ABSTRACT
The poem is deeply ironic – at the expense of those politicians who might indeed have been knighted for their efforts in foreign policy, but also at Lord Byron's own expense. The contemporary poets of the opening may be vain, self-serving and reactionary but in the end these offences are as nothing against the politician's power to have people killed. Byron at first claimed the poem 'had no plan' but Jerome McGann has shown how in a letter to John Murray in February 1821 Byron saw the plot developing. Some of Byron's friends thought they recognized Donna Inez as a satirical portrait of Byron's wife: Lady Byron too had 'tried to prove her loving lord was mad'. Byron seems to be both a libertine and a libertarian. It may be that his Romantic individualism simply cannot be applied to anyone but himself. Byron's voice may, seduce us into overlooking alternative voices, including those of women.
