''Cain'' is a dramatic work by Lord Byron published in 1821. In ''Cain'', Byron dramatizes the story of

Cain and Abel In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain ''Qayīn'', in pausa ''Qāyīn''; gr, Κάϊν ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl / Qāyīn and Abel ''Heḇel'', in pausa ''Hāḇel''; gr, Ἅβελ ''Hábel''; ar, هابيل, Hāb� ...

from Cain's point of view. ''Cain'' is an example of the literary genre known as

closet drama A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or sometimes out loud in a large group. The contrast between closet drama and classic "stage" dramas dates back to the late eighteenth century. Al ...

Characters

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

* Eve *

Cain Cain ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl/Qāyīn is a Biblical figure in the Book of Genesis within Abrahamic religions. He is the elder brother of Abel, and the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, the first couple within the Bible. He wa ...

, their first son * Abel, their second son * Adah, Cain's sister and wife * Zillah, Abel's sister and wife * Lucifer * Angel of the Lord

Summary

The play commences with Cain refusing to participate in his family's prayer of thanksgiving to God. Cain tells his father he has nothing to thank God for because he is fated to die. As Cain explains in an early soliloquy, he regards his mortality as an unjust punishment for Adam and Eve's transgression in the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the Bible, biblical paradise described in Book of Genesis, Genes ...

, an event detailed in the Book of Genesis. Cain's anxiety over his mortality is heightened by the fact that he does not know what death is. At one point in Act I, he recalls keeping watch at night for the arrival of death, which he imagines to be an anthropomorphic entity. The character who supplies Cain with knowledge of death is Lucifer. In Act II, Lucifer leads Cain on a voyage to the "Abyss of Space" and shows him a catastrophic vision of the Earth's natural history, complete with spirits of extinct life forms like the mammoth. Cain returns to Earth in Act III, depressed by this vision of universal death. At the climax of the play, Cain murders Abel. The play concludes with Cain's banishment.

Literary influences

Perhaps the most important literary influence on ''Cain'' was

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

's epic poem ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse (poetry), verse. A second edition fo ...

'', which tells of the creation and fall of mankind. For Byron as for many Romantic poets, the hero of ''Paradise Lost'' was Satan, and Cain is modelled in part on Milton's defiant protagonist. Furthermore, Cain's vision of the Earth's natural history in Act II is a parody of Adam's consolatory vision of the history of man (culminating in the coming and sacrifice of Christ) presented by the Archangel Michael in Books XI and XII of Milton's epic. In the preface to ''Cain'', Byron attempts to downplay the influence of poems "upon similar topics", but the way he refers to ''Paradise Lost'' suggests its formative influence: "Since I was twenty, I have never read Milton; but I had read him so frequently before, that this may make little difference."Byron, "Preface" to ''Cain'', in ''The Major Works'', ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 865.

Other influences

As Byron himself notes in the preface to ''Cain'', Cain's vision in Act II was inspired by the theory of

catastrophism In geology, catastrophism theorises that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This contrasts with uniformitarianism (sometimes called gradualism), according to which slow increment ...

. In an attempt to explain large gaps in the fossil record, catastrophists posited that the history of the Earth was punctuated with violent upheavals that had destroyed its flora and fauna. Byron read about catastrophism in an 1813 English translation of some early work by French natural historian

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier ...

. Other influences include ''

The Divine Legation of Moses ''The Divine Legation of Moses'' is the best-known work of William Warburton, an English theologian of the 18th century who became bishop of Gloucester. As its full title makes clear, it is a conservative defence of orthodox Christian belief agains ...

'' by

William Warburton William Warburton (24 December 16987 June 1779) was an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death. He edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of William Shakespeare. Li ...

and '' A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'' by

Edmund Burke Edmund Burke (; 12 January NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS">New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style">NS/nowiki>_1729_–_9_July_1797)_was_an_ NS.html"_;"title="New_Style.html"_;"title="/nowiki>New_Style"> ...

Notes

References

*Byron, ''The Major Works'', ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

External links

''Cain''
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
''Cain: A Mystery''
The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, vol 5. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, NY 1901. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cain (Play) Plays by Lord Byron Plays based on the Bible 1821 plays Cultural depictions of Cain and Abel Cultural depictions of Adam and Eve Fiction about the Devil Closet drama