The impression made on Lord Byron, when he arrived in Venice, by the character of this old man, and the terrible catastrophe that overtook him, first gave rise to his idea of the tragedy. But four years intervened between the project and its execution. During this time he consulted all the histories of Venice, every document and chronicle he could lay his hands on. He passed long hours in the hall of the great council, opposite the gloomy black veil surmounted by that terrible inscription—"Hic est locus Marino Faliero decapitati pro criminibus suis;" on the Giants' staircase, where the Doge had been crowned ere he was degraded and beheaded; he had interrogated the stones forming the monuments raised to the Doges; often was he seen in the church of St. John and St. Paul, seeking out the tomb of Faliero and his family: and still he was not satisfied, for the motives of the conspiracy did not yet present themselves so clearly to his mind as the fact of the conspiracy itself. Then he wrote to Murray, to search him out in England other more authentic documents concerning this tragical end.
"I want it," he said to him in February, 1817, "and can not find so good an account of that business here.... I have searched all their histories; but the policy of the old aristocracy made their writers silent on his motives, which were a private grievance against one of the patricians."
And not only did he seek for truth in books and monuments, but he likewise sought it in the character and manners of all classes inhabiting the lagoons. It was only toward the close of 1820, at Ravenna, that he felt ready to write his magnificent drama.
All the characters in this tragedy, except that admirable one of Angiolina, which he drew from imagination and traced with his heart, were supplied by history. In it Lord Byron has scrupulously respected places, epoch, and the time of duration for the action; points which he considered as elements of truth in art; in short, all essential circumstances were faithfully reproduced in his drama.
Even the faults which critics little versed in psychological science, and obstinately forgetful that this work was not intended for acting, pretend to find in it, were but the necessary results of historical accuracy. These critics wished to meet with the love, jealousy, and other passions common to their age and country; but Lord Byron would only give them what he found in history. Thence, no love and no jealousy; but a proud, violent character, coming in collision with a government proud and violent as itself; one of those men that are exceptional but real, in whom extremes of good and evil meet; one of those dramatic natures that fastened strongly on his imagination, producing a shock which kindled the flame of genius:—
"It is now four years that I have meditated this work, and before I had sufficiently examined the records, I was rather disposed to have made it turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But perceiving no foundation for this in historical truth, and aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the drama, I have given it a more historical form."[199]
As to the motives for the conspiracy, the clearness of certainty only came to him a year after his drama had been published. But there was such an attraction between his mind and truth that his intuition had supplied the want of material certainty. And when a year afterward, at Ravenna, he received the document so long desired, he was happy in sending Murray a copy of this document translated from an ancient chronicle by Sir Francis Palgrave, the learned author of the "History of the Anglo-Saxons," to be able to write:—
"Inclosed is the best account of the 'Doge Faliero,' which was only sent to me from an old MS. the other day. Get it translated, and append it as a note to the next edition. You will perhaps be pleased to see that my conceptions of his character were correct, though I regret not having met with this extract before. You will perceive that he himself said exactly what he is made to say about the Bishop of Treviso. You will also see that 'he spoke very little,' and these only words of rage and disdain, after his arrest, which is the case in the play, except when he breaks out at the close of Act V. But his speech to the conspirators is better in the MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it in time."
The historical inaccuracies of authors, their carelessness about truth, whether the result of malice or inattention, revolted Lord Byron, and especially if such untruths tended to asperse a great character. The lies of Dr. Moore about the "Doge Faliero" almost made him angry:—