A Crowded Stage: The Legitimate Borrowings of Henry Milner’s Mazeppa

Abstract

In this article, I examine Henry M. Milner’s remarkably successful 1831 equestrian adaptation of Lord Byron’s poem, Mazeppa (1819). The play is not only an adaptation of Byron, since it also draws upon Shakespearean plays including Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth to realign Byron’s poem for a popular audience. Milner uses hippodramatic techniques, and allusions to Romeo and Macbeth, in order to transform Mazeppa’s story from a representation of isolated endurance to a portrayal of his social rise from page to prince. By paying careful attention to the dramatic inventiveness and cultural resonance of Milner’s use of hippodramatic effects and Shakespearean allusions to adapt Byron’s poem for the popular stage, I shall argue that this play challenges assumptions that nineteenth-century theatrical adaptations are purely derivative and lack merit. Rather, I suggest that the value of such adaptive work lies in its capacity to reveal broader cultural shifts within nineteenth-century theatre.