Glenarvon on Stage: Impersonating Byron

Abstract

In 1805, Lady Caroline Ponsonby, daughter of the third earl of Bessborough, became the wife of William Lamb, future Viscount Melbourne and Prime Minister under Queen Victoria. In the seventh year of her marriage, Lady Caroline Lamb, now 27 years of age, commenced an affair with the 24-year-old Lord Byron. Their tempestuous relationship lasted less than five months, from March 1812 until Byron broke off the relationship in August. Her obsession with Byron persisted, becoming the subject of many of her poems and, most notoriously, of her novel, Glenarvon. Published anonymously in June 1816, the novel added further fuel to the scandal that prompted Byron’s departure from England on April 24, 1816. Although critics and biographers of both Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb have given close attention to the public reception of the novel, none has yet acknowledged the adaptation of Glenarvon as a stage play and the dramatic exposition of the man whom Lady Caroline Lamb dubbed—in the most-often quoted comment ever uttered about Byron—“mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”1