The Shackles of Myrrha

In a soliloquy on her relationship with the King Sardanapalus, the slave Myrrha expresses the following sentiment:  “Why do I love this man? My country's daughters/ Love none but heroes./ But I have no country!/ The slave hath lost all save her bonds. I love him;/ And that's the heaviest link of the long chain--/ To love whom we esteem not. Be it so:/ The hour is coming when he'll need all love,/ And find none.” With these words, Myrrha addresses several themes running not only through Byron’s Sardanapalus but also through popular political culture: slavery, feminism, and the issue of Greece. 

Lamenting the lost glory of her home country, she resigns herself to her shackles, describing them as her new lifeblood. The inextricable link between her role as a slave and as a woman mirrors the rhetorical strategies of the previous generation’s feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who described the inequality of “love” in English marriages. The issue of African slavery itself was also a hot topic during this time, and although Byron sets the play in an exotic locale, the issue remains at the forefront. He does allow Myrrha to break (partially) her bonds as a woman and slave in the final line, ominously stating, “when he’ll need all love/ and find none.”