Castiglione, the son of a duke, becomes engaged to his cousin Alessandra, inciting the jealousy of his father's ward, the orphan Lalage.

[5] Anna Cooke of Frankfort, Kentucky gave birth to the child of the state solicitor general Solomon P. Sharp but married Jereboam O. Beauchamp in 1824.

[7] Poe's story also utilized other real-life historical figures; the Earl of Leicester stands in as Beauchamp and the character Baldassare Castiglione represents Sharp.

[8] The true event, labeled "The Kentucky Tragedy", was fictionalized in many other works, including Conrad and Eudora (1834) by Thomas Holley Chivers, Beauchampe (1842) by William Gilmore Simms, and World Enough and Time (1950) by Robert Penn Warren.

[10] In 1835, Kennedy wrote to the owner of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia: "He is at work upon a tragedy", and he suggested that Poe be allowed to contribute something to the magazine.

[12] Another installment was published in January 1836,[18] though it was never fully completed, possibly because he considered the play unsuccessful[19] or because Kennedy insisted Poe focus on "drudging upon whatever may make money".

Beverley Tucker wrote for the Washington Telegraph that he was disappointed after Poe "had taught us to expect much, for his prose is often very high wrought poetry".

[23] One critic for the Lynchburg Virginian wrote: "Scenes from Politian", like the prose productions from the same pen (Mr. Poe) evince great powers, wasted on trifles.

Why, (to adopt the catechetical style of his own criticism,) why does Mr. Poe throw away his strength on shafts and columns, instead of building a temple to his fame?

[2] Poe took the advice and went on to focus on shorter works after the failure of both Politian and his only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which also led to his abandonment of The Journal of Julius Rodman.

As Poe described years later, he joined in the effort of "Magazine literature—to the curt, the terse, the well-timed, and the readily diffused, in preference to the old forms of the verbose and ponderous & the inaccessible".

[20] In 1845, Poe accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in print for stealing a quote from Politian for his own play The Spanish Student.