They are better, and
worse, than himself. They have stronger wills, more definite purposes, but
less genial and less versatile natures. But it remains true, that when he
tried to represent a character totally different from himself, the result
is either unreal or uninteresting. _Marino Faliero_, begun April, finished
July, 1820, and prefixed by a humorous dedication to Goethe--which was,
however, suppressed--was brought on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre early
in 1821, badly mangled, appointed, and acted--and damned.
Byron seems to have been sincere in saying he did not intend any of his
plays to be represented. We are more inclined to accuse him of
self-deception when he asserts that he did not mean them to be popular;
but he took sure means to prevent them from being so. _Marino Faliero_, in
particular, was pronounced by Dr. John Watkins--old Grobius himself--"to
be the dullest of dull plays;" and even the warmest admirers of the poet
had to confess that the style was cumbrous. The story may be true, but it
is none the less unnatural. The characters are comparatively commonplace,
the women especially being mere shadows; the motion is slow; and the
inevitable passages of fine writing are, as the extolled soliloquy of
Lioni, rather rhetorical than imaginative.
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