Take the
following
parallels:--
_Werner_, act i.
_Werner_, act i.
Byron
's
_Werner_. "
Again, in an unpublished diary of the same period it is recorded that
Mrs. Shelley was engaged in the task of copying on January 17, 1822, and
the eight following days, and that on January 25 she finished her
transcript.
Again, Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 409) records the fact that
Byron told him "that he had almost finished another play . . . called
_Werner_;" and (p. 412) "that _Werner_ was written in twenty-eight days,
and one entire act at a sitting. " It is almost incredible that Byron
should have recopied a copy of the duchess's play in order to impose on
Mrs. Shelley and Williams and Medwin; and it is quite incredible that
they were in the plot, and lent themselves to the deception. It is
certain that both Williams and Medwin believed that Byron was the author
of _Werner_, and it is certain that nothing would have induced Mrs.
Shelley to be _particeps criminis_--to copy a play which was not
Byron's, to be published as Byron's, and to suffer her copy to be
fraudulently endorsed by her guilty accomplice.
The internal evidence of the genuineness of _Werner_ is still more
convincing. In the first place, there are numerous "undesigned
coincidences," allusions, and phrases to be found in _Werner_ and
elsewhere in Byron's _Poetical Works_, which bear his sign-manual, and
cannot be attributed to another writer; and, secondly, scattered through
the play there are numerous lines, passages, allusions--"a cloud of
witnesses" to their Byronic inspiration and creation.
Take the following parallels:--
_Werner_, act i. sc. 1, lines 693, 694--
". . . as parchment on a drum,
Like Ziska's skin. "
_Age of Bronze_, lines 133, 134--
"The time may come,
His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum. "
_Werner_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 177, 178--
". . . save your throat
From the Raven-stone. "
_Manfred_, act iii. (original version)--
"The raven sits
On the Raven-stone. "
_Werner_, act ii.
_Werner_. "
Again, in an unpublished diary of the same period it is recorded that
Mrs. Shelley was engaged in the task of copying on January 17, 1822, and
the eight following days, and that on January 25 she finished her
transcript.
Again, Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 409) records the fact that
Byron told him "that he had almost finished another play . . . called
_Werner_;" and (p. 412) "that _Werner_ was written in twenty-eight days,
and one entire act at a sitting. " It is almost incredible that Byron
should have recopied a copy of the duchess's play in order to impose on
Mrs. Shelley and Williams and Medwin; and it is quite incredible that
they were in the plot, and lent themselves to the deception. It is
certain that both Williams and Medwin believed that Byron was the author
of _Werner_, and it is certain that nothing would have induced Mrs.
Shelley to be _particeps criminis_--to copy a play which was not
Byron's, to be published as Byron's, and to suffer her copy to be
fraudulently endorsed by her guilty accomplice.
The internal evidence of the genuineness of _Werner_ is still more
convincing. In the first place, there are numerous "undesigned
coincidences," allusions, and phrases to be found in _Werner_ and
elsewhere in Byron's _Poetical Works_, which bear his sign-manual, and
cannot be attributed to another writer; and, secondly, scattered through
the play there are numerous lines, passages, allusions--"a cloud of
witnesses" to their Byronic inspiration and creation.
Take the following parallels:--
_Werner_, act i. sc. 1, lines 693, 694--
". . . as parchment on a drum,
Like Ziska's skin. "
_Age of Bronze_, lines 133, 134--
"The time may come,
His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum. "
_Werner_, act ii. sc. 2, lines 177, 178--
". . . save your throat
From the Raven-stone. "
_Manfred_, act iii. (original version)--
"The raven sits
On the Raven-stone. "
_Werner_, act ii.
