Editorial Introduction
Manfred took a long time to get its acts together. Like the third canto of Childe Harold and a famous set of shorter poems, Byron wrote it in Switzerland after he left England in late April 1816 following the scandalous breakup of his marriage. Although he wrote Acts I and II in Switzerland in late September 1816, he had brought two MSS with him from England that he had written much earlier, in 1813: one was “The Incantation” that closes Act I Scene 1, the other was a piece titled “Ashtaroth’s Song” that he would write into the original version of Act III scene 1. Having completed the first two acts, he stopped writing and only resumed composition after he had moved to Venice, where he wrote the original Act III in late January and early February 1817. In April he received and corrected proof, but was told by his publisher’s house editor William Gifford that Act III was “weak” and should be revised. The rewriting wasn’t done until he moved to Rome in early May. “Ashtaroth’s Song” disappeared from Byron’s “Dramatic Poem” along with the original third’s act’s other serio-comical features. Whether the new third act is an improvement on the original is a matter of serious dispute.
Since Byron chose not to correct proof for the revised third act, leaving the work, as he said, “to Mr. Gifford’s correction”, it appeared with some unfortunate errors. Acts I and II had other serious mistakes as well, and when Byron’s publisher decided to reset the entire work after he received the new third act, further mistakes were generated. The errors were not removed until 1986 when Manfred was published in volume 4 of Lord Byron. The Complete Poetical Works (ed. Jerome McGann).