ABSTRACT
In 1835, the year after her father's death, Sara Coleridge wrote a diary entry on Thomas Noon Talfourd's new play Ion, a florid drama set in Greece and modelled on Sophocles. While the play would be staged at Covent Garden in 1836, Sara commented on the published text: The spirit of the piece is exclusively modern. Even when Greek tragedy is invoked explicitly, it has been made into something almost unrecognizable, a modern form of melodrama. William Shakespeare's plays suffered a similar fate, as mangled versions of the tragedies persisted on London's stages for decades after Coleridge's death. It is regrettable that Coleridge never formulated an explicit theory of tragedy despite demonstrating a profound intuition of how Dionysian and Apollonian forces conflict, in addition to his vast scholarly knowledge of plays and poetry. Remorse was staged and published, and obtained positive reviews and significant revenue, and Coleridge delivered important lectures on literature.
