A Play in Three Acts’ Features Lord Byron
Award-winning author Nigel Patten presents his second fictional play about a famous Englishman. His previous play, An Incompatible Passion, followed the last few months in the life of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
This play follows Lord Byron’s dramatic life in three acts. The dashing baron won women’s hearts with passionate letters and poems during the Regency era. His most famous work was the epic Don Juan, which he published in 1819, but was still working on prior to his death in 1824.
In 1823, the scandalous lord rented a 16th-century palazzo high in the hills above Genoa, Italy, with his mistress. The neighbors included Mary Shelley, the recent widow of poet Percy Shelly, and herself the author of the novel Frankenstein.
The play reveals Byron’s complex character and his ultimate rejection by English society for the scandals created by his amorous lifestyle. He was a tormented man seeking love in all the wrong places.
In a letter to Lady Melbourne in 1814, he wrote, “I have been trying all my life to make someone love me.”
Nigel Patten was born near London in 1940, and has lived in Switzerland since 1961, where he taught English at a French high school. He has published 12 books, including historical novels, a biography, an English course for French speakers, and a play on the last weeks of the poet Shelley’s life. A two-time Reader’s Favorite Award winner, the author travelled in a motorhome to India, and for 15 years sailed his sailboat between the Greek islands. Having reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro twice, he still hikes mountains. An actor and director, he was part of an amateur theatre troupe in Vevey for 40 years.