Masters of Their Fates: Byron's Marino Faliero and Brecht's Epic Theater

Byron has more than once been described as a "Brechtian" or "proto-Brechtian" dramatist, meaning that he anticipates the politicized, Marx-influenced dramatic theory and practice developed by Bertolt Brecht in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing mainly on Byron's historical tragedy Marino Faliero, this essay explores hitherto neglected implications of reading Byron in this way, by comparing Byron's and Brecht's approaches to tragedy, and to the closely related idea of fate. The essay first reads Faliero with Brecht's Life of Galileo, surveying critical perspectives on the politics of Byron's historical tragedy in the process. It then employs two key Marxist concepts-Marx's Bestimmung (determination) and Jameson's concept of "Necessity"-and uses two Renaissance intertexts-Machiavelli's The Prince and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar-to further illustrate connections between Byron's and Brecht's writings about fate, tragedy, history, and politics. In so doing, the essay contends that the politics of Byron's tragic drama is best understood using a "Brechtian" method of reading, derived in part from Brecht's own comments on Galileo. It thus argues that reading Byron with Brecht remains highly productive, with potential well beyond the fascinating but fleeting moments of conjunction both writers have enjoyed in previous Byron criticism.