SOURCE: McGann, Jerome J. “Hero with a Thousand Faces: The Rhetoric of Byronism.” Studies in Romanticism 31, no. 3 (fall 1992): 295-313.

In the following essay, McGann contends that the dramatic form allowed Byron to express his personal, spiritual, and social concerns.

I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.

(Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave)

And feeling, in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all colours—like the hands of dyers. 

(Don Juan III, st. 87)

I saw, that is, I dream'd myself Here—here—even where we are, guests as we were, Myself a host that deem'd himself but guest, Willing to equal all in social freedom. … 

(Sardanapalus...