SOURCE: Manning, Peter J. “Rebels Cosmic and Domestic” In Byron and His Fictions, pp. 146-74. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978.

In the following excerpt, Manning explores the tortured family dynamics that are central to The Two Foscari.

The line by Sheridan that Byron selected for the epigraph to The Two Foscari encapsulates its themes: ‘The father softens, but the governor's resolved.’ At the centre of the drama is the trial of Jacopo Foscari for alleged treason against Venice, over which his father the Doge is required to preside. The situation contains the already familiar elements: a father who figures as the oppressor of his son, and, as in Marino Faliero and Sardanapalus, a conflict between obligation to the state and private freedom. The outward circumstances of the play might thus be loosely termed political, but it is striking that Byron imparts little of the information needed to assess...