SOURCE: Sperry, Stuart M. “Byron and the Meaning of Manfred.” Criticism 16, no. 3 (summer 1974): 189-202.

In the following essay, Sperry places Manfred within the context of Byron's life and career, suggesting that the writing of the play represented for its author a personal catharsis that enabled him to write Don Juan.

I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. 

W. B. Yeats, “A Dialogue of Self and Soul”

Byron's greatest drama, Manfred, holds an important transitional place within the scope of his career as writer and thinker. It looks back to the third canto of Childe Harold, written, as Byron put it...