Susan J. Wolfson - ELH - 'A Problem Few Dare Imitate' - Sardanapalus and 'Effeminate Character''

"A Problem Few Dare Imitate": Sardanapalus and "Effeminate Character" Author(s): Susan J. Wolfson Source: ELH, Vol.
58, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 867-902 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2873285 . Accessed: 15/06/2013 23:07
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"A PROBLEM FEW DARE IMITATE": CHARACTER" AND "EFFEMINATE

BY SUSAN J.WOLFSON I
SARDANAPALUS
in character" on "effeminate Sardanapalus, Byron'smeditation was published late in 1821; the folthe idiom of ancientAssyria, lowing year, Hazlitt produced an essay "On Effeminacyof "1 The congruenceof his delineationof this character Character. at least in theearlyscenes,would tragedy, withtheheroofByron's have struck anyonewho had readtheplayorthegenerousexcerpts supplied in the reviews of 1822. Here are Hazlitt's opening sentences: a prevalence ofthesensiarisesfrom Effeminacy ofcharacter in a want offortitude to bear bility overthewill:oritconsists We theoccasion. however urgent fatigue, pain or to undergo to finger lift upa little ofpeoplewhocannot with instances meet indulgence from norgiveup thesmallest ruin, savethemselves out other cannot putthemselves They for thesakeofany person. oftheir wayon anyaccount. . . . Theylive in thepresent ofthepresent impulse. . . . beare thecreatures moment, is nothing to them. The slightest toy theuniverse yondthat, theempire oftheworld. (248) countervails thedegreeto whichSardanapalus would clearlyunderstood Byron in the 1820s notonlyas an historical subject,but provokeinterest on gender andthefate ofempire. discourses also within contemporary the complaints ofthe effeminate reiterates Hazlitt'scharacterization allies ofSardanapalus's empire:"Will had giventhefrustrated Byron to an irksome but necessary you rouse the indolentprocrastinator by shewinghimhow muchhe has to do? He will onlydraw effort, and representations" all yourintreaties (250). backthemorefor alliances are crossedin Hazlitt'sessay by two These compelling however:Hazlittat once broadens morecomplicated perspectives, the field of analysisby concedingthe general occurrenceof eftendenciesin themale character and,despitetheremarkfeminate to abable congruenceof his subjectwithByron'splay,attempts of Byronfrom any and questionable,figure solve the fascinating,
Press HopkinsUniversity ELH 58 (1991) 867-902 X 1991 by The Johns 867
such imputation.The first gesture emerges about halfwaythrough the essay, when its pronouns shift,fleetingly,from"he" to firstperson plural: "We laugh at the prophet of ill. . . . We resent wholesome counsel as an impertinence" (251); Hazlitt does not explicitly exempt himself fromthis failing.Yet as soon as he mentions the more overtlyambiguous Byron,he becomes more precise. He invokes the explanation of social identity-here, a class-based affectation-and reminds his readers of the manly vigor of Byron's poetic discourse: "Lord Byron is a pampered and aristocratic writer,but he is not effeminate,or we should not have his works with only the printer'sname to them!" (254).2 Despite such insistence, however, the issue remains open. The tone thatgoverns this logic is ironic, and the evidence equivocal: the absence of the author's name may indicate manly risks sufficientto provoke legal action, but the dodging of public accountability also reportsa certain failure of manly nerve.3 Byron's representation of "effeminate character" in Sardananot only does Bypalus predicts these problems of interpretation: ron associate it with a politics of evasion, he also embodies it in a hero cast as pampered, aristocratic,and effeminate all at once. Moreover, he perplexes thejudgments offaultwhich Hazlitt triesto settle: the play sets effeminacy amid a swirl of unstable, oftenconflicting,forces, aligning it, variously, with hedonism, eroticism, class privilege, sloth, self-mystification, ideological critique, political idealism, and humanitarianism.Could Byron have been playing out these complexities and contradictionsin the hope of discovering their inwroughtsocial, political, and psychological base? If so, the project risked incoherence, which the more conventionally oriented reviews did not hesitate to note. The British Review (already stung by Byron's ridicule of it as "my grandmother's review" [Don Juan 1.209]) complained that it was merely "whimsical" to produce "lectures on social morality from the mouth of the effeminateKing of Assyria," and protested "against the probable union of such manners as historyattributesto Sardanapalus, with such dispositions as are in this tragedyassigned to him by the poet." The reviewer, its editor William Roberts, was even moved to question "whether the best interests of society are not betrayed" by this patently"artificialmixture."Scots Magazine also objected to such license: "The passion foreffeminateenjoyments was never found in company with the love of humankind."4 The complaints had to do with more than the play's hero, forthe com-
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Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate
to synthesize was transparently plex of attributesByron was trying "Byronic"-both in the sense of drawing on a character type everyone readily identifiedwith him by the early 1820s, and in thatof staging his own privately voiced questions of character in early supporterof Italian liber1821 as Cavalier Servente and frustrated ation.5 Sardanapalus is notjust personal allegory turned to spectacle, however. As Roberts's remarks about "the best interests of society" suggest, to embody effeminacyin a head of state is to put extraordinary public pressure on questions of gender: "The sheking, / That less than woman . . . the effeminate thing that puts it [2.1.48-49; 95]) is ofconsequence governs" (as one detractor both as man and king. By placing an "effeminatecharacter" in a Byron gives himself and historically specific social configuration, his audience a way to think about how deeply judgments about gender are implicated in networks of political and cultural concerns.6
The interactionof self and social systemin this reading of gender has a wider range, one that evokes Shelley's proposition (in his Preface to Prometheus Unbound [1820]) that writers "are in one sense the creatorsand in anotherthe creations oftheirage." Yet this as Marjorie Levinson notes, double sense may be most interesting, for the way it disguises what "Shelley's own authorial practice demonstrates"-namely, that writers "create themselves as creatures-'creations'-of the age and they do so by refusing what is given to them as the age."7 When she goes on to describe this "manner of negating the given" as, paradoxically, "the determined expression of an epochal spirit" (3), the pun on "determined" prompts attention to how even the neat symmetriesof Shelley's formulation remain sensitive to the unstable economy of individual and social agency-in his terms,"internal powers" and "external influences (135)-in the creation of literarytexts. Byron is a compelling focus forsuch questions, given the event of "Byronism," a noun established by the time of Sardanapalus (see LJ, 8:114) to name a phenomenon both self-fashionedand created by the age. The forceof this double selfhood was feltacutely by Byronhimself during the months he was writingthe play, when he complained frequentlyabout the usurpation of his authorityby the "London Managers" who were stagingother of his plays against his will and over his protests.8This contest of self and social production, and the related question of how internalpower and external influence interact,is the larger context within which Sardanapalus is con-
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ceived. It also emerges as a subject of inquiry in the play itself, which is not just about its hero, but also about the cultural orders within which he acts and by which he is acted upon-and, more particularly,about the complex ways gender gets constructed by those interactions. Gender is the template of the play's investigationof how "social freedom" (4.1.81) is to be managed, power secured, and the integrity of a culture maintained and perpetuated. As the terms "feminine, "effeminate, "manly," and "unmanly" are summoned to evaluate the king, they also announce the codes of conduct and sensibilitythatbind Assyrian-and by analogy, any-culture.9 Concentratingthis vocabulary on Sardanapalus and his awakening into political and militaryaction, Byron inflectsit with an arrayof complementaryfigures.On one side are the patriarchs,whose example applies the harshestjudgment to the present king's "mode of life or rule" (1.2.246)-chief among these, Nimrod,"the hunter-founder of [the] race" (5.1.179), and his most direct political descendant, Salemenes, royal advisor and voice of empire. On anotherside are the palace women: the harem, especially Sardanapalus's favorite,his Greek slave Myrrha; and more remotely,but still with a claim on his gentleness, his queen, Zarina. Sardanapalus's oscillation between these gendered sets tempts some to view him as "a tragic hero with masculine and feminine tendencies in irreconcilable conflict.'10 Yet an importanteffectof Byron's play is to challenge such essentialist formulations and to sharpen our sense of how the categories of "masculine" and "feminine" themselves can become sites of conflict.If the company of women seems to draw Sardanapalus away fromresponsibilities of empire, the feminine sphere is not simply opposed to thatof Salemenes and Nimrod,but overlaps and merges with it in ways that unsettle the alignment of masculinityand empire. Zarina, the motherof princes, implicitlycalls up issues of dynasty; and Myrrha,along with Salemenes, despairs of the civic and political consequences of Sardanapalus's negligent luxury: although her motive is love ratherthan nationalism, she, too, urges care for "thy past fathers' race, / And for thy sons' inheritance" (1.2.589-90)-so much so, that one contemporaryreviewer calls her a "female Salemenes," a voice of "just apprehensions and manly counsels"; and, at moments of crisis, she displays capacities usually identifiedas masculine.1" The deepest confusion of gender is stirredby the legendary Semiramis, the warrior"Man-
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Queen" (1.1.43) and an inverse figureof the present "she-king": it is this female ancestor who epitomizes everythinghe finds most repellent in the imperatives of empire. at the center of the play into a bewilThese confusions intensify Byronmakes the batdering,and revelatory,set of transformations. tle, historically a proving ground of masculinity,into an arena of crisis and violence in which customarymanifestationsof gender dissolve. Here, Sardanapalus's effeminacyis not so much revoked as propelled into a new register, a spectacular androgyny: with "silk tiara and his flowing hair," he "fightsas he revels" (3.1.205; 213), scarcely to be distinguished fromMyrrha,who appears waving a sword over "her floatinghair and flashing eyes" (384), not only mirroringhim, but evoking the warrior Semiramis as well. Byron amplifies these weird equivalences with a psychic correlative, Sardanapalus's telling of a subsequent nightmarein which he confronted"a horrid kind / Of sympathy" with his dynastic progenitors, "The Hunter" Nimrod and "the Crone" Semiramis (4.1.124-25; 132)-the formeroddly passive, the latter a ghastly embodiment of imperialism and sexual aggression. By the end of the play, Byron will suppress these confusions with a retreat to and a theatricalclimax masquerading as an act transcendorthodoxy ing history;but this central intervalof gender disruptionpersists as an unmet challenge. That Byron can stage these confusions only as events of psychic he has in imagining any and political crisis reflectsthe difficulty social formcapable of sustaining a middle term against polarized at the opening ofthe distinctionsof gender. We sense this difficulty play, when Sardanapalus's effeminacyis represented as concealing, but not canceling, a masculine character.This latency is absent in Byron's source, Diodorus Siculus, who draws the king as a monbut also given to fetishstrous hybrid,a man not only effeminate, istic transvestismand bisexuality: He lived the lifeof a woman. . . . spendinghis days in the and purple garments companyof his concubinesand spinning garb ofwool, he had assumedthe feminine the softest working and so coveredhis face and indeed his entirebody withwhitthat used bycourtesans, and theother unguents eningcosmetics he rendered it more delicate than that of any luxury-loving woman.He also tookcare to make even his voice to be like a oflove withmen as woman's,and . . . to pursuethe delights well as withwomen.(1:427)12
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AlthoughByronurged his publisher to have this "storytranslatedas an explanation-and a note to the drama" (LJ, 8:128-29), his apparent brief for historical grounding is misleading.13 For what Diodorus reveals-indeed, casts into relief-is a difference: Byron's Sardanapalus is emphatically heterosexual. This revision is crucial: by designing an effeminatecharacterwhich retains heterosexual masculinity,Byroncan at once imply a power in reserve and set effeminacyinto play as a sign of something other than mere decadence or incapacity. These consequences are animated both by personal concerns and by questions of social judgment, and are always inflected by class privilege. On a public level, Byron's character of Sardanapalus summons the whole issue of masculinity in the cult of Regency dandyism and his own association with it; on a more private level, the compound of flagrant effeminacyand heterosexual virilityprojects onto the stage an oblique, and ultimatelyheroic, figureforthe issue of gender of deepest concern to him, his bisexuality.14Leigh Hunt was clearly conjuring all these implications in his gossipy account of Byron in Italy, which, suggestively,refersto the subject ofthe play: Byrondeveloped a habit oftrimming and oiling his hair "with all the anxiety of a Sardanapalus. The visible character to which this effeminacygave rise appears to have indicated itselfas early as his travels in the Levant, where the Grand Signior is said to have taken him fora woman in disguise."15 Dandyism involved and a self-conscious irony,all within the a conscious theatricality aura of aristocraticlicense Hazlitt grants Byron's social behavior. "Of nothing was he more indignant," recalls his friendTrelawny, "than of being treated as a man of letters,instead of as a Lord and a man of fashion." Reports such as this confirmthe force of Ellen to serious mattersand its Moers's argumentthat,in "its indifference intense concentrationupon trivia,"Regency dandyism "was a halfdefiant,half-humorousway of life," whose social success required "a considerable audience of non-dandies, ordinary people who were either amused or shocked."16 One function of such social performances,patently,was to reinforceclass identityin the postRevolutionary era: "As a social, even political phenomenon, with repercussions in the world of ideas," Moers writes,"dandyism was the invention of the Regency, when aristocracyand monarchywere more widely despised (hence more nastily exclusive) than ever before in English history.What the utilitarianmiddle class most hated in the nobility was what the court most worshipped in the
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ofclass thatMoers sees stimulating dandy" (13). The differentiation the dandy's performanceis also what licenses his attitude toward with the appearance of gender-namely, the privilege of flirting effeminacy. Yet, as Hazlitt's essay implies, dandyism could strain such license when it disseminated into the social fabricat large as a corruptinginfluence on the national character.Not coincidentally,this corruptionwas frequentlyattributedto a contamination by continental style, and to more than a few, Byron was an index of the symptoms. Reviewing Beppo in The British Review in 1818, thatmakes the William Roberts charged it with violating everything sons of Britain "manly and true"; "dipped in the deepest die of Italian debauchery," the poem was more than enough explanation why England should "dread an amalgamation with the Continent."17 Indeed, reading the poem prompted Roberts to lament the "denationalizing spirit" that,"since the late revolution in France" seemed too much in evidence-worst of all in a visible "decay of that masculine decency, and sobriety,and soundness of sentiment, which, about half a century ago, made us dread the contagion of French and Italian manners" (330). The concern was expressed not just by the sober middle-class men such as Roberts to the and the readers of The British Review. It was also important both perspectives, dandyism spelled older order of aristocrats:from a default of the activities by which virile manhood traditionally defined itself,and the fate of empire was in the balance. It is this aspect that is most immediate in Byron's characterization of Sardanapalus, and it involves the tone of indifference Moers describes-with a metaphor,in fact,thatbears on the theatricalidiom of Byron's representation:the dandy, fashioninghimselfas "a Hero so evidently at the centre of the stage that he need do nothing to prove his heroism-need never, in fact,do anythingat all, . inactivity"(13). Mary Shelley irresponsibility, stood forsuperiority, gives a more critical edge to a similar analysis when, in 1835, she defines Lord Lodore against this type: "Although essentially spoiled, he was not pampered in luxury. . . . he possessed none of those habits of effeminacy . . . preventing our young selfindulged aristocracy from rebelling against the restraints of society."18 In Beppo, Byron all but provokes these critiques when he compares dandyism to a national dynasty,speculating that "the dynasty of Dandies" was "now / Perchance succeeded by some other class," and theatricallylamenting in the idiom of de casibus
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tragedy (in compendia of which Sardanapalus frequentlyfigures), "how / Irreparably soon decline, alas! / The Demagogues of fashion: all below / Is frail; how easily the world is lost. . ." (60). But the campiness is misleading, forit was not the only tone of reflection.Byron's record of the life he was leading in Ravenna as he was shaping both Beppo and Sardanapalus not only reveals his sensitivityto this association ofthe dandy with political defaultand effeminacy;it also provides a kind of motivatingtext forthe way, beneath the surface of Sardanapalus's pleasure-seeking,;he leaves signs of "latent energies" (1.1.11) pointed toward a plot of masculine emergence. The soldiers' reportin the middle act that "Baal himself/Ne'er foughtmore fiercelyto win empire, than /His silken son to save it; he defies /All augury of foes or friends" (3.1.312-15) shimmers as a fantasy script for Byron's own longing, as jaded dandy and politically defunct expatriate Lord, for self-renewal throughpolitical commitment.Unlike Sardanapalus's Nineveh, Byron's Ravenna was already under foreigndomination; the politics were all concerned with revoltand subversion, and Byronwas participatingwith money, advice, and collaboration.19In this respect, he was more like a rebel satrap than Sardanapalus. At the same time, however, his aversion to violence and his aimless routine of and amorous intriguewith Teresa Guiccioli defined entertainments him as a kind of Sardanapalus-and not without the sense, confessed in his journals and voiced by the play's secondary characters, thathe must be roused forends more worthy.Uneasy in the role of Cavalier Servente (by which he felt effeminized, more like the slave Myrrha than her master), restless, alternately bored and amused by local revels, he felthimselfall too prone to the "Italian manners" thatRoberts feared.20In alternatemoods he was reading history about the lives of heroes and longing for release from a "lifetime, more or less ennuye"; the only cure forhis "depressed spirits," he sensed, was "Violent passions" (LJ,8:15). This seemed possible to him in Italy at the beginning of 1821, when, as Leslie Marchand reports,"revolutionaryexcitement had risen to the fever pitch . . . with the Austrians poised for the invasion of Naples."'21 By mid-January, Byron is involved in local . . . politics and "sketch~ing] the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which" he says, "I have forsome time meditated. Took the names fromDiodorus Siculus, (I know the historyof Sardanapalus, and have known it since I was twelve years old), and read over a passage in the ninth vol. octavo of Mitford'sGreece, where he rather
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vindicates the memoryof this last of the Assyrians" (LJ,8:26). We can appreciate the logic of Samuel Chew's suggestion that Byron's dramaticconception of Sardanapalus idealizes "Byron's conception of his own character." Yet Margaret Howell's sense thatthis figure is less an idealization than a texture of "inconsistencies" seems more apt; the "odd compound of indolence and courage" in Sardanapalus "corresponded to his own contradictory ideas and impulses."22 If the vindication of Sardanapalus appeals to Byron,its potential script forself renewal is contradictedby what he-records of his own activities, a sustained lethargy amid trivial entertainments and political intrigue. January 14th,1821 of SardanaWrotethe openinglines ofthe intendedtragedy Reand rainy. Misty palus. Rode out some miles intotheforest. turned-dined-wrote some moreofmytragedy. Read Diodorus Siculus-turnedover Seneca, and some other Took a glass of grog. books. Wrotesome more of the tragedy. and scribbledand havingriddenhard in rainyweather, After waters and scribbled again. . . I have a mixeda glassofstrong . . . and notgayhardly ever. to makeme gloomy is, however, sullenly. But it composesme fora time,though January 15th,1821 Weatherfine,Received visit.Rode out intothe forest-fired home dined-dipped intoa volume of Mitpistols.Returned ford'sGreece-wrote partof a scene of "Sardanapalus."Went January 16th,1821 pistols-returned-dined-wroteRead-rode-fired visited-heard music-talkednonsense-and wenthome. Wrote partofa Tragedy-advancein Act 1stwith'all deliberate speed.' Bought a blanket. . . . Politics still mysterious. out-heard some music-heard some politics . . . War seems certain-. . . it will be a savage one. single waters. . . . The effect ofall wines and spiritsupon me
(LJ,8:27-28)
All January is absorbed in these random activities, their aimless motions aggravated by a birthday: "I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!!" Byronmoans on the 20th; "I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose" (8:31). Yet he seems helpless to change his course: pistols, and returned.Dined-read. Went out "Read-Rode-fired at eight-made the usual visit," he notes on the 23rd; "Heard of nothingbut war,-'the cry is still, They come' "-a rueful allusion to Macbeth's tauntsat the invading armybefore his defeat (5.5.1-2). Susan J. Wolfson 875
"The Car[bonar]i seem to have no plan," he complains; "nothing fixed among themselves, how, when or what to do. In that case, they will make nothing of the project, so often postponed, and never put in action" (LJ,8:32). They merely multiplyand magnify his own aimlessness, as if everyone had become a Sardanapalus: "Half the city are getting their affairsin marching trim.A pretty Carnival! . . . met some masques in the Corso-'Vive la bagatelle!'-the Germans are on the Po, the Barbarians at the gate, and their masters in council at Leybach . . . and lo! they dance and sing, and make merry,'for to-morrowthey may die.' . . . The principal persons in the events which may occur in a few days are gone out on a shooting party . . . a real snivelling, popping, small-shot,water-hen waste of powder, ammunition,and shot, for their own special amusement" (LJ,8:33). By February, Byron's hope of transformation by political "events" was diminishing and his swings of mood becoming more intense: "What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. . . . Oh! there is an organ playing in the street-a waltz, too! I must leave off to listen" (LJ, 8:43). "Much as usual," he records on the 14th; "Wrote, before riding out, part of a scene of 'Sardanapalus' The first act nearly finished.The rest of the day and evening as before. . . . Heard the particularsof the late frayat Russi . . . Anotherassassination has taken place at Cesenna,-in all about forty in Romagna within the last three months"; he finished the firstact that night (LJ, 8:45). By the 18th, he has thoroughly compounded the imaginative energies invested in the drama with those of the projected revolt: "To-day I have had no communication with my Carbonari cronies; . . . It is a grand object-the verypoetry of politics. Only think-a free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothinglike it since the days ofAugustus" (LJ,8:47). But events in modern Italy prettymuch came to a halt on March 7th, when the Austrians defeated the Neapolitan army at Rieti. Although Byron insists to his publisher (writingon the anniversary of Bastille Day) that Sardanapalus should "not be mistaken fora political play-which was so farfrommy intentionthatI thoughtof nothing but Asiatic history" (8:152; Byron's emphasis), his surrounding accounts disclose scenes of action which persistentlyimplicate the play's "poetry of politics" in larger stages of social reflectionand political play.23
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II
The first image the play gives us of Sardanapalus, in a reading by Salemenes, is that of a character in default. Like Philo on Marc Antony, he speaks as a chorus, lamenting the prospect of "The blood of Nimrod and Semiramis / Sink[ing] in the earth, and thirteen hundred years / Of Empire ending" (1.1.6-8)-a motion he would reverse. He will soon urge the king "beyond /That easy-far too easy-idle nature. . . . 0 that I could rouse thee!" (1.2.61Byron has him rehearse the agenda 63). Before that confrontation, forus: heart He mustbe roused.In his effeminate There is a carelesscouragewhichCorruption Has notall quenched,and latentenergies, but notdestroyedRepressedby circumstance in deep voluptuousness. Steeped,but notdrowned, (1.1.9-13) It is an important aspect of this reading that Sardanapalus the "man" (14) is not as much usurped as masked by effeminacyand the corruptions it involves. The paradigm is that of the prodigal: "Not all lost-even yet-he may redeem / His sloth and shame, by onlybeing that/Which he should be," namely,one who would "sway his nations" and "head an army"rather"than rule a harem" (18-23). Yet the substitutions Salemenes names also disclose a political emergency. Effeminacyis not just an embarrassmentto royal decorum; it is a danger to the security of empire: "All the nations . thy fatherleft/ In heritage, are loud in wrath against thee," he warns (1.2.98-100). A "king of all we know of earth" may not the softeningvoices /Of women, simply heed "lulling instruments, and of beings less than women"; forwhile he "lolls crowned with roses," his "diadem / Lies negligentlyby to be caught up / By the first manly hand which dares to snatch it" (1.1.30-36). Byron's framing of this analysis as a contest of gender-unmanning influences betrayinga father'sheritage to othermanly hands-tests the proposition thatthe exercise of political power requires clear oppositions a king's effeminacy and radical polarities.24Withinsuch a structure, its confusions are of reform: cannot functionas a capable principle an invitationto revolt,because they corruptthe conservative foundation of masculine culture and the discourses thatbind it-"what all good men tell each other,/ Speaking of him and his," as Sa-
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lemenes puts it (1.1.45-46). Thus, even the king's enemies feel compromised, diminished as men by the prospect of a revolt that promises no more than "woman's warfare." As one complains, To have plucked A bold and bloodydespotfrom his throne, And grappledwithhim,clashingsteel withsteel, That were heroicor to win or fall; But to upraisemyswordagainstthissilk-worm . (2.1.82-87) Another says that it makes him "blush"-as if effeminized-that their antagonist is a mere "king of distaffs"(2.1.344). This widely voiced title, with which Salemenes confrontsthe king, epitomizes the scandal of substitutions.When Byron has Sardanapalus answer the slander thathe has turned "the sword . into a distaff'by arguingthat"the Greeks. . . related /The same of their chief hero, Hercules, / Because he loved a Lydian queen" (1.2.324-30), he exposes his partiality.Hercules was not enamored of, but enslaved by, this queen, who effeminized him with both dress and a social role, in forcingon him the tasks of spinning and weaving while she took over his lion skin and club. The Greek Myrrha confirms this degradation, when, celebrating Sardanapalus's heroism on the battlefield,she compares his erstwhile "effeminate arts" to Hercules "shamed in Lydian Omphale's / Shegarb . . . wielding her vile distaff' (3.1.218-20). This account is crucial, because its image of a shamed, effeminized, but not efin bondfeminate,hero privileges the figureof masculine strength This distinction age over thatof a positively conceived effeminacy. is also at stake in a more potent scandal for Assyrian culturenamely, Sardanapalus's gross abuse of the symbols of Nimrod's It is in the "Hall of Nimrod" thathe stages his "evening patriarchy. revel" (1.2.635) and it is "Nimrod's chalice" which he uses to toast Bacchus (160)-who was deified, he reminds his critics, not for conquering India, but as the patron of "the immortalgrape" (166; 174), a bequest Sardanapalus deems superior to "Nimrod's huntings, / Or my wild Grandam's chase in search of kingdoms / She could not keep when conquered" (3.1.2, 5-7). This Grandam, however, poses a problem to the substitutionsand inversions with which Sardanapalus would fashion the politics of effeminacy: this Man-Queen's androgyny does not complement and legitimize his effeminacy;rather,as her frequentpairing with 878
Nimrod indicates, itjoins her to the imperial patriarchy.Her honor to "Nimrod's line" (1.2.86) poses a double embarrassmentto Sardanapalus: "Semiramis-a woman only," Salemenes chides, "led / These our Assyriansto the solar shores / Of Ganges" and returned "like a man-a hero; baffled,but not /Vanquished" (126-30). When Salemenes firstheralds the entryof "the grandson of Semiramis, the Man-Queen" (1.1.43), a nasty syntactic ambiguity regenders both king and queen-or applies its androgynous compound to both,with a pointed differencein the code thatidentifiesmanliness with militarism:the queen is masculinized exactly in proportionas the grandson is feminized. Byron's firststage direction repeats the duplicity for the readers whom he considered his primaryaudience: "Enter SARDANAPALUS effeminately dressed, his Head where national identityis "won" and sustained by "blood, and toil, and time, and peril" (2.1.118), an effeminateking can only engender political disorder. The termsare everywhere linked in the play: "As femininelygarbed, and scarce less female" thanhis company of "glitteringgirls,/At once his Chorus and his Council," the king is "subject to his slaves" (1.1.39-41; 47). Yet as this charge is broadcast, Byron complicates it with other values. If the play's first image of effeminacyis controlled by voicings of distress over the fate of empire, Byron shows this culture also using the same set of termsto scorn any mercifuland pacifist nature. This extension enables us, as Gordon Spence argues, "to regard Sardanapalus both as guilty in his indolence and contempt forhis subjects and as admirable in his pacifismand humanity"-or perhaps not even guilty: for Marchand, this is no "indolent wallower in voluptuousness, but a contemplative characterwhose inaction was owing partlyto his humanitarianhatred of war and violence and partlyto his contempt forthe ends of worldly ambition and the lust for power."25 Byron encourages this view by having Sardanapalus regard these ends as unreal stages of action: Myrrha's speaking the "names, / Lord-king-sire monarch" produces "a chill" in his "heart, a cold sense of the falsehood/ Of this my station" (1.2.443-49) thatis linked to his contemptfora people who "murmur" Because I have notshed theirblood, norled them To dryintothe desert'sdustby myriads, Or whitenwiththeir bones the banksofGanges;
crownedwithFlowers,and his Robe negligently flowing, attended by a Train of Womenand youngSlaves" (PW, 5:15). In a world
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Nordecimatedthemwithsavage laws, Not sweatedthemto build up Pyramids, Or Babylonian walls. (1.2.227-32) This is a culture in which such social policy gets judged only as Thus, when the apprehended conspiratorArbaces coneffeminacy. fesses his admiration for Sardanapalus's mercy, remarking that "Semiramis herselfwould not have done it" (373), he is scorned by his ally for having been "turned / into-what shall I say?Sardanapalus! / I know no name more ignominious" (2.1.367-69), and then mocked fora "spirit shrunk/Into a shallow softness. the pardon'd slave of she Sardanapalus" (397-98; 404). The italics, redundant to metrical stress,punctuate the gendered contempt. The language of softness,forbetter and forworse, inflectsthese aligned by Sardanapalus himselfwith the luxuryof values. It is first his "soft hours" (1.2.8), then, more judgmentally, by Myrrhawith default: she feels "fallen /In [her] own thoughts,by loving this soft stranger"(653). Yet it is also associated with an innate gentleness: Zarina says of her husband that "he was softof voice and aspect" and "indifferent, not austere" in his neglect of her (4.1.241-42). This attitude bears on public policy as well. Resisting the "too severe . . . Hard" temper of Salemenes, Sardanapalus thinks of himself as "softer clay, impregnated with flowers" (2.1.522), his metaphor revealing a feminine reconception of self. When he idealizes himselfas one who "loves his fellows /Enough to spare even those who would not spare him" (2.1.313-17), the larger terrainof Byron's text lets this resonate with a general male assessment of women's values: "What they ask in aught that touches on / The heart, is dearer to their feelings or / Their fancy,than the whole external world" (4.1.221-23). It is the gendered judgments of this social system, Byron suggests, that in no small part construct Sardanapalus's "effeminate character." A sensibility fundamentallyaverse to its dynastic script of oppression, violence, and military imperialism refuses this maleidealizing identified role and, in resistance, cultivates effeminacy, this as a progressive humanitarianism. In showing his hero thus resistinghis dynastic precursors,Byron also distinguishes his play its precursortexts:his Sardanapalus indulges hedonism not in from default but, as Daniel Watkins argues, in "protest against the ideology of the society he is born to rule."26 That Byronhas conceived 880
a rulerin such termsis a bold enough gesturein the reactionary of post-Napoleonic Europe, when emphatic politicalatmospheres does Sardashows offorcewere deemed essential.So seductively in fact, and mercy, napalus articulate his principlesof pacificism correlaries are obscured.M. K. thatformanyreaders,problematic ruler,"and Leslie MarchandinJosephcalls himan "enlightened Corbett, but"humane."For Martyn siststhat he is "noteffeminate" "His ironic scepticism,his valour,his generosity, idealism and noble and memoramakehim"the mostadmirable, magnanimity" ble of Byron'sheroes." If G. Wilson Knighthesitatesabout the ofhis policies,forCorbett, the "pity "unpractical enlightenment" because it can not comof thistragedy is the worldlosing,partly is incapableofrealising, because Sardanapalus prehend, and partly he towers of his vision. For all his faults, the splendid humanity above the rest.He is to Nineveh as Hamlet is to Elsinore." John FarrelldefendsSardanapalusas the victimof "the totalfailureof the utopianmajestyfor or enemy,to comprehend anyone,friend whichhe stands."And he receiveshis mostenthusiastic endorsethecharm someonewho laterwenton tourgeus toresist mentfrom of Romanticism's own self-representations (and who, since then, it has alteredhis readingoftheplay): "If Sardanapalushas a fault, and the is thathe is too good fora world thatloves war, glory, McGann in 1968; he "merexerciseofpower,"contendedJerome withhis own ofsuch ideas, and counters cilesslyexposes the folly between power and resolving"the conflict politicalphilosophy," So when Sardanapalusproself-possession." pleasure" in "perfect /I live in peace and pleasure: tests,"I loatheall war,and warriors; whatcan man/Do more?"(1.2.529-31),thisis morethansufficient: ofthe humansublime."27 he is one of Byron's"forms Neglected in these analyses, however,are factsByron'splay therelation to a ofSardanapalus'spacifism keeps in view: namely, and royal sustained social structure byslavery, hereditary privilege, prerogative-onein whicha kingmaydeal withpeople as property her as and treatwife and childrenas politicalfactors ("I married wed-for state, /And loved her as mosthusbandslove monarchs thisbond superior to whatlinks thinking theirwives," he protests, a "peasant to his mate" [1.2.213-16]). The systemof slaveryis in no smallpartbecause its to the least critical pressure, submitted who also figures is Myrrha, intoa sentimental chiefembodiment to a masculinemaster. devotion ofgender:feminine representation tendsto avoid representing ofthisromance, Undertheforce Byron Susan J. Wolfson 881
slavery in the play as an ideologicalproblem.It becomes,instead, WhenSardanapalus pleads excuse to "gentle, an idiomofself-pity. wrongedZarina" by askingher to see him as "the veryslave of Circumstance /And Impulse . . . Misplaced upon the throne ofslavmisplacedin life"(4.1.330-32),thesocial and politicalfacts Despite Byeryare not onlynot addressed but sentimentalized. it is a measureof his desire to ron's own positionagainstslavery, ofslavthathe letsthe vocabulary keep Sardanapalussympathetic rather thana politicalsignimetaphor eryoperateas an existential This fier-the fault ofSardanapalusis evasion,notslave-owning.28 in partby a McGann argues,is motivated strategy of sympathy, moment: thana social aspect of Byron'shistorical personalrather in his scandalousseparation from Lady Byron his need to represent But the termsof a husband's remorseand a wife's forgiveness. resultis deeply unstable,forthe otherscandalouslyderelicthusband in the English press was George IV; Englishreadersin Byeffects ron'sday would be remindedofboth,and withconflicting withByron'shero.29 on theirsympathies to exploitpopIndeed, Sardanapalus seems almostgratuitously attention to a mistreated to GeorgeIV, by provoking ularantipathy queen and to lavish palace revels fundedat public expense. Al"in these thatone "hardship"of writing thoughByrongrumbles times [is that]one can neitherspeak of kingsor Queens without and insists thathe "intended suspicionofpoliticsorpersonalities" in Sardanapalus (LJ, 8:152),someoftheplay'slanguagein neither" to plot,seems calculatedatjust such itsearlyscenes, extraneously his Queen," would suspicion.The openingline,"He hathwronged tworeaderin the 1820sthe theatrical have evoked foranyBritish in consequence of her trialof Queen Caroline foradultery month "let the paByronic escapades in Italy.And the king'scommand, forth / For an vilion . . . Be garlanded,and lit, and furnished especial banquet" (2.1.1-3), would have conjuredGeorge IV's inhis at his Brighton famousextravagances Pavilion,especiallyafter in his wife.30 This palace, begun 1787,and elabofrom separation forits ratedover the nextthreeand halfdecades, was notorious its lavish its rich and and interiors costly furnishings, great expense, so Byron's friend, galas. "Nothingwas ever half magnificent," all there;"It was in reality ThomasMoore,marvelledofone affair in the gorgeoussceneryofthe theatre"-a to imitate thattheytry of ofstateand stagewhichthe "royalpalace" interiors congruence of Byron'splay clearlyevoke, aided by the factthatthe exterior 882 Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate
BrightonPavilion was a monumentto fashionable orientalism.31 If, as McGann writes, the defeat of Napoleon permitted"the restoration ofthe European monarchies under the hegemony of England," the exorbitance of the present English monarchy,underwritten by its taxpayersin economically hard times,was simultaneouslyweakening the prestige of the crown and royal society at home.32 These contexts,though in code, help framethe way Byron draws the character of Sardanapalus to reveal a degree of self-interest behind his policy of pacificism; his "disposition /To love and to be merciful,to pardon /The follies of my species, and (that's human) / To be indulgent to my own" (1.2.275-78) is also one, Byron suggests, that may conveniently rationalize, without examining, the terms of its self-servingluxury. Even a reviewer such as Bishop Heber, who finds the character "admirably drawn," has to note such "selfishness" and its social default: "He affectsto undervalue the sanguinaryrenown of his ancestors as an excuse forinattention to the most necessary duties of his rank; and flatters himself,while he is indulging his own sloth, that he is making his people happy."33 Byron makes this affectation particularlylegible by writing Sardanapalus's self-defense in terms that conveniently project unquestioned alternatives: a king either revels or is a tyrant."Byron's most impressive achievement," Peter Manning argues, "is to make [us] aware of the problematical motives beneath unimpeachable sentiments."34 One of the most deeply problematic motives of Sardanapalus's luxuriatingeffeminacyis, paradoxically, its value as a term of selfrestraint: iftheyrouseme,better his ashes, Nimrod from They had conjuredup stern "The Mighty Hunter!"I will turn these realms who were, To one wide desertchase ofbrutes, But would no more,by theirown choice,be human. Whattheyhave foundme, theybelie; thatwhich They yetmayfindme shall defytheirwish it worse. To think (1.2.372-79;Byron's emphases) Withwarnings such as this,ByronmarksSardanapalus's effeminacy both as a protest against cultural values and, as Manning percepto escape the heritage of viotively writes, "the sign of an effort lence he fears in himself' (128)-a subconscious resistance to "something bloody and cruel in his natureby refusingto give it any Susan J. Wolfson 883
to break forth," opportunity in Allen Whitmore'selaboration.35It is suggestive in this respect thatthe ghost of Nimrod not only represents a despised cultural heritage, but conjures a bloodline that feeds a latent identity: "He looked like Nimrod," an astonished adversary remarksof an angry Sardanapalus (2.1.352). To show Sardanapalus simultaneously bearing the legacy of his past even as he resists its dictates is also to imply his deep allegiance to its gendered polarities. Byron's analysis is shrewdest in his understanding of how even an individual psychology inclined to cultural critique continues to reproduce the culture's syntax.The lurkingof Nimrod behind the effeminatemasquerade is one sign; the eruption of orthodox views of the feminine is another. When Salemenes seeks to shame Sardanapalus with Semiramis, a woman who acts like "a man," Sardanapalus reacts in termsthatare utterly conservative about gender, however progressive his critique of imperial "Glory": she had better wovenwithin herpalace Some twenty thanwithtwenty garments, guards Have fledto Bactria, leavingto the ravens, And wolves,and men-the fiercer ofthe three, Her myriads offondsubjects.Is thisGlory? Then let me live in ignominy ever. (1.2.134-39) Recall that weaving and spinning are the terms of Hercules's humiliation. This conservative view is also, tellingly, Byron's own fantasy: Women "ought to mind home . . . not [be] mixed in society," he remarksof their "artificialand unnatural" situation in contemporaryEurope, deeming the contrasting"state of women under the ancient Greeks" (which he was gleaning fromMitford) not only "convenient," but ideal (LJ,8:15). These values of "ought" emerge as a revealing contradictionin the politics of effeminacy he writes forSardanapalus. Whatever reform of policy pacificism proposes, the systemas it applies to women is fundamentally the same: a crown of roses is still a crown and powerlessness still marksboth female and property-a status confirmed,and problematically idealized, by Myrrha'striple identification:"King, I am your subject! I Master, I am your slave! Man, I have loved you!" (1.2.496-97). Byron's play so successfully evades this contradictionthata contemporaryreviewer such as Heber had no trouble imagining Myrrha's "courage, and her Grecian pride [as] softened into a subdued
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and painfulrecollection by the constant and winningtenderness of her abasementas a slave in the royalharam;and stillmoreby can womanlylove. . . . No character the lowliness of perfect be drawnmore naturalthan her's" (496). What Heber describes as "perfect"and "natural,"of course, is an ideology of gender Englishvalues; thathe is able to thatcoincideswithconservative for to Byron's a specific social makethisleap attests capacity giving The counterpart to Myrrha's natthe aura ofuniversalfact. system in thisdefinition ofgenderis Semiramis's unnatural uralperfection ofglorious Averseto a dynasty violence,Sardanapalus monstrosity. focuses on its female embodiment,as if to exile by essential biological definitionwhat he despises. Her sexual difference per se, then alienated as superbecomes a trope of difference in suchfigurings, is less feminine Semiramis natural and unnatural: a "semi-glorious human monster" and human than,punningly, (1.2.181). action in other Byroncasts Sardanapalus'sentryinto military pleasures in terms, ones thatseek to retainthe play of effeminate Thus, the epiphanyMyrrha the midstof masculineimperatives. the announces-"He . . . springs up . . . And rushesfrom banquet to the battle/As thoughit were a bed of love" (3.1.221ofthe same energy. An ac24)-makes banquet and battlemirrors In a complexgesture thistransition. Byron scene marks tual mirror character"(LJ, as "naturalin an effeminate wanted to represent in milito previewhimself 8:128), Sardanapaluscalls fora mirror /And the tarygarb: "This cuirassfitsme well, the baldricbetter, helm not at all. MethinksI seem [Flings away the helmetafter it again] / Passing well in these toys; and now to prove trying in itsvery His preening campiness, suggests, them"(3.1.163-65).36 than effeminacy thathe will become a "man" less by abandoning ofthe mirror by givingit a largerarena ofaction.The provenance it is one ofSemiramis's her Indian spoils from is a predictor: itself campaign.Byrondoes not rejectthe idea thatSardanapalus'sbebuthe attempts to as well as sociallyinfluenced, havioris "natural" that can encompass-an accomplishment revisewhatitsexpression some see as a sortofbriefforByronism.37 crisis,however,is to produce an effect of this military Another poweras no less violentthanthemasexpandedsense offeminine sense would escape. Byron has himfirst culine terms Sardanapalus in thewakeofan earlier, thisaffinity successfully quelled conspiracy. for swift he maintains exhortation revenge, Myrrha's Recoilingfrom Susan J. Wolfson 885
he says, revenge, ofsexualdifference: witha vocabulary his integrity /Fromfear"(2.1.584-85): and springs is "too feminine,
yoursex,once rousedto wrath, to a pitch vindictive Aretimidly whichI would notcopy. Of perseverance, this,as from you were exemptfrom I thought The childishhelplessnessofAsianwomen. (2.1.586-90)
This genderingof fearresonateswith general culturalattitudes: ofanother scornsthe apprehensions forinstance, one conspirator, as "weakness-worse / Than a scared beldam's dreaming" however,distinc(2.1.349-50). As the political crisis intensifies, Indeed, the less and less certain. proving tionsofgenderunsettle, "roused,"is the wrath, herelinkswithMyrrha's wordSardanapalus desiredofhim("He same one his allies use to nametheemergence character of an effeminate must be roused"). If the cultivation wrath offeminine violence,therevelation an escape from promised thatprospect. thwarts but beSemiramis, was always knownfrom This contradiction could be thanlove,herenergy cause hermotivewas empirerather of revelation. The night is a moreproblematic demonized.Myrrha / Like battle did not send her "herdingwith the otherfemales, Sardanapalushimself, antelopes"but,as we learnfrom frightened of more than me" (3.1.377-78; 385-87). This it "made warriors to his and disturbing disruption equivalence poses a fascinating thatMyrrha apWhen he reports of the feminine. understanding peared on the field"like the dam/Of the younglion, femininely notonlydoes it raging"(378-79), his simileis doublyimpressive: Byron's in afeminine character (toturn "natural" a capacity suggest phrase);but "dam" also evokesthebloodlinejoininghimto Semi(1.2.238grandam" beldame,/Mymartial the "blood-loving ramis, thatis nota perverwithwrath confronts Sardanapalus 39). Myrrha "Femibut a newly revealed definition: sion of the "feminine," in excess are / Because all passions ninely meaneth furiously, wonder, is His tone female,"he is movedto surmise(3.1.380-81). butthe ofSemiramis, his harshand sarcastic judgments contrasting of feminine thisspectacle how unsettling noteof"excess" betrays by love: it challengesall the is to him,even when motivated fury by which he had preservedself regardand termsof difference ofpacifism. his effeminized principles justified 886 Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate
Byron deepens this crisis by interpolatinga nightmare for Sardanapalus during his rest frombattle. He has the king relate it to Myrrha,as if to make her bear its import.It is a colloquy with the ancestors in which the grandam emerges as a grotesque of Myrrha. Sardanapalus's dream of Semiramis does more than unveil the ancestral past, Caroline Frankline proposes; it also seems a prophecy a vision of "how Myrrhacould change" in of female transformation, the catalyst of violent passions.38 That the central syllables of the name Semiramis chime Myrrhapredicts on the subrational level of logic: Semiramis usurps the lovphonics the nightmare'sfigurative er's "place in the banquet," substituting for her "sweet face" (4.1.102-03) bloody-eyed, withered, a grey-haired, thing, ghostly ghastly, And bloody-handed, Female in garb,and crown'dupon the brow, withthe passion yetsneering Furrow'dwithyears, Of vengeance. (4.1.104-8) The real horrorof this "thing" is its near effacementof its feminine gender; the garb is the only sign. Semiramis, of course, embodies a bloody dynasty as well: she appears with Nimrod and a host of other "crowned wretches, / Of various aspects, but of one expression" (114-15); "All the predecessors of our line / Rose up, methought, to drag me down to them," shudders Sardanapalus (175-76). But more disturbing than her inclusion in the line of of gender. It violence is her perversion of Sardanapalus's orthodoxy is the female wretch who provokes the starkest language of alienation frombloodline and empire alike: a "ghastly Beldame! / Dripping with dusky gore, and trampling on / The carcasses of Inde" (31-32). This psychically evolved specter of the feminineone which Byron exaggerated over and against competing accounts confrontsSardanaof Semiramis-is the event that most forcefully palus with the errorof cultivatingan effeminatecharacteras a term of ideological resistance: not only does this royal redefinition of self fail to reformmasculine culture but, Byron suggests, it involves a fundamental misapprehension of what is possible in a female garb.39 It is this second revelation which Byronhas Sardanapalus sensationalize. Among the company, Semiramis alone leers with the passion of "lust" (4.1.107) as well as empire. So effectivelydoes she
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embodythesetwinaggressions that menmaybe redundant; we are soon remindedthatshe is a "homicideand husbandkiller"(180). in her becomes a scenariooffemale-engendered Sexuality death:
The femalewho remained, she flewupon me, And burnt mylips withher noisomekisses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . she still Embracedme, while I shrunk from her,as if, In lieu ofherremote I descendant, Had been the son who slew herforher incest. (4.1.149-50,155-58) This nightmareof female sexual aggression directlychallenges Sardanapalus's conservative understanding of gender, in which men are masters and women are theirslaves. In the action of the dream, he shrinksin horror as these roles are reversed and perverted.Sexuality and violence, two energies Sardanapalus had thoughtto keep opposed, are here wound together, even as they were when he entered battle "as though it were a bed of love" (3.1.224). Neither the feminine nor the erotic offersan escape fromviolence, and Sardanapalus finds himself a victim of both. The psychic consechaos of all loathsome quences are inevitable: "Then-then-a things/ Throng'd thick and shapeless: I was dead" (4.1.156-60). The end of the play is forecast: a release frombiological and cultural heritage alike in a determined act of self-cancellation. In the nightmareof historyByronwrites forSardanapalus, the masculine ancestors offerno refuge,though there is a momentarydesire for acceptance by the "noble aspect" of Nimrod and the race of fathers.They retain an attractivenessthatexposes a need to secure a kind of masculine allegiance against the terrorof female aggression: "The Hunter smiled upon me," Sardanapalus recalls (4.1.13334). Yet his more habitual repulsion rebounds as a fantasyof rejection: as he grasps Nimrod's hand, "it melted" and Nimrod vanishes into "nothing but/ The memory of a hero" (144 46). This disappearance, repeated by his father'sreticence ("he, /I know not why, kep.tfromme" [177-78]), leaves the dreamer trapped between an impossible longing for masculine validation and a horror at his feminine ancestry. So intimately involved is Sardanapalus's ideology of gender with his alienation fromempire that the latter is made, ultimately, to concentrate on the specter of the unnatural woman. Cast into the phantasmic and the demonic, Semiramis is exiled by this nightmare,spoken of no more in the play.
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scenes, in the remaining This purging allows Byronto attempt, It is notsurof sexual and politicalpriorities. one finalreordering the moreregular prisingto read in his prefacethathe "prefer[s] abandonment ofa structure, howeverfeeble,to an entire formation structure(PW,5:9). He meansdramatic ofall ruleswhatsoever" theplaymakes "law ofliterature"-but the"unities"as a universal ofgender and distinction ofsocial structure evidenttheimplication clearlysensed thiswhen he dismissedByas well. FrancisJeffrey of "law" as "mere caprice and contradiction": ron's summoning libertine'; "He, ifevermanwas,is a law untohimself-'a chartered theArchbishop ofCanterbury's mildlysar[a pointedphrasefrom intoKing Henrythe casticwonderat Prince Hal's transformation is still" libertine, Fifth:"When he speaks,/ The air, a chartered looks very wantsto do penance withinthe Unities!This certainly ofthe libertine by classical deThe correction like affectation."40 As implies,has to do withmorethandramaturgy. as Jeffrey corum, bears on Byron's formalist rigor Byron's in the case ofKingHenry, thisreform emergesas the coselfregardand, notcoincidentally, vertsocial allegoryofthe play itself. the termsof conserof genderedpolarities, In a culturalsyntax are alreadyin place, even as the empirecrumvativerestoration bles.41 When Sardanapalus's eagerness to enter the final fray prompts Salemenes to remarkthat he sounds "like a young soldier,"he replies,"I am no soldier,but a man"-expressinghis this time but "loath[ing]"of "soldiership,"not with effeminacy orderofmasculinepride (4.1.561-66).This higher witha superior thefinalstagesoftheplay,as Byron masculinity pulses throughout has Sardanapalus repeatedlyface down threatsof unmanning. When he fearsthat sending his sons away "mayI Unman [his] when accused of indulging a heart"(210-11), the verb is reproof; farewell"withhis wife (363), he hears the caution:"I "feminine now. growwomanishagain,and mustnot;/I mustlearnsternness order-hide thytears. . . they My sins have /Been ofthe softer myself'(396-98; 402-03); unmanme /Here when I had remann'd when takingleave of his remainingsoldiers, he exhortsthem, coincides "Let's not unman each other"(5.1.401). This restraint that Diodorusreports Sardanapalus for dynasty. witha new concern had daughtersand sons (1:439); Byronmakes this solely a male thathe has line, whichSardanapalusbelatedlyhonorswithregret sins," left"crownlessPrinces" the paltryheritageof a "father's Susan J. Wolfson 889
(1.1.48-49)]-and now, . . . tired of this unbridled license, he
even as Zarina assures him that they will know only "what may honour /Their father'smemory" (4.1.276-83). His tone is affectionate and rueful,compared to Salemenes's consolation thatthe rebels will "have missed their chief aim-the extinctionof/ The line of Nimrod" ("Though the present King / Fall, his sons live-for victoryand vengeance" [376-79]), but the fidelityis the same. Just thatwill keep "[his] father'shouse" before settingthe conflagration (5.1.208) fromdelivery to the rebels, Sardanapalus bids "Adieu [to] Assyria! . . . my fathers'land" (492-93). Sardanapalus becomes tragicto the degree thatit representsthe the to reform defeat,within the structuresof civic life, of any effort Yet it is part of Byron's intelligence gendered politics of patriarchy. about this tragic paradigm that he lets it expose what it cannot organize and subsume-specifically, an excess of problematic individual motives. Even as Sardanapalus utters allegiance to the fathers,Byron reveals a habitual self concern. When he imagines that in consequence of losing the kingdom,his sons will hear "all Earth . cry out, 'thank your father!'/ And they will swell the echo with a curse" (4.1.289-90), Byron makes his egotism indistinguishable fromhis care fordynastic defeat. This is also the flow of Sardanapalus's reiterated pacifism: "To me war is no gloryconquest no renown. . . . I thoughtto have made mine inoffensive rule / An era of sweet peace 'midst bloody annals . . . Sardanapalus' golden reign. / I thoughtto have made my realm a paradise, /And every moon an epoch of new pleasures" (4.1.505-18). The self-idealizing thatis everywhereinterwoveninto this political "sweet idealism-and the self-concernevident in its easy shiftfrom peace" to "paradise" to "new pleasures"-all betraymotivationby an unredeemed, and ultimatelyunexamined, egotism. There is always critical pressure on the pathos. The one uncritical sentimentalityByron allows himself is Myrrha, whom he refeminizes into a figureof devoted subordination. "Appropriately enough," suggests Paul Elledge (who sees Sardanapalus moving "closer toward the reconciliation of his masculine with his feminine impulses"), "Myrrha's role as 'masculine' counterpartdiminishes in importance and the Greek slave assumes her companion to the proper place as a subservient,deeply affectionate we can see king."42Whetheror not we share this sense ofpropriety, how the play elicits it. Rejecting freedom,Myrrhaasserts that it is "the woman's [part to die] with her lover" (5.1.371-73) and Sardanapalus concurs in this essentialism: asking if she feels "an inward
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he "will he assuresherthat joininghimin thepyre, from shrinking" not love [her] less; nay perhaps more,/ For yielding to [her] necesnature"(414-17). Maskingtheideologicalgridas emotional pledge to do "forlove, thatwhich/ An sity,Byronhas Myrrha Indian widow braves forcustom"(466-67). If this stoic firmness produces an outcomeequivalentto thatgained by the "childish of suppression helplessnessofAsianwomen"(2.1.584-89),Byron's thisquestionby a dramaofindividualdesireand aestheticspectacle is potentenoughthatsome readersdeem the eventa "worthy are McGann'sand are apotheosis,"a "Liebestod" (theterms are enhanced poeticsofmystification Byron's echoed).43 frequently and myrrh" (deofthe "frankincense associations by the symbolic their pyre orderfor he has Sardanapalus tailsnotin Diordorus)that an elevationbeyondthe (5.1.280).These elementsset the stagefor ofapotheosis. theyare the properties mortal; elabosentimental oftheway Byron's is morerevealing Nothing however,thanthe waywardcomplications, rationsmay introduce For if enhancement. ofthisseemingly straightforward multivalence it also bears a sanctification, evokes a ritualof Christian "myrrh" text:it is a pre-Christian associationfrom second, moretroubling is transin Ovid's Metamorphoses, the shrubintowhich Myrrha, by incest theagonyofa birth engendered as a release from formed, name,in alliance with In Sardanapalus,Myrrha's withherfather.44 by cannot but summonthis reference-one reinforced "myrrh," (1784), whichByronknew.Although sensationaltragedy Alfieri's the association, ofthiscomplicated the play evades the fullimport it name means that cannotbe escaped sheerpresenceof Myrrha's incestposes a of Myrrha's entirely-especiallysince Ovid's story ByroninventsforSardanapotentialreciprocalto the nightmare withthe son who is the objectof his mother's palus; of sympathy "incest" (4.1.58). develis to displayyetone morephase ofhow Byron The effect This texts. ofprecursor visiblehis revision ops meaningby making moral shapes Sardanapalus's process of legible revisionvirtually of Diodorus's in the finalscenes. In a decisive recasting character a man; his make Sardanapalus does notmerely Byron Sardanapalus, the contrasts whose behavior one he also makeshima gentleman, After in account. sending series ofbrutalenforcements Diodorus's "much of his treasure"away withhis children(1:439), Diodorus "gold and silveras his remaining the kingclosed himself, reports, and . . . his concuwell as everyarticleof the royalwardrobe, Susan J. Wolfson 891
bines and eunuchsin theroomwhichhad been builtin themiddle and his palace ofthepyre,[and] consignedboththemand himself is theepitomeofchivSardanapalus to theflames"(1:441). Byron's the escape ofhis wifeand sons; he cares forthe alry:he arranges his slavesand "all the safety ofhis harem(3.1.121; 148-49);he frees sex" (5.1.257-59),and he disinmatesofthe palace, of/Whatever concubine to his soldiers,even as his favorite tributes his treasure in love, tojoin himin death. volunteers, at It is a shortstep now from such idealizing to a finaleffort EarlierEnglish accounts,unlikeByron's aesthetictranscendence. play, were concernedto read a display of gender in the king's suicide: Lydgatejudges it an action"Mor bestial thanlik a manli man" (2.2319), while Surreyrepresentsthe king as one who, "drenchedin sloutheand womanishe hym delight,. . Murdred And some ofthistone dede" (10-14).45 selfeto shew some manfull survivesin the Scots Magazine's dismissalof Sardanapalus's"resthe insultsof his conqueror"as less olution. . . to escape from bycontrast, heroicthanevocativeofCleopatra'swiles (103). Byron, drives towarda conclusionwhich effacesthe social systemthat As the conflagration absorbsplot intospectamade gendermatter. withits entanglements of genderand emcle, immediatehistory, pire,is cancelled. In the earlyscenes of the play,Byronhad Sarin different but relatedterms: self-cancellation danapalusconfront in he has become "a nothing" ofoffice, theresponsibilities forgoing has himrecalland reclaimthisnullity, public eyes (1.2.103).Byron no longer just beforehe mountsthe pyre; addressinga country for indulgesone lastpiece oftheater, underhis sway,Sardanapalus an audience thatis only a figure:"Adieu, Assyria!. . . I sated thee withpeace and joys; and this/Is myreward!and now I owe The idiom servesto projectthe imthee nothing"(5.1.491-95).46 and ontothestageof molation beyondthe spectacleofthemoment universalmythology: thelight ofthis shallbe offunereal Most pyres royal form'd ofcloudandflame, Nota mere pillar A beaconinthehorizon for a day, buta light Andthen ofashes, a mount and To lessonages,rebelnations, princes. Voluptuous (5.1.436-41) on the level of glow has the effect, Ending the play in this fiery his artransforming Sardanapalus'sscript, spectacle,of endorsing 892 Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate
probvalue and effacing particular tifice intoa symbolofuniversal bedazzles us Yet even as Byron transcendence. lems in a clarified he also unsettlesthemwith the withthese highersignificances, suggestion thatthe pyreis merelythe latestand the last sign of a as higherconmasksitself thathabitually consuming self-interest This minorvibration remainspartof the play's total summation. What also remainsis the uneasy issue of gender. In the first the quesproduction, reviews and subsequent English theatrical gets tion was eitherstabilized or conspicuouslyevaded. Myrrha and the more devotion, routinely lauded as a model of feminine is eitherefcomplicatedchallenge of Sardanapalus'seffeminacy transformed. The faced or recast in the paradigmof effeminacy and generExaminerdeclared thatthe king"preservesfrankness was osityto the last." And, farin advance of Marchand,Jeffrey worn-out deinsistingthat Byron'shero "is not an effeminate, of pleasure,a princely epibauchee . . . but a sanguinevotary in death."47 Simicure. . . . He enjoyslife. . . and triumphs larly, Heber arguedthat ofSardanapalus (however they and effeminacy thedissipation in no way toas theoriginal causeoftherevolt) may be alluded hisend, ormaterially toinfluence . canbe saidtoaccelerate toourattention as a young king, fighthisfortunes. He is offered in hisfirst from excessof battle, erring (ifhe errs) inggallantly viandoverpowered not ofcarelessness, byirresistible courage, ofhischaracter areso far Thepeculiarities olenceandtreachery. incidental andornamental as theplotis concerned only. . wouldhavefallen likethesilken and martial monarchs hardy or ofNineveh. . . . Though truly accused, (whether prince ofthemost vices revolting enemies, byhistriumphant falsely,) what be expected from evenbeyond and an effeminacy might we find when ofAsiatic Sardanapalus despotism, thelastdregs hisarmies with a ofdanger, conducting roused bytheapproach with at least, a successnot sometime a skill, and,for courage, . . . andseeking warlike ancestors tothose ofhismost inferior whichlittle his deathwitha mixture ofheroism and ferocity character. with ofa weakorutterly accords ournotions degraded AlthoughHeber notes the "selfishness" and "self-indulgence" his willingness to subordinate mixedintoByron's characterization, is a written himself ofheroism by the character these to the script Almost tooagreeably, producEnglishtheatrical telling response.48 Charles tionsemphasizedthespectacle,especiallytheimmolation. Susan J. Wolfson 893
expression.
Alexander Calvert unabashedly staged the play as a showpiece: "The play is a poem over the heads of the people, but the 'conflagration' will make it a financial success," he assured everyone.49 Along the way, the complex and intractable issue of the king's effeminate character is downplayed. Both William Macready and Charles Kean cut the preening mirror scene from theirproductions, in 1834 and 1853 respectively, and only George Henry Lewes seems to have minded the revision.50He was especially irritated by Kean's interpretation: He mustknowthe plain meaningof plain English words,and is it astounding therefore to see himnotonlycarefully evading any representation of the effeminate voluptuousness and careless indifference ofSardanapalus, butalso uttering the wordsin tones directly contrary to the sense. Thus, when the swordis placed in his hands,he givesitback,withtheremark that itis too heavy["A heavyone; thehilt, too,hurts myhand./(To a Guard) Here, fellow, takethyweapon back. . . ." (2.1.194-95)],and the remark insteadof expressing effeminacy, he uttersas if it werea stolidassertion ofa matter offact! How Byron wouldhave fumed could he have heardhis intention thusrendered! Charles Kean omitsthe detail whichByronlaid so muchstresson, viz. Sardanapaluscallingforthe mirror to arrange his curlsbefore rushing intobattle. Lewes's impatience produces a longing, fantasyelaboration of the scene he misses and he is aware ofthe implication,speculating that "as [Kean] also omits to give any indication of the effeminacy, he, perhaps, instinctivelyfeltthat detail would raise a titter!"'51 The suppression of Sardanapalus's potentiallyunheroic implication with the feminine was not absolute, however. In a production in New York in 1854, an actress named Mrs. Shaw-Hamblin assayed the title role.52As her experimenthelps us see, Byron's exploration of gender as a collaboration of history,social system,and personal mythhas to be renegotiated with each new reception: we read his understanding of gender only by becoming self-conscious about our own. If Byron allows Sardanapalus to stage his storyas "a problem few dare imitate,and none /Despise" (5.1.447-48), the staging of Sardanapalus is less loftyand more perplexed. The final conflagration imitates a heroics that would transcend all ideologies, including the ideology of transcendence itself; but the problem of effeminate character retains its daring and conflicting strains of definition.
Princeton University 894 Sardanapalusand "Effeminate Character"
NOTES For valuable help with this essay, I am gratefulto Ronald Levao, Peter Manning, William Galperin, Mark Kipperman, Marjorie Levinson, Jerome McGann, and GarrettStewart. 1 Byron's reference to Sardanapalus as an "effeminatecharacter" appears in Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 12 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973-82), 8:128. Subsequent citationsappear parentheticallyin the text as LJ with volume and page number; William Hazlitt, "On Effeminacy of Character," in Table-Talk; or, Original Essays, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1822); reprintedin The Complete Works ofWilliam Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1931), 8:248-55. Subsequent citations appear parenthetically in the text. 2 David Bromwich gives perceptive attentionto how Hazlitt's sympathy with Byron's liberal politics and his admirationof his genius interactwith certain elements of class antagonism-as well as irritation at Byron's self-will, egotism, and aristocratic contemptforthe herd (Hazlitt: The Mind ofa Critic [New York: OxfordUniv. Press, 1983], see 326-34). 3 Compare, for instance, Byron's gendering in acknowledging his authorship of The Corsair in this passage fromThomas Medwin: "Contraryto the advice of my friends,I affixedmy name. The thing was known to be mine, and I could not have escaped any enemies in not owning it; besides, it was more manly not to deny it"
Princeton Univ. Press, 1966], 144). reviewof Sardanapalus,etc.,The British 4William Roberts, Review 19 (March 1822): 72-73. Donald H. Reiman identifiesthe reviewer (The Romantics Reviewed: Byron and Regency Society Poets, 5 vols. [New York and London: Garland, 1972]), 1:495; Review of Sardanapalus, etc. in Scots Magazine, 2d ser., 10 (January1822): 105. Subsequent citations appear parentheticallyin the text. 5 "Such a character,luxurious,energetic,misanthropical,"observed the Quarterly Review, "is precisely the character which Lord Byron most delights to draw" (Bishop Heber, "Lord Byron'sDramas," Quarterly Review 27 [1822]): 494); Andrew identifiesthe reviewer (Byron: The Critical Heritage [New York: Barnes Rutherford and Noble, 1970], 236). Somewhat less appreciatively,Francis Jeffrey remarkedthat all of Byron's heroes are "one individual": "There is the same varnish of voluptuousness on the surface the same canker ofmisanthrophy [sic] at the core. he does littlebut repeat himself." But he was willing to distinguishSardanapalus for his good-humor and amiability ("Lord Byron's Tragedies," Edinburgh Review 36 [1822]- 420 and 424, respectively; subsequent citationsappear parentheticallyin my text); Reiman (note 4) identifies the reviewer (B:2:918). In a recent paper, Marilyn Butler argues that Byron's patent echoes of several Shakespearean texts (notably, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Richard II) and theirtragicheroes assist this identificationof Byron with his hero. Once English readers recognized Sardanapalus as a "re-reading or misreading of Shakespeare," then "it is a short,Coleridgean step to take the socially inaccessible private Byronto be speaking throughthe hero" ("John Bull's Other Kingdom: Byron's Intellectual Comedy" [Paper delivered at "Byron and the Drama of Romanticism" Yale University,30 March 1990]; a version of this in Studies in Romanticism). paper is forthcoming 6 Quotations of Sardanapalus are fromthe The Poetical Works of Lord Byron: Poetry, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, 7 vols. (London: John Murray, 1898-1904), 5:1-112. Parenthetical citations indicate act, scene, and line number. References to this edition of Byron's poetry are given as PW with volume and page number; Jerome J.McGann's cogent remarksabout the implication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in political and social contexts also articulate the larger poetics of Sarda-
(Medwin's "Conversations of Lord Byron,"ed. ErnestJ. Lovell, Jr.[Princeton:
ReviewsofBritish Romantic ed. Donald H. Reiman;PartB: Contemporary Writers,
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napalus: "The central ideologicalfocusoftheentire myth involvesthequestionof personaland politicalfreedom in the oppressiveand contradictory circumstances whichByron observedin theworldofhis experience. Morethananything else this book says thatthe mostpersonaland intimate aspectsof an individual'slife are closelyinvolvedwith, and affected by,thesocial and political context in whichthe individual is placed" ("The BookofByron and theBookofa World," The Beautyof Literary Investigations in HistoricalMethod& Theory [Oxford: ClarInflections: endon,1988],261). 7 Marjorie Levinson, Introduction toRethinking Historicism: CriticalReadingsin Romantic History, byLevinsonet al. (Oxford Basil Blackwell, and New York: 1989), 3, heritalics;I citeShelley'sPreface from Shelley's Poetry and Prose,ed. Donald H. Reimanand SharonB. Powers(New York:Norton, 1977),135. 8 Evoking thepolitics ofSardanapalus, Byron referred totheunauthorized staging of MarinoFaliero as a "piece of usurpation" (LJ,8:22). On severaloccasions,he insisted to friends and his publisher, that John Murray, Sardanapaluswas notwritten forthe stage (see especiallyLJ,8.116-34). "I claim myright as an authorto prevent whatI have written from being turnedintoa Stage-play," he protests to Murray (90). He was especiallyirkednotonlythatMarinoFaliero had been acted theauthor's will" (22),butthat he was namedas theagentofitsproduction. "against "The Milan paper statesthatI brought theplay!!!" (116); "I opposed the forward . . . but [it]is continued representation tobe acted-in spiteofAuthor" (118); in " I would have flung he insists, a Sardanapalan intothe fire gesture, [mytragedy] thanhave had it represented" rather (119). 9 JeromeMcGann's shrewdperspective on the OrientalTales of the previous decade (note 6) may be extendedto Sardanapalus: the play is the latestin this "series of symbolic historical and politicalmeditations on current European ideButler ologyand politics"(262). Marilyn (note5) makesa case for Byron's constructionofNinevehas an ektreme ofcontemporary displacement Londonthat, byvirtue ofitsvery makesdisplacement itself a critical issue.Byron's extremity, Ninevehthus as "a shadow-world" orparodic"other"ofLondonin emerges, by a peculiarreflex, 1821-one whichnotonlyprovokes attention to parallelsbetweenGeorgeIV and and scandal,overgiven to throwing Sardanapalus (a "king. . . beset by criticism in an [oriental] also exposesBritain's parties pavilion")butin so doing, fraudulently artificial "to an Otherworldofthe feminine elementwithin its own displacement culture." 10 Gordon Spence, "Moral and Sexual Ambivalence in Sardanapalus," Byron Journal12 (1984): 69. 11Heber (note5), 495. 12 Quotations, hereand subsequently, follow DiodorusSiculus,trans. C. H. Old10 vols. (London:WilliamHeinemann, citations in my father, 1946). Parenthetical textindicatethevolumeand page number ofOldfather's edition. 13 "For the historical writes "I refer account," Byron to Murray, youto Diodorus he citesis The Historical Siculus" (LJ, 8:128-29). The text Library ofDiodorusthe G. Booth(London,1700).E. H. Coleridge'sedition(note6) provides Sicilian,trans. selections from Boothas well as from an 1854translation byC. D. Yonge.According toJerome editor oftheplaysfor Oxford did not J.McGann, University Press,Murray Diodorusas Byron publishthe selectionsfrom requested.Even so, the basic perand his crueltyspectiveofhis account-especiallythedetailsofhis "effeminacy" would have been available to readersin Lempriere's widelypublished,muchreA Classical Dictionary1788,8th ed. printed Classical Dictionary(J.Lempriere, is A Classical Dictionary, [London:T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812]);mytext "Fifth American and Improved Corrected Edition, by CharlesAnthon" (New York:Evert et al., 1825).This perspective was also the subjectofLydgate'sFall of Duyckinck thekingas a creature Princes, widelyread in theRenaissance.Lydgaterepresents
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witha perversion ofmanall implicated intemperance, and raging ofbase appetites condicioun" off as "Mostfemynyne "Sardanapalle" liness(2:2234-338).Introducing (2237), LydgaterepeatsDiodorus's scandalousdetails: "Offfalsvsage he was so he span,/In therhabitedisguisid /Thatamongwomenvpontherokke femynyne, flesshliinsolence,/ Offalle men he fledde the froma man./ And of froward and directly thefallofSardanapalus merely attributes presence"(2243-47).Lydgate riht veray /Displesidwas withhis "AtthelasteGod off character: tohis "femynyne" in his affecciouns" siht/So femynyne /Because he was in eurymanys condiciouns, 4 vols. (EarlyEned. HenryBergen, Fall of Princes, follow (2283-86). Quotations Univ.Press,1967). Londonand New York:Oxford 1924;reprint, glishTextSociety, recalled"the Dandies" 14 As he awaitedthe publication ofSardanapalus,Byron in hisjournal:"I had "I likedtheDandies,"he writes fooleries": "hundred andtheir enoughofit-to conciliretained in myminority-&probably a tingeofDandyism ate the greatones-at four& twenty.--I had gamed-& drank- & takenmy thefullest his sexualunorthodoxies, 9:22). As for degreein mostdissipations" (LJ, Byronand GreekLove: of the subjectis Louis Crompton's treatment and finest Press,1985). Univ.ofCalifornia England(Berkeley: Homophobiain 19th-Century thedegree suggests however, Sardanapalus, does notevenmention ThatCrompton withthiscomplexofpsyto whichtheplaydisplacesanyideologicalconfrontation chologicaland social experiences. WithRecollections and Some ofHis Contemporaries; '5Leigh Hunt,Lord Byron Philadelphia:Carey, Life,and of His Visitto Italy (1828; reprint, of theAuthor's Lea & Carey,1828),83. of theLast Days of Shelleyand Byron(Boston: 16 E. J.Trelawny, Recollections to Beerbohm Ticknorand Fields, 1958),41; Ellen Moers,The Dandy: Brummell of Moers'sstudyap1960),47. Subsequentcitations (London: Secker& Warburg, in mytext. pear parenthetically 17 WilliamRoberts, The BritishReview 11 reviewof Beppo, a VenetianStory, (B:1:456). thereviewer (May 1818): 329-30. Reiman(note4) identifies 18 MaryShelley,Lodore(New York:Wallis& Newell, 1835),21. 19For a well-informed engageshifting ofeventsand Byron's accountoftheflux (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, Byron:A Portrait ment,see Leslie Marchand, 1970),336-43. by his role as uneasysense ofbeing feminized 20 Elsewhere,I discuss Byron's transsimultaneous ofJuan's on his representation and itseffects CavalierServente thatof the TurkishSultana in another Easternculture, vestismand enslavement and the Politicsof Gender in Gulbeyaz (" 'Their She Condition':Cross-dressing was composing Don Juan."ELH 54 [1987]: 585-617,see especially604-5). Byron on Sardanapalus. thisepisode at the timehe was working 21 (note 19),338. Marchand 22 Samuel Chew, The Dramas of Lord Byron:A Critical Study(1915; reprint, A Poet's Tonight: Howell,Byron New York:Russell& Russell,1964),113; Margaret Books,1982),61. Springwood Stage (Surrey: Plays on theNineteenth-Century 23 The substitution durto divert Byron exercisefor politicscontinued ofliterary had whenit was clearthatItalianliberation By theend ofApril, ingthesemonths. failed,he could at once insistto ThomasMoore that"no timenorcircumstances and triumphant," ofindignation tyranny against shallaltermytonenormyfeelings butit is always off, "Andnow let us be literary;-asad falling yetstillrecommend, be gone,'let us taketo thenextbest; and,if If 'Othello'soccupation a consolation. morefree andwise,we mayamuseourselves tomakemankind contribute we cannot at intervals" I havebeen scribbling (LU, and thosewholikeit.Whatareyouwriting? 8: 104-5). 24 For Coleridge, of of genderservedas a metaphor in 1830,distinction writing between on an "essentialdifference scope. In the courseofinsisting metaphysical
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oppositeand contrary" ("Oppositepowersare alwaysofthesamekind, and tendto union,either by equipoise orby common product"), he summons thetriangulation ofterms explored by Byron's play: "The feminine character is opposedto themasculine;buttheeffeminate is itscontrary" (On theConstitution of theChurchand State,ed. John Colmer[Princeton: Princeton Univ.Press,1976],24). 25 Spence (note 10),60; Marchand (note 19),343. 26 Daniel P. Watkins, "Violence,Class Consciousness, and Ideologyin Byron's History Plays,"ELH 48 (1981): 806. 27 M. K. Joseph,Byronthe Poet (London: VictorGollancz, 1964), 116; Leslie Marchand, Byron'sPoetry:A Critical Introduction (Cambridge:HarvardUniv. Press,1968),103; Martyn Corbett, Byron and Tragedy (New York: St.Martin's Press, AnEssayon Byron," 1988),114-15,98; G. WilsonKnight, "The Two Eternities: The Burning Oracle: Studiesin thePoetry ofAction (London:Oxford Univ.Press,1939), 225; JohnP. Farrell, Revolution as Tragedy:The Dilemmaof the Moderate from Scott to Arnold(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980), 164; Jerome McGann,Fiery Dust: Byron'sPoetic Development (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968),233, In a recent 239, and 236, respectively. conference paper("The Hero Witha ThouofByronism," at "Byron and theDramaofRomanticism" sand Faces: The Rhetoric McGannsharply [30 March1990,Yale University]), analyzesseveralmoreproblemA versionofthispaper is atic aspectsof Byron's characterization of Sardanapalus. in Studiesin Romanticism. forthcoming 28 Byron himself indulgesa similar displacement intothe figurative, abettedby whenhe offers his playto Goetheas "thehomageofa theidiomoffeudalromance, literary vassal to his liege lord"(PW,5:8). In Sardanapalus,thevocabulary ofslavtwo times,mostoftennames a social fact,usuallyin ery,sounded directly forty relation to Myrrha; but thisis frequently tropedby nonslavesas a contemptuous a principalslavetermforany postureof weaknessor abasement.Sardanapalus, and enemies,a restless and complaining owner, applies it to traitors populace,and to himself, to excuse his failings. refers to the finally Byron'spoetry frequently in classical, a journalentry and Eastern from degradation ofslavery feudal, cultures; late 1821 showshis distress overthemodern trade:"Thereis no freedom-evenfor Masters-in the midstof slaves- -it makesby blood boil to see the thing.-I wish thatI was the OwnerofAfrica-todo at once-what Wilberforce sometimes from her desarts-and look on upon the first will do in time-viz-sweep Slavery thissituation from dance of theirFreedom";he distinguished "politicalslavery," willbe slavesletthem!"(LJ, to "men'sownfault-ifthey whichhe attributed 8:41). toexposethebrutalities ofEuropeanslave Backhome,theEnglishpresscontinued in fact, tradein Africa: one horrifying account, appearsin the same volumeofthe in whichSardanapalusis reviewed(34-52). ThankstoJerome McGann Edinburgh thisissue withme. for discussing 29 McGann,"The Hero With a ThousandFaces" (note27). As in the case ofthe stanzason the "trimmer poet" thatMcGann analyzes in Don Juan,here,too, a self-contradicted "producesan unstableand apparently palimpsestof references from textwhose truebiographical beneaththe subject-Byronhimself-emerges layerof . . . displacements" ("The Book ofByron"[note6], 278). "Playingmasto becomewhathe beholds, queradesofthiskind,"arguesMcGann,"forces Byron in the guise of the last,and mostcontemptible, of the English himself to reflect in one's own overthrow." Georges.To writein thisway is to be cunning ("Hero" [note27]). 30 E. H. Coleridgeproposes thereferences and thePavilion(PW, bothto thetrial Politicsin EnglishRomantic 5:15 n.1); see also CarlWoodring, Poetry (Cambridge: HarvardUniv. Press, 1970), 189. RogerSales gives a livelyaccountof the highly in History, publicized politicalcircusthatattendedthe trial(EnglishLiterature 1780-1830:Pastoraland Politics(New York:St. Martin's Press,1983), 178-86,as
898
does AnnaClark,who emphasizesthe way in whichGeorge'spoliticalopponents exploitedCaroline'scause, manipulating "popularsympathy for herto undermine thegovernment or even royalty itself'("Queen Carolineand the Sexual Politicsof PopularCulturein London, 1820," Representations 31 [Summer1990]: 49). The effect oftheplay'sseveralcoded references toroyalscandalis aptlysummarized in Marilyn Butler's remark that GeorgeIV "is no less effeminate thanSardanapalus, in theearlynineteenth-century sense ofpreferring thewoman'sworldofthe salon or burdensofempire"(note5). pavilionto the increasing weighty In viewoftheelaborate andfrequent attention paid bythepressand intheculture at largeto theseaspectsofGeorgeIV's reign, Byron's disclaimers to Murray about merecoincidence betweentheplay'slanguageand current contexts have a patently tone:"The wordsQueen-& pavilionoccur-but it is notan allusion disingenuous
to his Britannic Majesty-as you may tremulously . . . imagine. . . . I have
made Sardanapalus brave(though as history voluptuous represents him)and also as itcouldneither amiableas mypoorpowerscouldrender him.-So that be truth nor satireon any livingmonarch"(LJ,8:126-27). These assurancesmay have been offered to accommodate bothMurray's and his sensitivity Torysympathies to the on by the publication of otherof Byron'spoems. The real politicalheat brought withSardanapalus: explosion was causedbya playMurray printed Cain. Forsample reactions, see Rutherford (note5, 214-47) and Truman Guy Steffan, Lord Byron's and Annotations Univ.of "Cain"; TwelveEssays and a TextwithVariants (Austin: Texas Press, 1968),309-52. The Six Actsof 1819 had outlawedblasphemous and seditiouslibel and, as the trialofWilliamHone made clear,the crownwas even PeterJ.Manning willingto prosecute instances ofsatire and parody. offers a sharp in "The Hone-ing account ofthebearing ofHone's trial on Byron's literary practices ofByron's Corsair"in ReadingRomantics: Textsand Contexts and Lon[New York Univ. Press, 1990],216-37) and examinesboth in thisessay and in don: Oxford "Tales and Politics:The Corsair,Lara, and The WhiteDoe of Rylstone" (Reading affected Romantics, 195-215)theway suchtrials Murray's dealingswithByron. 31 ThomasMore,quotedbyJ.B. Priestly, ThePrince ofPleasureand hisRegency: 1811-20 (New York:Harper& Row, 1969),41. 32 McGann,"The Book ofByron" (note6), 260. 33 Heber,Quarterly Review(note5), 494-95. 34 PeterJ. Manning, Byronand His Fictions(Detroit:WayneStateUniv.Press, the case is noteven problematic: the Sar1978), 128. For Allen Perry Whitmore, the banquet . . . norforbear the goblet;/ Nor danapaluswho will not "forbear a singlerosetheless; /Norlose onejoyoushour"(1.2.308-13)"really wishes and thethought that his subjects . tobe left alone toenjoyhispleasures, would
rebel causes him to despise them because they inconvenience him. . . . The
seem morebased on a selfish wishto be freeofresponfor[his] pacifism grounds thanon any real concernforhis people" (The Major Charactersof Lord sibility Institut fur Universitat Byron's Dramas [Salzburg: EnglischeSpracheundLiteratur, Salzburg, 1974],72).
35 36
Ofthoseat theYale Conference on "Byron and theDramaofRomanticism" (31 of "Myrrha" as the true March 1990) who played withthe punning possibilities the most sustainedand of Sardanapalus,JeromeChristensen offered "mirror" ofPolitics," elaborateexamination ("Swaying:Sardanapalusand the Myrrha-stage 8 of Lord Byron'sStrength: a versionof whichwill appear in chapter Romantic and CommercialSociety[Baltimore: Writing JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press, 1992], Christensen fashions himself into"a figure forthcoming. arguesthatSardanapalus with equal to [Myrrha's] imageofhim,"and "is swayedby that exampleofhimself whichhe would sway." The problematic are aspects of this ideal self-reflection literal scene evokesand reconceives a famous mirror sharpened bythewayByron's
73. Whitmore,
Susan J. Wolfson
899
Shakespeareanprecedent-namely,the conflict between vanityand revelation stagedin Richard II's climactic moment ofself-regard. Richard, ofcourse,is a king oftenstigmatized as effeminate-most recently forByron'saudience by Hazlitt, who,in 1818,describedhim"bewailinghis loss ofkingly power,notpreventing it * . . his pridecrushed and broken downunderinsults and injuries, whichhis own misconduct had provoked, but whichhe has notcourageor manliness to resent" ("Richard II," The Charactersof Shakespeare'sPlays [1818, reprint, London: GeorgeBell and Sons, 1901],126-27).Byron's is a mirror scene witha difference. Another RenaissancetextthatByron mayhave knownand been usingfortacit contrast is Surrey's sonneton "Th'Assyrian king."His Sardanapalus, precisely because ofhis effeminate life,cannotbe transformed by any sudden entry intobattle: he In warthatshouldsettpryncelye hertes afyre Vanquyshd dydyeld for wantofmartyall arte. The dentofswordesfrom kyssessemed straunge, Andharder thenhysladyessydehis targe; Fromglotton feastes to sowlyders farea chaunge, His helmetfarabove a garlandes charge. Who scace thenameofmanhodedydretayne, Drenchedin sloutheand womanishe delight (3-10) I quote from the editionof Surrey'sPoems annotated by EmrysJones(Oxford: toWilliamKeachfor Clarendon, thissonnet 1964); thanks to myattention. bringing In his notes, Jonessuggests Surrey maybe covertly to Henry VIII (126); if alluding so, thenthis, for too,is a precedent Byron's ofusingSardanapalus, practice at least in certain aspects,as a critical on thefailures ofcontemporary commentary monarchy-in his case, GeorgeIV's. 37 This bisexualideal is readin bothpersonal and political conduct, often withan essentialism thatmatchesor even exceeds thatof the play's mostorthodox disin hisbisexualtendencies, courses.G. WilsonKnight calls Sardanapalus "poet-like" tofuseman'sreasonwith woman's emotional "aiming depth"(note27,247).W. Paul and theDynamics Elledge (Byron Vanderbilt Univ.Press, ofMetaphor [Nashville: " denotea conflict the "imagesof'bisexuality' 1968]) respondssimilarly: whichis resolved when, "afterverifying his manhoodthrough in spiritedparticipation "effeminate military engagements," emotionalism" to Sardanapalus emergesfrom "a rigorous intellectualism and combativeness" (119, 120-21),finally achievinga harmonious and"'healthy betweenhis opposingimpulses"(136). compromise 38 Caroline Franklin, "My hope was to bringforthheroes": The Fosteringof MasculineVertuby the Stoical Heroinesof the PoliticalPlays (London: Oxford Univ.Press,forthcoming). 39 Previousrepresentations of Semiramis contrast Guercino's Byron's markedly. Semiramis Receiving Word of the Revolt of Babylon (1624) presentsa selfdark-haired was awareofGuercino's possessed,Reubens-like, beauty.Since Byron he mayhave known thispainting. Morerecent, work, antecedents are Lemliterary and Voltaire's priere's widelyread Classical Dictionary Semiramis, whichenjoyed on theBritish vilification ofSemiramis contrasts withLempopularity stage.Byron's rather He includesthelegendsofmonstrosity: priere's moreequivocalaccount. her in the deathofherhusbandNinus;her"unnatural" conspiracy her son passionfor and her occasionalimpersonation ofhim;herreputation for"licentiousness," and thereports thatshe "regularly called thestrongest and stoutest men in herarmy to herarms, and afterwards notbe livingwitnesses putthemto deaththat theymight ofherincontinence." Buthe also notes"heruncommon hersoundadvice beauty," and "prudent andherestablishment ofBabylon as "themost directions," superband
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Sardanapalusand "Effeminate Character"
magnificent in theworld"(note12,666-67).Voltaire's city Semiramis (in TheWorks ofVoltaire, trans. F. Fleming, William 42 vols. [Paris:E. R. Dumont, 1748],17:147225) makesheralmost an entirely sympathetic, tragic figure: she is as haunted as any Byronichero by the sins of her past, and her guiltis a "dreadful malady"that weakensher gripon the "reinsofempire"(149); we see herbeset by base manipulators and longing fordeath.The incestuous desirethatByron emphasizesin the dream is recast byVoltaire as innocent (S6miramis does notknowhersonand thinks he is the agentof restoration promised in the prophesies), and she welcomeshis murder unwitting ofheras "the fateI merited" (224). 40 Jeffrey (note5), 422-23. I quotefrom Gary Taylor's edition ofHenry V (London: Oxford Univ.Press,1984). 41 After thisessay,I discoveredDiane Long Hoeveler's interesting completing discussion (Romantic Androgyny: TheWomen Within [University Park:Pennsylvania StateUniv.Press,1990],161-68),which, whilediffering from minein a number of important also reachesthe conclusion respects, that"neither the manlywoman northe womanly man can existin a societythathas radically polarizedand then institutionalized sexual identities and roles" (167). 42 Elledge (note37), 121. 43 McGann, FieryDust (note27), 230. 44 See Book X (2.84-99). Myrrha, tormented by incestuous passionfor herfather, insinuates herself intohis bed. When, after severalencounters, he unmasks her,she fleesto a foreign land and begs thegods for relief as she laborsin thebirth oftheir child;theychangeherintoa myrrh tree.In Vittorio Alfieri's drama, Myrrha (1784), she commits suicide at themereconfession ofherdesire.Her torments echo those Voltaire giveshis guilt-haunted S6miramis: Sleep everlastingly forsakes mypillow; Or dreams, with' horrid imagesofdeath, Give greater martyrdom thansleepless nights: I do notfind, throughout the day or night, A moment's peace, repose,or resting place. Yet nothing in the shape ofhumancomfort Do I presumeto covet;deathI deem, Expect,solicit, as myonlycure.(3.2) I quoteTheTragedies ofVittorio ed. EdgarAlfred Alfieri, 2 vols.(London: Bowring, George Bell and Sons, 1876), 2:311-64. Bowringappears to have used, without Charles Lloyd's three-volume acknowledgment, translation of Alfieri's complete in 1815.Byron tragedies mayhavereadtheplayin either In anyevent, language. he was violently affected in thesummer bya performance of1819:"I am notvery well today,"he writesto Murray; "Last nightI wentto the representation of Alfieri's Mirra-thetwolastactsofwhichthrew me intoconvulsions-I do notmeanbythat word-a lady'shysterics-but theagonyofreluctant tears-and thechoaking shudder which I do not oftenundergoforfiction" (LJ,6:206); several days later,he thathe has "neverbeen quite well since the night reports oftherepresentation of Alfieri's Mirra-a fortnight ago" (217). Byron's subsequentformation of Myrrha in ofnational Sardanapalusas a transgressor rather thanfamilial codes and as a willing suicide forlove seems motivated in partby an effort to reconceivethe horrors of Alfieri's "representation." 45 Lydgate(note 13); Surrey (note36). 46 The echoes of "nothing" extendto Byron'scomplaint in his prefacethathis aboutkeepinghis playsoff "private feelings" thestageseem destined"to standfor nothing" (PW,5:9). For bothplaywright and hero,theauthority ofprivate selfhood in tension exists withsocialstagesofaction. Butparadoxically, theidiomofthestage
SusanJ. Wolfson
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provesconvenient for declarations ofindividual the "nothing" that agency:against cannot protect thetheatrical the"nothing" Sardanapalusfrom establishment, Byron forSardanapalus writes theatrical shiftindulgesa highly self-authorizing. Byron's ing attitudes aboutthe value ofthe stageare illuminated by David Erdman, who, theexpressions ofantipathy, disputing cherished arguesthatByron hopes oftheatricalsuccess and issued statements such as thoseofthe preface to rationalize any eventof failure The History of His Ambition and Fear of ("Byron'sStage Fright: the Stage,"ELH 6 [1939]: 219-43) for Writing " Examiner(reviewof Sardanapalus,etc. [23 December 1821]), 809; Francis Jeffrey (note5): 424. 48 Heber (note5): 493-94. 49 Quoted by Howell (note22), 81. 50 For information and Kean,see Howell, 67 abouttheproductions ofMacready and 75. 51 GeorgeHenry Lewes, "CharlesKean and Sardanapalus" (The Leader [25 July in DramaticEssays byJohn 1853];reprinted and GeorgeHenry Forster Lewes,ed. W. Lowe [London:Walter WilliamArcher and Robert Scott,1896]),252. 52 Howell (note22), 80.
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Susan J. Wolfson - ELH - 'A Problem Few Dare Imitate' - Sardanapalus and 'Effeminate Character''

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"A Problem Few Dare Imitate": Sardanapalus and "Effeminate Character" Author(s): Susan J. Wolfson Source: ELH, Vol.

"A PROBLEM FEW DARE IMITATE": CHARACTER" AND "EFFEMINATE

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Princeton University 894 Sardanapalusand "Effeminate Character"

(Medwin's "Conversations of Lord Byron,"ed. ErnestJ. Lovell, Jr.[Princeton:

ReviewsofBritish Romantic ed. Donald H. Reiman;PartB: Contemporary Writers,

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

Sardanapalusand "Effeminate Character"

Character" Sardanapalusand "Effeminate

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