Tragicomedy, Bisexuality, and Byronism; or, Jokes and Their Relation to Sardanapalus

Abstract

For nineteenth-century readers, Byron was the embodiment of passion, aptly portrayed by Shelley as Maddalo, "a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. . . . His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men." 1 And so it is not surprising that before his ill-fated attempt to deliver Greece, Byron first tried his hand at rescuing Britain's theater, the nation's other representative assembly, from its profound debasement in spectacle and rant. The theater had need of Byron's talents, and in turn it provided him with a political forum of sorts. Throughout a period that saw vigorous government prosecution of Jacobin clubs, the theater functioned as a legitimate scene of political education and action; during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, it was rocked by price riots first in 1792 and again in 1809, prompting Elizabeth Inchbald to write, "If the public force the managers to reduce their prices, a revolution in England is effected." 2 Despite the best efforts of censors to screen plays for inflammatory content, audiences became increasingly adept at reading political significance into all kinds of material and increasingly sensitive to the collaboration between dramatic form and political meaning, whereby traditional genres like tragedy and the comedy of manners were thought to uphold official politics and culture. As Jeffrey Cox puts it, "Questions about the 'legitimate' drama were inevitably linked to questions of 'legitimacy' in the political realm. The 'illegitimate' drama was thus felt to be not only a threat to aesthetic quality . . . but also as a challenge to the political and cultural order." 3

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