Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/368

 that Byron told him "that he had almost finished another play called Werner;" and (p. 412) "that Werner was written in twenty-eight days, and one entire act at a sitting." It is almost incredible that Byron should have recopied a copy of the duchess's play in order to impose on Mrs. Shelley and Williams and Medwin; and it is quite incredible that they were in the plot, and lent themselves to the deception. It is certain that both Williams and Medwin believed that Byron was the author of Werner, and it is certain that nothing would have induced Mrs. Shelley to be particeps criminis—to copy a play which was not Byron's, to be published as Byron's, and to suffer her copy to be fraudulently endorsed by her guilty accomplice.

The internal evidence of the genuineness of Werner is still more convincing. In the first place, there are numerous "undesigned coincidences," allusions, and phrases to be found in Werner and elsewhere in Byron's Poetical Works, which bear his sign-manual, and cannot be attributed to another writer; and, secondly, scattered through the play there are numerous lines, passages, allusions—"a cloud of witnesses" to their Byronic inspiration and creation.

Take the following parallels:—

Werner, act i. sc. 1, lines 693, 694— " as parchment on a drum, Like Ziska's skin." Age of Bronze, lines 133, 134— "The time may come, His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum." Werner, act ii. sc. 2, lines 177, 178— "... save your throat From the Raven-stone." Manfred, act iii. (original version)— "The raven sits On the Raven-stone." Werner, act ii. sc. 2, line 279— "Things which had made this silkworm cast his skin." Marino Faliero, act ii. sc. 2, line 115— "... these swoln silkworms masters." ("Silkworm," as a term of contempt, is an Italianism.)

Werner, act iii. sc. 1, lines 288, 289— I fear that men must draw their chariots, as They say kings did Sesostris."