Hypocrisy and Cant

Where it surfaces

• Preface to Cantos VI, VII, and VIII

  Byron excoriates the 'cant' of the era, particularly the hypocritical mourning for Castlereagh and the double-dealing of English society, quoting Voltaire on the displacement of virtue by measured language.

• Epigraph

  The Shakespeare quote challenges self-righteous moralizing, suggesting that virtue does not negate the enjoyment of life's pleasures, a key satirical target in the poem.

• Dedication

  Byron excoriates Southey and the Lake Poets for their political apostasy, abandoning liberal principles for Tory patronage, and condemns Castlereagh's hypocritical statesmanship.

• Don Juan

  Donna Inez's moral posturing and the contrast between public virtue and private vice are central to the chapter.

• Canto I

  Donna Inez's strict moral education of Juan is undercut by the narrator's ironic commentary, and the poem satirizes societal pretensions about virtue and education.

• Canto III

  Lambro's mild manners and gentlemanly breeding mask his violent nature, highlighting the hypocrisy of social and moral codes.

• Canto X

  The narrator directly addresses Hypocrisy in a stanza, praising it with ironic fervor, and critiques the double standards of virtue in society.

• Canto XII

  The canto exposes the hypocrisy of virtuous women who 'hate all vice except its reputation' and the double standards of chastity.

• Canto XIII

  The chapter critiques the hypocrisy of society, where appearances are paramount and virtue is often a facade, as with Mrs. Sleep who 'looked a white lamb, yet was a black sheep.'

• Canto XIV

  The chapter critiques the superficiality and moral pretense of aristocratic society, where virtue is often a mask.