Manfred is a three-act dramatic (or dialogued) poem composed between 1816 and 1817 and begun while Byron resided in the legendary Villa Diodati in Switzerland. About four months before starting this production, the poet had hosted the author of the Gothic classic "The Monk", the novelist Matthew Gregory Lewis, who had recited to him the first part of Goethe's "Faust" by translating it offhand. Not by chance, the Faustian character of the protagonist is one of Manfredo's most characteristic traits, as well as the arrogance of the magician in the face of the powers he conjures, the weight of the crimes of his past (with almost explicit allusions to the incest scandal between Byron and his half-sister Augusta Leigh), the sublime characterization of the alpine landscape and its existential considerations (which impacted countless poets and even philosophers, such as Nietzsche)

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