'History is closely followed': The Authority of Historical Discourse in Byron's Venetian Plays

Byron’s Venetian plays (Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari) address the issue of the nature of authority within the state by reviving historical episodes centred around the conflict between old Doges and Venice ruling aristocracy. Both texts are characterised by the heavy presence of documentary material that Byron apparently intended as evidence of his close rendering of historical events. As a matter of fact, both Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari are built around a missing piece of historical information, which becomes crucial in evaluating the import of the facts described, and which can be retrieved only in the historical Appendices. By continually referring the reader to texts other than his own version of the story, Byron questions the self-sufficient nature of drama. At the same time he directs his readers’ attention to the way in which history gets written and passed on, and he opens up the perspective on how authority is legitimised through the writing of history. He thus paves the way for the renewed interest in the public sphere that would characterize cantos VI to VIII of Don Juan (the composition of which was significantly resumed in 1822, after the end of his experiments in the dramatic genre), with their reliance on historical episodes. In neither cases, however, is the authority of the documentary material taken for granted. In the tragedies, Byron does not explicitly write against his models as in Don Juan, but he significantly plays one source against the other, thus emphasizing the instability of historical narrations. Having removed the black veil covering controversial figures of the Venetian past, Byron gradually shifts the focus of his plays from the struggle for power in the state, with its attendant clash between different conceptions of political authority, to the way in which the discourses of history are articulated and gain authority in time.