Byron Bicentennial Closet Dramas
by Jed Pumblechook, final year student of History and English at University College Cork
Editor’s note: RPW is back again with something different! This time we are looking at the Byronic ‘closet dramas’ of one Jedediah Pumblechook. Because of problems with formatting and other quality loss issues, this post will contain links to three of the plays as they appear on Jed’s personal website, rather than the full text as usual. I’ll also include Jedediah’s introduction to their work here:
Perhaps it was fortunate, perhaps not, that my secondary school education glanced past both the first and second generation Romantics (Wordsworth earned a slightly longer glance every Spring). Hence, my interest developed on my own terms, in my own ambling time and in pain-free ignorance of what was either an Hendecasyllable or a Dactylic hexameter.
Pleasingly, and despite studying English literature, this carry-on has persisted to my current and final year at university. While thoroughly enjoying Yeats and Kavanagh, Donne and Milton – and an odd lady who writes poems about ducks – my passion for the Romantics has remained, and intensified.
As I was managing to avoid both the traps set for undergraduates laid by Shelley, the seductive and compelling admirers of Keats, the awestruck fans of Coleridge’s recreational troubles – I noticed Byron stood alone and untouched (unless serious woo-ing required She Walks in Beauty). I soon, I believed, discovered why. In my reading, he was as slippery to get a handle on as a bear wrestling a particularly dexterous salmon. Distracted by the luminous beauty of it’s skin and eye, he can’t claw him long enough to enable dissection, before the fish, amused by the game, leaps high and swims voluptuously away.
This, though, is one of the great thrills Byron gives us. He lets us in and out of his mind with the hypnotic subtlety of Salome, then it’s off with our comfort as the seventh veil of Juan’s declensions fall to the earth.
These little closet dramas were inspired by The Byron Society of America’s project https://www.unclosetingbyron.com/. I use only unbothered Byron poems (Southwell features prominently) and hilarious incidents in his life and letters.
#1 – Soliloquy
#2 – The Glyster Pipe of Romanelli
#3 – John Murray II: The Daily Torments of a Gentleman Publisher
Of course, these are just a few of Jed’s many productions. You can read as many as you like on the website. Tune in next time when we’ll have a return to poetry with Romantic-inspired writings by Ciaran O’Rourke!
And don’t forget to check out the previous RPWs if you missed them. Click here.
Adam Neikirk