We can agree, I think, that Sardanapalus, for better or for worse, is defined by his femininity. The question I have, however, is how exactly to define femininity, as it operates with the play... Sardanapalus is continually referred to as "effeminate," "manless" et cetera, but how exactly might his actions be used to define these terms?
To me, it seems that femininity might be equatable to sensuality winning out over sensibility. Sardanapalus, as he is introduced to us, prefers the sensual pleasures of food, entertainment and sex over exercising his rationality. Is this a fair definition? How does the functioning definition of femininity affect the play as a work?
In the telling of the actual Assyrian King Sardanapalus, it was he who ordered the funeral pyre to be constructed. He refused to be captured or killed by another hand, so he piled up his riches as well as his concubines and eunuchs and burned them along with himself. Byron takes this agency away and "gives the torch" to Myrrha. She convinces him to war and to go back again; she is also the one to plant the idea of constructing his pyre and decides to sacrifice herself. He takes the dynamism of gender politics and weaves it directly into the action and devices of the play itself by changing the facts of history (or at least common legend).
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