Lord Bryon’s Love Letter

Lord Bryon’s Love Letter

Lord Byron’s love letter is a play that features four characters: Ariadne, an old woman, the matron, and the matron’s husband. The play discusses the contents of a love letter claimed to have been written by Lord Byron, and several people seem interested in finding it. When the doorbell rings, for example, the old woman and the spinster immediately conclude that someone has come to search for the love letter. Lord Byron’s Love Letter is however presented in the form of a poem that does not appear to have a specific design to be noticed. The poem is based on several themes that are only given little details. The presentation of the themes also does not follow any discernible pattern, and the writer leaves the readers with the responsibility of building themes from the work presented. The play Lord Byron’s Love Letter does not have a specific design with topics being alienated to twentieth-century ideologies and isolation of the artist from the society whereby themes are introduced, dropped and later picked up.

The theme of deception seems to be a major theme, but the author does not appear to develop them continuously as would be expected. The old woman and her spinster granddaughter try to deceive the neighbors that they had Lord Byron’s letter that they had obtained from Byron himself. The spinster’s grandmother claims that she had met Lord Byron in Athens and they demand money from the people who come to see the letter. The spinster and her grandmother claim that they had gone to Greece to learn about the classic remains associated with early civilization, a journey that led them into meeting Lord Byron at the steps. The grandmother says that she had fallen in love with Byron the first time they met and lived together until Byron dies in the war while defending his country. The death of Byron is given as the reason why the grandmother had decided to renounce the world and instead decided to live alone in loneliness. The spinster’s grandmother speaks from behind the curtains, and only the spinster interacts with the clients. The spinster and the grandmother ask for money from the clients before presenting the letter to them, but the clients do not pay the money. The letter accidentally falls, and the couple realizes that the writer of the letter is not Lord Byron as claimed but rather the spinster’s grandfather. However, deception does not appear to be the theme intended by the author since the spinster, and her grandmother does not succeed in their mission. The author could have been trying to build the theme of deep feelings of love hidden in memories but ended up building the theme of deception.

An illusion is presented in a more significant part of the book at the expense of reality. The spinster and her grandmother spend their life inside a dark room burning a lamp. The fear of facing reality outside the room appears to have overpowered the grandmother and her granddaughter to the extent of not being able to interact with people outside their house. The belief that people will be foolish enough to pay money to read Lord Byron’s letter is a belief of illusion. The grandmother appears to have been affected adversely by the fear of reality since she does not engage visitors on face-to-face communication. Whenever visitors knock on the door, the grandmother hides behind the curtains and speaks from there. The spinster is purely given the responsibility of engaging the visitors with help coming from her grandmother behind the curtain. The spinster and her grandmother have decided to leave a different life created by their imagination. However, the outcome of the fear for reality is the slip that happens when the couple notices the trickery that the grandmother and her granddaughter were using to get money from unsuspecting individuals seeking to see Byron’s love letter. In addition to the life of the granddaughter, the keeping of a dead canary inside the parlor proves further how the two occupants cannot accept the truth that the canary is already dead. In the building of the theme of illusion, the author seems to pick again, the theme of deception. The presentation of a dead canary inside a parlor seeks to deceive the visitors that the canary is still alive. The theme of illusion is introduced inside the theme of deception, and later, the author decides to rebuild the theme of deception by making the mission of the spinster and her grandmother unsuccessful in their trickery mission. The spinster and the grandmother live in illusion and try as much as they can to lure people into living into illusion like them.

The interaction of characters in any work of literature is crucial in building the intended themes (Steier, p.136). The spinster and her grandmother are presented as close associates with different personalities but connect well in their attempt to making their mission successful. The old woman, for example, believes that Lord Byron was banished from his country due to being suspected of getting involved in unclean behaviors with his half-sister. On the other hand, the spinster believes that Byron left the country willing to go to war. The old woman appears to do nothing, and the spinster is left to undertake all the responsibilities. The old woman is defensive when it comes to talking about Byron, but the spinster thinks Byron is an evil man. Also, the spinster has better relationship skills than the old woman and treats the clients with ultimate respect to drag them into believing in their ideologies. The old woman makes negative comments about the visitors and is not interested in most of their inquiries. The main interest of the old woman is the money that the clients will leave behind, but the spinster wants to make the process of deceiving their client as flawless as possible. For example, the old woman warns the spinster to observe the matron and her husband when the matron goes for her husband. The outcome of the mission later ascertains the fear of the old woman since the couple fails to pay before seeing the letter. The author presents the two characters to have different character traits but proves that only cooperation is needed and not similarity of character for two people to effectively work together. When that a visitor knocks the door, the old woman moves and hides behind a corner to wait for the spinster to do her job. However, the old woman helps through the curtain, but the spinster is not comfortable with the directions that the old woman gives.

The love of letters by Bryon is similar to the love shown by the clients of spinster and her grandmother. Bryon has a way of writing letters that move readers into believing that he is going through the events in the letters during the time of writing. The expertise in writing can be related to the spinster and her grandmother’s wisdom in the narration that has the capability of moving the clients into falling victims of their trickery. For example, the narration given by the old woman concerning her meeting with Byron gives the listeners difficulties in differentiating it from the truth. The story of Byron and the old woman is set on a faraway country such that the clients could not have known anything concerning the event that could have led to the old woman meeting Byron. The spinster and the old woman claimed that they had gone to Athens to learn about the remains of ancient civilization when fortunately the old woman met Byron. The meeting is staged by the woman’s fallen gloves that were collected by Byron. In the process of giving back the gloves to the woman, Byron’s hands and the woman’s hand meet and the warmth on both hands makes the two to hold each other for some time: “Above [the woman], there was a man who was walking lamely… the man turned now and then in order to observe the lovely scenery…,” (Steier, p.135). The holding of hands as said by the spinster and her grandmother sets the pace for a relationship that would end with the death of Byron. However, the ability of the spinster and the old woman to express their ideas appears different from Byron’s belief. Most of the letters written by Byron proved that language is inefficient in explaining the extent of an individual’s feelings towards someone. Unfortunately, the spinster and the old woman do not believe in the insufficiency of language, and their lack of caution costs them when the couple realizes of their trickery play.

Believing in illusion is costly and allows people to take the advantage to misuse an individual. The clients seeking the services from the spinster and the old lady appear to have some illusion of folly. The spinster and the old woman are keen to exploit the desperation of the people looking for Lord Byron’s letter to get money. The spinster and the old woman have devised ways of luring the desperate individuals into believing that illusion was part of a peaceful lifestyle and that an individual would create a world of imagination to live without the disruptions associated with everyday’s life. The clients did not appear to create sense from the fact that the spinster and the old woman were already struggling in accepting reality and thus were not in a position to help troubled adventure seekers. The spinster and the old woman decided to lead a life full of illusion by ensuring that they did not make any contact with the outside world. The author says that the spinster and the old woman could no longer sustain the rays of the sun outside the parlor.

The design used in Lord Byron’s Love Letter does not appear to be explainable. The play involves themes that are developed from nowhere and dropped after a short time. The themes are then revisited later to create the entire plot of the play. The ideas presented by the play appear to be based on the twentieth century, and the artist is segregated from society.