The Deformed Transformed

As a dramatist, Byron's function, or metier, was twofold. In Manfred, in Cain, in Heaven and Earth, he is concerned with the analysis and evolution of metaphysical or ethical notions; in Marino Faliero, in Sardanapalus, and The Two Foscari, he set himself "to dramatize striking passages of history;" in The Deformed Transformed he sought to combine the solution of a metaphysical puzzle or problem, the relation of personality to individuality, with the scenic rendering of a striking historical episode, the Sack of Rome in 1527. In the note or advertisement prefixed to the drama, Byron acknowledges that "the production" is founded partly on the story of a forgotten novel, The Three Brothers, and partly on "the Faust of the great Goethe." Arnaud, or Julian, the hero of The Three Brothers, "sells his soul to the Devil, and becomes an arch-fiend in order to avenge himself for the taunts of strangers on the deformity of his person." The idea of an escape from natural bonds or disabilities by supernatural means and at the price of the soul or will, the un-Christlike surrender to the tempter, which is the grund-stoff of the Faust-legend, was brought home to Byron, in the first instance, not by Goethe, or Calderon, or Marlowe, but by Joshua Pickersgill.

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