The construction arrangements
came courtesy of Edward John Trelawny, whom I’ve mentioned several times here.
As I said, he entered the Shelley circle early in 1822 via Bysshe’s cousin
Thomas Medwin and quickly established himself—through some considerable flash
and exaggeration—to be someone whom the Shelleys and the others enjoyed. He was
full of adventure stories (some were sort of true), and he later published his
own memoir—with Mary’s help (for which she received little of his gratitude)—Adventures of a Younger Son (1831). Even
later, he would publish a self-serving memoir about his experiences with
Shelley and Byron, called, frankly, Reflections
on the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858). It, too, bore some
resemblance to the truth.
Anyway, Trelawny was a robustly,
romantically handsome man—a sort of Johnny-Depp-as-Pirate look—and Mary was
taken with him. In Pisa, in February 1822, the group had agreed to Byron’s
suggestion that they mount a production of Othello
in Byron's Pisan mansion (with all of Pisa to be invited), and Trelawny,
swarthy, was to play the Moor. Byron, we know, was good at suggesting things—like
midnight ghost-story competitions—but his initial excitement sometimes faded
with the dawn’s early light. Othello
was one such project.
Still, the cast would have been
fantastic. Byron as Iago (Medwin raved about his thespian skills), Mary as
Desdemona, Edward Williams as Michael Cassio, Jane Williams as Emilia. Who wouldn’t
pay to see that?
But all came to naught. Byron’s
latest lover, Teresa Guiccioli, did not speak English, and, according to Medwin’s
account, pouted, so Byron, after a few rehearsals, let the project die—just as
he’d given up on his own ghost story back in 1816.[1]
But if Byron suggested ghost
stories and Shakespearean productions, it was Trelawny who fueled the fires of
both Shelley and Byron to build their own boats for an idyllic summer by the sea.
[1] For two brief accounts of this,
see William S Clair’s Trelawny: The
Incurable Romancer (New York: Vanguard, 1977), 60; Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, 3 vols. (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 974–75.
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