George Gordon Byron, Cain

Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne)

Ed. by Daniel Robinson, Widener University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1821

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

This verse drama is Byron’s retelling of the Genesis story but with Cain as its hero, both in the sense of the play’s main character, and also as a version of what Byron himself admired and indeed constructed — “the Byronic hero”, which here reaches the final stage of its development. Like his other plays, Cain was a closet drama not intended for the stage, a type of romantic poem-drama like Goethe’s Faust or, later, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. In fact it has since been performed, for example, by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Pit in 1995, in a successful production directed by John Barton.

The play is subtitled A Mystery, by which Byron signals not a whodunit but a type of …

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4680 words

Citation: Forsyth, Neil. "Cain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 September 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6202, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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