but he insisted that his plays were closet dramas, to be experienced in the reader’s ‘Mental Theatre’, and not to be performed. While Byron’s attitude has often been dismissed by critics, this article takes his insistence on the reading of his plays as the starting point for understanding what Byron believed tragic drama should achieve and what it is for. Reading Byron’s preference for reading in the context of contemporary theatrical practices, the article contends that Byron’s preference for tragedy-as-read is rooted in his belief in the power of the imagination, and presents a vision of tragedy as something individual and private. It then provides a new reading of Byron’s play Manfred (1817) which both exemplifies and complicates this idea, and develops his vision of tragedy further. The article therefore offers a fresh way of approaching the genre of closet plays and the work of a key Romantic writer, and provides a new approach to tragedy which contributes to broader critical discussions about how tragedy is experienced and theorised