ABSTRACT
Parody, in the form of the burlesque stanza of Hookham Frere’s Whistlecraft and mocking repudiation of his earlier subject matter and self-presentations, granted Byron the voice of his maturity. In Beppo (written in 1817 but published in the following year), Byron’s first effort in ottava rima, we see the beginning of the ‘Juanesque’ manner. In Frere’s burlesque the poet found the form and manner best suited to his comic talents and a way to escape what he had come to see as the poetical dead end of the high Romanticism of the previous year’s Childe Harold Canto IV The poem was written in Italy after Douglas Kinnaird, who visited Byron in September 1817 at the Via Foscarini, arrived with books from England, Whistlecraft amongst them. Byron immediately set to work in the manner of Frere, writing to Murray on 12 October that he had ‘written a poem . . . humorous, in or after the excellent manner of Mr. Whistlecraft (whom I take to be Frere), on a Venetian anecdote – which amused me’. 1 The anecdote is recounted in John Cam Hobhouse’s diary:
A Turk arrived at the Regina di Ungheria [sic] inn at Venice and lodged there – he asked to speak to the mistress of the inn a buxom lady of 40 in keeping with certain children & who had lost her husband many years before at sea – after some preliminaries my hostess went to the Turk who immediately shut the door & began questioning her about her family & her late husband – She told her loss – when the Turk asked if her husband had any particular mark about him she said – yes he had a scar on his shoulder. Something like this said the Turk pulling down his robe – I am your husband – I have been to Turkey – I have made a large fortune and I make you three offers – either to quit your amoroso and come with me – or to stay with your amoroso or to accept a pension and live alone. 2
