Masaniello on the London Stage

Abstract

“I want a hero,” Lord Byron declared in the opening line of the first canto of Don Juan. “An uncommon want,” he explained, for the simple reason that there were too many candidates jostling for public attention: “Every year and month sends forth a new one.” After reviewing some thirty-two such candidates with political and military credentials in British and French history, Byron observed that none of these heroes or would-be heroes could serve the present need, for inevitably, “the age discovers he is not the true one.” The want was not as uncommon as Byron implied. When one turns to Byron’s source, the theater, it becomes immediately evident that every new melodrama presented yet another hero to meet the persistent public clamor. After a decade of the Regency, the Prince had now become King. Without agreeing with those who called him inept, it would not be wrong to say that he was less ept than current needs of the 1820s required. The defeat of Napoleon, the Bourbon restoration, and the age of Metternich brought about a repression of liberal reform on the Continent. And in Britain, because theater censorship prohibited satirical or polemical drama directed against the government, there was no opportunity for performances directly advocating changes in the present British rule.