Byron had no sooner finished the first draft of Manfred than he began (February 25, 1817) to lay the foundation of another tragedy. Venice was new to him, and, on visiting the Doge's Palace, the veiled space intended for the portrait of Marin Falier, and the "Giants' Staircase," where, as he believed, "he was once crowned and afterwards decapitated," had laid hold of his imagination, while the legend of the Congiura, "an old man jealous and conspiring against the state of which he was ... Chief," promised a subject which the "devil himself" might have dramatized con amore.

But other interests and ideas claimed his attention, and for more than three years the project slept. At length he slips into the postscript of a letter to Murray, dated, "Ravenna, April 9, 1820" (Letters, 1901, v. 7), an intimation that he had begun "a tragedy on the subject of Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice." The "Imitation of Dante, the Translation of Pulci, the Danticles," etc., were worked off, and, in prospecting for a new vein, a fresh lode of literary ore, he passed, by a natural transition, from Italian literature to Italian history, from the romantic and humorous epopee of Pulci and Berni, to the pseudo-classic drama of Alfieri and Monti.

Jealousy, as "Monk" Lewis had advised him (August, 1817), was an "exhausted passion" in the drama, and to lay the scene in Venice was to provoke comparison with Shakespeare and Otway; but the man himself, the fiery Doge, passionate but not jealous, a noble turned democrat pro hac vice, an old man "greatly" finding "quarrel in a straw," afforded a theme historically time-honoured, and yet unappropriated by tragic art.

There was, too, a living interest in the story. For history was repeating itself, and "politics were savage and uncertain." "Mischief was afoot," and the tradition of a conspiracy which failed might find an historic parallel in a conspiracy which would succeed. There was "that brewing in Italy" which might, perhaps, inspire "a people to redress itself," "and with a cry of, 'Up with the Republic!' 'Down with the Nobility!' send the Barbarians of all nations back to their own dens!" {Letters, 1901, v. 10, 12, 19.)

In taking the field as a dramatist, Byron sought to win distinction for himself—in the first place by historical accuracy, and, secondly, by artistic regularity—by a stricter attention to the dramatic "unities." "History is closely followed," he tells Murray, in a letter dated July 17, 1820; and, again, in the Preface (vide post, pp. 332-337), which is an expansion of the letter, he gives a list of the authorities which he had consulted, and claims to have "transferred into our language an historical fact worthy of commemoration." More than once in his letters to Murray he reverts to this profession of accuracy, and encloses some additional note, in which he points out and rectifies an occasional deviation from the historical record. In this respect, at any rate, he could contend on more than equal terms "with established writers," that is, with Shakespeare and Otway, and could present to his countrymen an exacter and, so, more lifelike picture of the Venetian Republic. It is plain, too, that he was bitten with the love of study for its own sake, with a premature passion for erudition, and that he sought and found relief from physical and intellectual excitement in the intricacies of research. If his history is at fault, it was not from any lack of diligence on his part, but because the materials at his disposal or within his cognizance were inaccurate and misleading. He makes no mention of the huge collection of Venetian archives which had recently been deposited in the Convent of the Frari, or of Doria's transcript of Sanudo's Diaries, bequeathed in 1816 to the Library of St. Mark; but he quotes as his authorities the Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, of Marin Sanudo (1466-1535), the Storia, etc., of Andrea Navagero (1483-1529), and the Principj di Storia, etc., of Vettor Sandi, which belongs to the latter half of the eighteenth century. Byron's chroniclers were ancient, but not ancient enough; and, though they "handed down the story" (see Medwin, Conversations, p. 173), they depart in numerous particulars from the facts recorded in contemporary documents. Unquestionably the legend, as it appears in Sanudo's perplexing and uncritical narrative (see, for the translation of an original version of the Italian, Appendix, pp. 462-467), is more dramatic than the "low beginnings" of the myth, which may be traced to the annalists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but, like other legends, it is insusceptible of proof. Byron's Doge is almost, if not quite, as unhistorical as his Bonivard or his Mazeppa. (See Nuovo Archivio Veneto, 1893, vol. v. pt. i. pp. 95-197; 1897, vol. xiii. pt. i. pp. 5-107; pt. ii. pp. 277-374; Les Archives de Venise, par Armand Baschet, 1870; Storia della Repubblica di Venizia, Giuseppe Cappelletti, 1849, iv. pp. 262-317.)

At the close of the Preface, by way of an afterthought, Byron announces his determination to escape "the reproach of the English theatrical compositions" "by preserving a nearer approach to unity," by substituting the regularity of French and Italian models for the barbarities of the Elizabethan dramatists and their successors. Goethe (Conversations, 1874, p. 114) is said to have "laughed to think that Byron, who, in practical life, could never adapt himself, and never even asked about a law, finally subjected himself to the stupidest of laws—that of the three unities." It was, perhaps, in part with this object in view, to make his readers smile, to provoke their astonishment, that he affected a severity foreign to his genius and at variance with his record. It was an agreeable thought that he could so easily pass from one extreme to another, from Manfred to Marino Faliero, and, at the same time, indulge "in a little sally of gratuitous sauciness" (Quarterly Review, July, 1822, vol. xxvii, p. 480) at the expense of his own countrymen. But there were other influences at work. He had been powerfully impressed by the energy and directness of Alfieri's work, and he was eager to emulate the gravity and simplicity, if not the terseness and conciseness, of his style and language. The drama was a new world to conquer, and so far as "his own literature" was concerned it appeared that success might be attainable by "a severer approach to the rules" (Letter to Murray, February 16, 1821)—that by taking Alfieri as his model he might step into the first rank of English dramatists.

Goethe thought that Byron failed "to understand the purpose" of the "three unities," that he regarded the law as an end in itself, and did not perceive that if a play was comprehensible the unities might be neglected and disregarded. It is possible that his "blind obedience to the law" may have been dictated by the fervour of a convert; but it is equally possible that he looked beyond the law or its fulfilment to an ulterior object, the discomfiture of the romantic school, with its contempt for regularity, its passionate appeal from art to nature. If he was minded to raise a "Grecian temple of the purest architecture" (Letters, 1901, v. Appendix III. p. 559), it was not without some thought and hope of shaming, by force of contrast, the "mosque," the "grotesque edifice" of barbarian contemporaries and rivals. Byron was "ever a fighter," and his claim to regularity, to a closer preservation of the "unities," was of the nature of a challenge.

Marino Faliero was dedicated to "Baron Goethe," but the letter which should have contained the dedication was delayed in transit. Goethe never saw the dedication till it was placed in his hands by John Murray the Third, in 1831, but he read the play, and after Byron's death bore testimony to its peculiar characteristics and essential worth. "Lord Byron, notwithstanding his predominant personality, has sometimes had the power of renouncing himself altogether, as may be seen in some of his dramatic pieces, particularly in his Marino Faliero. In this piece one quite forgets that Lord Byron, or even an Englishman, wrote it. We live entirely in Venice, and entirely in the time in which the action takes place. The personages speak quite from themselves and their own condition, without having any of the subjective feelings, thoughts, and opinions of the poet" (Conversations, 1874, p. 453).

Byron spent three months over the composition of Marino Faliero. The tragedy was completed July 17 (Letters, 1901, v. 52), and the copying (vide post, p. 461, note 2) a month later (August 16, 17, 1820). The final draft of "all the acts corrected" was despatched to England some days before October 6, 1820.

Early in January, 1821 (see Letters to Murray, January 11, 20, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 221-228), an announcement reached Byron that his play was to be brought out at Drury Lane Theatre, by Elliston. Against this he protested by every means in his power, and finally, on Wednesday, April 25, four days after the publication of the first edition (April 21, 1821), an injunction was obtained from Lord Chancellor Eldon, prohibiting a performance announced for that evening. Elliston pursued the Chancellor to the steps of his own house, and at the last moment persuaded him to allow the play to be acted on that night only. Legal proceeedings were taken, but, in the end, the injunction was withdrawn, with the consent of Byron's solicitors, and the play was represented again on April 30, and on five nights in the following May. As Byron had foreseen, Marino Faliero was coldly received by the playgoing public, and proved a loss to the "speculating buffoons," who had not realized that it was "unfit for their Fair or their booth" (Letter to Murray, January 20, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 228, and p. 226, note 2. See, too, Memoirs of Robert W. Elliston, 1845, pp. 268-271).

Byron was the first to perceive that the story of Marino Faliero was a drama "ready to hand;" but he has had many followers, if not imitators or rivals.

"Marino Faliero, tragédie en cinq actes," by Casimir Jean François Delavigne, was played for the first time at the Theatre of Porte Saint Martin, May 31, 1829.

In Germany tragedies based on the same theme have been published by Otto Ludwig, Leipzig, 1874; Martin Grief, Vienna, 1879; Murad Effendi (Franz von Werner), 1881, and others (Englische Studien, vol. xxvii. pp. 146, 147).

Marino Faliero, a Tragedy, by A. C. Swinburne, was published in 1885.

Marino Faliero was reviewed by Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, July 21, 1821, vol. 35, pp. 271-285; by Heber, in the Quarterly Review, July, 1822, vol. xxvii. pp. 476-492; and by John Wilson, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, April, 1821, vol. 9, pp. 93-103. For other notices, vide ante ("Introduction to The Prophecy of Dante"), p. 240.