Which Romantic poet wrote the verse drama 'Manfred'?

Lord Byron wrote the verse drama Manfred, a dramatic poem composed mainly in 1816 and 1817. Its full title is Manfred: A Dramatic Poem, and it is often described as a closet drama because it was designed more for reading than conventional stage performance.

The work centres on Manfred, a powerful but tormented nobleman haunted by guilt and grief connected with Astarte, a forbidden beloved. He seeks supernatural help to escape his suffering, confronting spirits and other mysterious beings in the Alps. Manfred’s refusal to submit to either supernatural authority or religious consolation gives the poem its Byronic atmosphere of defiance and isolation.

Byron began writing the poem after leaving England for Switzerland in 1816 amid scandal and social ostracism. He spent time near Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, during the same period associated with the ghost-story discussions that helped inspire Frankenstein. Critics often see autobiographical echoes in Manfred, but the drama should not be treated as a literal autobiography.

Manfred also had a major musical afterlife. Robert Schumann composed incidental music for it, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky later wrote the Manfred Symphony. These adaptations helped extend Byron’s dramatic poem beyond literary circles.