ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the essential prole-gomenary matters; the major causes and effects of the one-sided cumulative critical reading that Byron has received, the relationship among Byron, the contemporary Jacobean social setting, and the Jacobean drama which reflected that setting and stipulation of a working definition for the term “dramatic imagery.” It aims to rectify the critical imbalance by approaching Byron through the previously unexplored medium of its dramatic imagery. The effects on Byron of this generally unbalanced critical attention have been twofold: perpetuation of the myth that the play is “undramatic,” and, perhaps resulting from the power of the myth, a seemingly perverse blindness to the unique qualities of the double play. A neglected minor classic in the extensive literature of war and peace, Byron proves to be an unexcelled depth study of the process of massive self-deception, which reaffirms the validity of the Socratic maxim, “Know Thyself.”
