The Lady of Lyons | Page 3

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The Lady of Lyons;
Or,
Love and Pride.

by Edward Bulwer Lytton

To the author of "Ion."
Whose genius and example have alike contributed towards the
regeneration of The National Drama,
This play is inscribed.
PREFACE.
An indistinct recollection of the very pretty little tale, called "The
Bellows-Mender," suggested the plot of this Drama. The incidents are,

however, greatly altered from those in the tale, and the characters
entirely re-cast.
Having long had a wish to illustrate certain periods of the French
history, so, in the selection of the date in which the scenes of this play
are laid, I saw that the era of the Republic was that in which the
incidents were rendered most probable, in which the probationary
career of the hero could well be made sufficiently rapid for dramatic
effect, and in which the character of the time itself was depicted by the
agencies necessary to the conduct of the narrative. For during the early
years of the first and most brilliant successes of the French Republic, in
the general ferment of society, and the brief equalization of ranks,
Claude's high-placed love; his ardent feelings, his unsettled principles
(the struggle between which makes the passion of this drama), his
ambition, and his career, were phenomena that characterized the age,
and in which the spirit of the nation went along with the extravagance
of the individual.
The play itself was composed with a twofold object. In the first place,
sympathizing with the enterprise of Mr. Macready, as Manager of
Covent Garden, and believing that many of the higher interests of the
Drama were involved in the success or failure of an enterprise equally
hazardous and disinterested, I felt, if I may so presume to express
myself, something of the Brotherhood of Art; and it was only for Mr.
Macready to think it possible that I might serve him in order to induce
me to make the attempt.
Secondly, in that attempt I was mainly anxious to see whether or not,
after the comparative failure on the stage of "The Duchess de la
Valliere," certain critics had truly declared that it was not in my power
to attain the art of dramatic construction and theatrical effect. I felt,
indeed, that it was in this that a writer, accustomed to the narrative
class of composition, would have the most both to learn and unlearn.
Accordingly, it was to the development of the plot and the arrangement
of the incidents that I directed my chief attention;--and I sought to
throw whatever belongs to poetry less into the diction and the "felicity
of words" than into the