AN ITALIAN TRILOGY

MASQUES FOR SHELLEY, BYRON AND KEATS

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Why an Italian trilogy?

I was an art student plotting my next move when I was invited to participate in a summer school in the Golfo dei Poeti, Italy. On the Isola Palmaria, where we were based, I began to hear stories, often told by locals, of Byron’s cave, of Shelley’s drowning and his pagan beach cremation further down the coast. Later I learned of the death of Keats in Rome. This was my introduction to the Romantics and this is where poetry first came alive for me.

I was as fascinated by who they were and how they lived as much as I was by what they wrote; their extravagantly brief lives, their rejection of authority and conformity, their antagonism with the establishment and conflict with the pervading manners and fashions of the day. I spent the next months travelling in Italy, pavement drawing and selling architectural sketches with their roving poet ghosts accompanying me on a journey through antiquity. The question of why they had chosen Italy remained.

What is a Masque?

During an event commemorating the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante in Florence where we declaimed the entire ‘Divine Comedy’ I began to reconnect with the spirit of the Romantics. I took a trip out to Viareggio and found myself in front of Shelley’s statue where an imaginary conversation took place between his bronze bust and myself cast as a passing tourist. The idea a verse-drama or ‘masque’ – a work at the intersection of poetry and theatre – began taking shape.

Shelley, Byron and Keats lived poetically. There was a drama to their short but extraordinary lives and these dedications, these three masques, I hope provide not only a contemporary reflection but a manifestation of the spirit that compelled them, offering a documentation of what lead them to seek exile, inspiration and restitution in Italy.

A MASQUE FOR SHELLEY

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The first in the Trilogy. An address to Shelley’s statue in Viareggio. I performed the work in Piazza Shelley on the 200th anniversary of Shelley’s death. It was subsequently presented at the British Institute, Florence, Poetry on The Lake in Orta and at Keats-Shelley House in Rome.

A MASQUE FOR BYRON

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This was written to coincide with the Byron Bicentennial commemorations at Keats-Shelley House, Rome, 2024. From the Hellespont to tourist flooded Venice this poetic investigation into a divisive figure offers a sympathetic critique of the poet with the benefit of a contemporary lens…

A MASQUE FOR KEATS – COMING SOON

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Launching at Keats-Shelley House, Rome, February 2026

A scenariao is imagined where Keats returns to contemporary London to resume his medical practice but is he prepared to sacrifice his poetic legacy in exchange for a life of health and happiness?

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