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S~ I I" I ! I f I i %. ' ^ i * ISMJJ^ h

PROMETIJIU UNBOUND

A I arior mn Edition

EDITED BY lAW'RENCK JOHN 2ILLMA1N

This volume brings together for the.1 time all the important textual and crl> material about Prometheus Unbound VP has appeared since the poem's puhlicati r 18^0. It is the result of more than seven of research and editing.

Prometheus Unbound represents the mination of Shelley's development. It w&; own favorite poem, yet he realized tha problems of interpreting it would be m , ous and difficult. It was greeted in 18K clashing critical opinion:

"What ... is the meaning of this tv physical rhapsody about the unbindin Prometheus? ... It is only nonsense, unmixed nonsense."

"What grace there is in the flow of & words! What perfection of rhythm!"

". , . a production of magnificent po-!,, power."

"Little else but absolute raving ... a Itnge of nonsense, cockney ism, poverty,1. »< pedantry."

Shelbys early death prohibited any « tributioti to understanding he might h, itiade in the way of notes. Later critical' terptetatibn* and reviews, diverse in s,<,ti and cpftten^ Iwe been widely scattered''1!1 Often iwtfQettibte*

collected these interpretations, B thje present b^

821

65-^8087

Kansas city public library Kansas city, missouri

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound

A VARIORUM EDITION

SHELLEY'S

Prometheus Unbound

A

VARIORUM EDITION

EDITED BY Lawrence John Zillman

19S9

University of Washington Press

SEATTLE

© Copyright 1959 by the University of Wanhington !*«*» Second printing, with corrections, 1960

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number* 50-90M

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEfilCA

JPor Xorwfce, tvho shared

1K8, fIJ.131 : for wtoon r«i<l noon

Preface

IT WAS EAULY in my work on the present volume that I read the comment of George S. Hillard (1345) with respect to the 1805 Henry James Todd

edition of Spenser's works; "This is what is technically called a variorum edition, containing a reprint of all the labours of the previous editors. , . . There is a great deal of learned rubbish in it; much trouble is often wasted in elucidating what is plain, and really difficult points are frequently

passed by in silence" (Hillard, Spenser* I, v-vi).

It soon became evident that Shelley, like Spenser, was not without his tribute of "learned rubbish,9' which may have led Douglas Bush to suggest that "one of the worst things about Shelley is the effect he has on his

admirers; nearly all of them are reduced to a common denominator, of which the outward evidence is perhaps a wild glitter in the eye" (My- thology, p. 156) » But in the case of Pronmtlieus Unbound* at least, the judg- ment of Kenneth Neil Cameron is, in the main, both true and pertinent; "The divergence of [the views on Prometheus Unbound] results, it should be emphasized, not from critical caprice but from genuine difficulty. Pmmethem Unbound is unquestionably one of the most profound and subtle of the great English poems. And difference and divergence in its interpretation are not—as might at first appear-— leading us farther from it but closer to it" ("Shelley Scholarship/' p» 100).

Too frequently, however, the "difference and divergence" in interpreta- tion available to the student are those of a few major names only, and to suggest, as does Bennett Weaver, that for critical comment on Prometheus Unbound we must "follow the way of the books— for there are few articles written on this drama" (Rom&ntic Poets, p. 187), is to overlook a fertile body of smaller, but certainly not always minor, studies or brief comments whose impact on our understanding of the poem, and of the changing attitudes toward it, is negligible only because they are in large part in- accessible, A comprehensive variorum treatment of the full range of these writings would appear to be the corrective to this situation. For, although

vii

viii

Matthew Arnold in 1888 could argue that "Shelby i« not a classic, various readings are to be no ted with earnest attention" ("Shelley*" p, 206), the need for such a treatment was evident to Swinburne some twenty years earlier. He wrote:

It is seldom that the work of a scholiast is «<> noon wanted an in Shell** y*n <•««** it has been. The first collected edition of his works had many gapn and error** patent and palpable to any serious reader. Hia text is ulntad) matter far debute mid comment, as though he were a classic newly unearthed. Or tain pawtgr?* l«*gm to be famous as crucial subjects for emendation; and the muster singer of our modem poets shares with his own masters and models the leant enviable proof <*f fame — that given by corrupt readings and diverse comme.utarieH {"Note*/* p. 3

Today, certainly, only the most prejudiced would deny the de«tnibiltty of the fullest possible light that can be thrown on a jmem an complex* and subtle, and significant as Prormtlieus Unbound, even though a part of that light be from sources now somewhat dimmed by time,

A final word should be said with respect to the requirements of nrlttrttoii and condensation in variorum editing. Some au thorn may well object that their work has been unhappily abbreviated, its general significance largely lost in the segregation of details. It is my hope, however, that, fHjweially in the Introduction, a fair indication of the broader point** of view ha* IHWW given, and that, if much of the supporting evidence haw been MixwHHortly sacrificed to the demands of space limitation, a fair fttatomont of the attitude may be acknowledged, and the desirability of pewpi^ttve for tiny one interpretation in the total pattern of critical thought may be udmittm),

tAWRBNCK JOHN ZItUIAtf University of Washington

A cknowledgments

IT is PLEASANT to record hero my thanks for the help so cheerfully given and so essential to the completion of this work; and at the same time to absolve all concerned from any share in such shortcomings as the work may evidence.

To the many on the University of Washington campus who have borne with me, and, for special help, to Professors A. R. Benham, Charles Goggio, Linden Mander, and the late Curtis C. D. Vail; to Mrs. Ruth Kirk, In- terlibrary Loan Librarian, for diligence in locating seemingly inaccessible items; to the Research Committee of the Graduate School for funds in support of research; and to the Agnes Anderson Research Fund Committee for a grant in aid of publication,

To the Bodleian Library; the Huntington Library, San Marino,, Cali- fornia (for MSS HM 2176 and HM 2177); and the Duke University Library, for permission to use microfilms and photostats of manuscript materials in their collections.

To the Keats -Shelley Memorial Association for permission to reproduce Joseph Severn's posthumous portrait* now in the Keats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome*

To the following holders of copyrighted material; George Allen & Unwin Ltd. for J» A* K. Thomson's The Classical Background of English Literature; Edward Arnold Ltd, for Oliver Elton's Shelley; The Atlantic Monthly for Arthur Symons' ShcUey; Joseph Warren Beach for his The Concept of Nature in Ninetee.nth~Gertiury English Poetry; Ernest Benn Ltd, for the Roger Ingpen-Waltar Peck Julian Edition of Shelley's Works; Basil Black- welt for Ralph Houston's "Shelley and the Principle of Association** and for William R. Rutland's Swinburne, a Nineteenth Century Hettene; The British Council for Stephen Spender's Shelley; Calcutta University Press for Amiyakumar Sen's Studies in Shdky; Cambridge University Press for The Cambridge History of English Literature and for S. J. Mary Suddard's Keats, Sfaetttty and Shakespeare; The Catholic World for Sister Anna Mer-

• xx

x Acknowlwlgrnents

cedes' "Two Paths from Plato: Shelley arid St. Augu«tine"; Gwtto & Windus, Ltd., and Oxford University Press, New York, for Herbert JL C. Grierson and J. C. Smith's A Critical History of Knglisti /'win; The Clarendon Press, Oxford, for John Bailey's The (smtinuity of letters* for Marjory Bald's Shelley's Mental Progress, for A. M, I). Ihi^hwls Shelln Poems Published in 1820, for B. Rajan's "The Motivation of Shelley^ Prometheus Unbound," for Walter Raleigh's Some Authors* and for Archibald Strong's Three Studies in Shelley; Columbia University Prrsn for Edward B. Hungerford's Shores of Darkness; Qmtempomry Rnww for Elizabeth Meldrum's "The Classical Background of Shelley,"

Also to: Gerald Duckworth & Co, Ltd. for Stopford Brooke's Studies in Poetry; Duke University Press for James A, Notopoulow' 7%<* Plutonium of Shelley and for Newman I. White's The Unextinguislwl Ifatrth; Kdin- burgh University Press for P. H. Butter's Shelley's Idols of thr C/nv; Exposition Press Inc. for Arthur Wormhoudt's The Demon /xwr; Kyrc & Spottiswoode Ltd. for Leslie Stephens* Hours in a Library: Fa her mid Faber Ltd. for Leone Vivante's Englisli Poetry; K. JL Fogle for hin "(mage and Imagelessness: A Limited Reading of Prometheus Unbound"; Gambit St Co. Ltd. for James Cousin's The Work Promethean; Dr. II HaltsWhitc for W. Hale-White and Amelia H. Sterling's translation of Spinoxa*« Kfhir; George G. Harrap& Co. Ltd. and Barnes & Noble Inc. for A. K. KoilwayV Godwin and the Age of Transition; Harvard Univornity Pnwn for the Lorli Classical Library (see Bibliography for individual editors); William IIitin«« mann Ltd. for the Bonchurch Edition of The Qmtplete Works of Al^rnon Charles Swinburne; Hough ton Mifflin Company for G. II* GarJwV *Sr/#^'W Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and for George WoodbetrryV l«*ti«Iiri<Ige Edition of The Complete Poetical Works of Percy /tyssfw Shelley; Hutchin- son & Co. Ltd. for Graham Hough's The Romantic Pw*t$; The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism for Charles (X Hoffman'* "Whtteltfsitcfit Philosophy of Nature and Romantic Poetry**; (J. Wilson Knight for hit! The Christian Renaissance and The Starlit Dome; Alfred A, Knopf In*1* for Newman I. White's Shelley; Longmans Green & Co. Ltd ami Koiwrt Bridges' executrix for Robert Bridges' The. Spirit of Afrm; The Mac miUttti Company for Solomon Gingerich's Essays in, the Kwnantir hutn* for Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern JfWrf, ami for WiHtnin Butler Yeats's Essays; Methuen & Co. Ltd. for 01 won Ware} CnmplwlPH Shelley and the Unromantics, for C. D. Ix)eock^s The. PIMMS of /Vmy tivxithe Shelley, and for A. Glutton- Brock's Shelley the Man and I/if A** mil! his Introduction to the Locock edition; University of MimuMotit fur

Ellsworth Barnard's Shelley's Religion (1937); The Modern Ixutgttaga Association of America for K, N. Cameron's "The Political SymtxtltMm of Prometheus Unbound" and for Bennett Weaver's "Pwmrthcua Bound and Prometheus Unbound"; University of North Carolina Frew for Carl Graho'* Prometheus Unbound: An Interpretation; Mrs. Viola Notanello (n<5« Mac*

Acknowledgments xi

millari Brown) for J. Macmillan Brown's The Prometheus Unbound of Shelley: A Study,

Also to: Alfred Noycs, Messrs. Hodder & S tough ion Ltd., and J. P. Lippineott (Company for Alfred No yes's Some Aspects of Modern Poetry; The Odyssey Press for Ellsworth Barnard's Shelley; Selected Poems, Essays* and letters; Oxford University Press, New York, for Benjamin Kurtz's The Pursuit of Death; A Study of Shells Poetry; Oxford University Press, New York, and John Lane The Bodley Bead Ltd, for the John IX Sinclair translation of Dante's Divine Comedy; Oxford University Press, London, for H. N. BrailsfonFs Slwtt&y, Godtvin, and Their Circle, and for the poets represented in the Oxford Standard Authors series; Princeton Univer- sity Press for Carlos Baker's Shelley's Major Poetry; The Fabric of a Vision; G. P* Putnam's Sons for Paul Elmer Mora's Shelburne. Essays, Seventh Series (1910); Melvin M. Hader for his "Shelley's Theory of Evil Mis- understood"; Sir Herbert Read for his "Shelley the Optimistic Phil- osopher"; Rinehart& Company Inc. for K. N. Cameron's Rinehart Edition of Shelky\*t Selected Poetry and Prose; Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, for G. Wilson Knight's f^ord Byron; Christian Firtues and for F. A. Lea's Shelley and the Romantic Revolution; The Society of Authors for The Col- lected Works of George Bermrd Shaw; The Viking Press Inc. for Edmund Blunders SfieUty.

Finally, a special word of thanks for patience and assistance far beyond the call either of duty or of marital vows to her to whom this book is dedicated.

Contents

THE PLAN OF THIS EDITION xvii

INTRODUCTION 3

EXPLANATORY NOTE 115

TEXT OF PROMETHEUS UNBOUND,

WITH VARIANT READINGS AND TEXTUAL NOTES 117

CRITICAL NOTES 302

APPENDIXES

A* Shelley's Drafts of Prometheus Unbound 631

B. Shelley*s Italian Translations of Prometheus

Unbound Passages 677 (1 Mrs. Shelley's Note on Prometheus Unbound

Written for Her Edition of 1839 682

D* Contemporary Reviews 689

£ The Prometheus Story before Shelley 723

F. A Basic Approach to the "Representative Values"

in Prometheus Unbound 732

G. The Time Scheme of the Poem 741 II* Shelley *s Lyric Indention in the E Manuscript 744

BIBLIOGRAPHY 747

INDEX 767

xiu

Illustrations

facing

Portrait of Shelley writing Prometheus Unbound

in the Baths of Caracalla 140

Bodleian MS Shelley E.l» Folio 18V, opening lines of Act I 141

Bodleian MS Shelley Additions c.4, Folio 6, draft of II.iii.28-42 172

Debatable readings from Bodleian MSS Shelley E.1, 2, 3 173

xv

The Plan of This Edition

IT is THE FUHFOSE of the present edition of Prometheus Unbound to bring

together all of the important published material,1 textual and critical, that

can in any significant way assist the reader of the poem. Of necessity this imposes certain problems of selection on the editor, I have tried to choose

wisely from that extensive body of writing that has accrued to the poem since its first publication in 1820, and to correlate the material in such a

way that critical emphases and trends may be discernible. The basic text is that of 1820, and it has been reproduced with verbal

exactness* It wa« necessary to decide between this relatively imperfect text (printed in England while Shelley was in Italy) and the manuscript

left by the poet* My decision was based on the following considerations, mainly historical: (1) The manuscript is not the one from which the play

was printed, but was significantly revised by Shelley after Mary had made the printer's copy from it, (2) The manuscript itself is imperfect, especially in punctuation, and its literal reproduction as a basic text could have little more than curiosity value* The detailed descriptive treatment possible in ray textual notes and variant readings permitted a much fuller and more adequate presentation of this, Shelley's best commentary on 1820, than would have been possible had a base text been abstracted from it. (3) The full evidence for the debatable question of Shelley's "final" text is before the reader without the prejudice of an assumed judgment through ab-

lKi«»ptkm« have been made only for certain theses that have, in some significant way* amplified published portions of the studies. Every effort has been mad© to read nil of the* references to the poem written in English, and those in foreign languages that have been generally recognized a» of inde{>emlent value (much of this material k largely a reworking of English and American criticism)* Lack of a comprehensive Shelley bibliography hat increased the possibility of oversight, but it is hoped that no work of importance between 1820 and 1955 has been missed. The exigencies of publi- cation have prevented detailed treatment, in the body of the book, of items that have appeared following the latter data, but all pertinent studies that have come to my attention before actual press time have been included (preceded by an asterisk) in the Bibliography and» where feambla, in footnote references.

ami

xviii The. Plan of This

straction. (4) Mrs. Shelley in 1839 made relatively slight use of the manu- script for her edition; it did not become available to scholars until IH93, and was not used as corrective to a critical edition until 1 Wk (3) Histori- cally, 1820 (or that edition corrected slightly by Mrs. Shellry) rvpresrntcil the point of departure for most nineteenth-century editors.

Immediately below the lines of text on each page, selected draft variants are given (the drafts are reproduced fully in Appendix A), as we!! an de- tailed variant readings to be found in the K manuscript8 and in repre- sentative subsequent editions of importance. Of the many edition* of the poem only a few hold serious interest for textual study, KdJtors have tended to rest heavily on a few key editions, and the detailed variant readings of the present work have been limited largely to these, anil to such others as have sufficient independent interest to justify their inclusion. But the history of the text, especially in the late release of the manuscript, gives these editions unusual significance, and I have therefore treated thorn more fully than is customary, notably with respect to punctuation in the verse. The general characteristics of other representative edition* are given in the Introduction.

Below these readings are such notes as may throw light on textual problems. These include Shelley's alterations of the E manuHcript, wdleeied draft readings, differences of opinion with respect to the K wading*, conjectures, etc. Here also will be found such variant** in other than the key editions as do not fall into the pattern of editorial imitation*

To avoid an unnecessarily awkward page makeup, critical not«* pertain- ing to interpretation of specific scenes and lines have been plueeit nt the end of the poem, unless such interpretation stems from textual conniibrii- tions, in which case a cross reference will direct to the Textual Note*, Trait- scriptions of draft passages* as well as the Italian translation by Shelby, have been relegated to appendixes. The Introduction deals with more general matters of historical, textual, and critical interest

For all relevant manuscripts, textual variants of whatever nature have been given, making it possible for the reader to reconstruct completely any of these items. For Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839 (inaftmuch OH nht? wa* working in part at least from Shelley's errata) , all textual variant* for the verse and the Preface have been indicated, as well as any cif importance in the stage directions. Minor stylistic differences in the latter have not hmt included. For the other principal editions all essential variant* have been noted.

It must be granted that "essential" is a relative term, and there may be a reader of this book to whom it is important to know that one editor u*w single instead of double quotation marks, or spells labor, labour, t have assumed that no real purpose can be served by indicating at length minh

2Bodleian MSS E.I, E.2, and E,3 have formerly been referred to as B (for !h»c!l*tnn). but recent acquisitions by the Library make a clearer distinction neeesmtry*

The. Plan of This Kditwn xix

matters of individual editorial style, many of them mannerisms. For the key editions other than those of Mrs. Shelley, therefore, the following

items have been omitted or treated as indicated:

Typographical errors. Obvious typographical errors have not been given

in the variant readings. These have included dropped or clearly erroneous punctuation, broken type, failure to capitalize at beginnings of lines,

accidental hyphenation, spacing failures, omission of closing quotation

marks, transposed letters, misplaced apostrophes or accents, and mis- spellings. In the latter instance, however, if the error has resulted in a different word, it has been included.

Type. Type «i/.e, style, and spacing have not been noted, except in the

case of italics for emphasis. Quotation marks* Some editors have used single quotation marks, some

double; some running quotes, others quotes at the beginning and end of the queued passage only. These differences have not been indicated, but, where quotation marks have been supplied for passages not so marked in

1820, this fact has been noted*

Spelling, Spelling variants have been admitted only (1) when the move- ment of the line has been altered (as in the case of dieresis), (2) when a change in pronunciation has resulted in altered assonance (as in chant, chaunt)) or (3) when some special interest has attached to the variant* The principal types of spelling variations will be indicated by the following list: aerial, aereal; aggrandisement, aggrandizement; amphisbenic, amphis- hasnie; aye., ay; bleat, blessed (where the latter is clearly pronounced as one syllable); burthen, burden; cameleon, chameleon, camelion; candour, can- dor; cloak, eloke; desert, desart; development, developement; frenzying, phrerizying; gray* grey; gulph, gulf; immoveably, immovably; learnt, learned; 'mid, mid; might's t» mightst; 0, Oh; oer, o*er; past, passed; rapt, rapped; skiey, skyey; siren, syren; tho, though, the'; veil, vail

Tides, Titles referred to in Shelley's Preface have in later editions some- times been given in italics, sometimes in quotation marks* These differ- ences have not been noted

Punctuation* In a work of poetry* matters of rhythm and phrasing are strongly or subtly influenced by ahadings in punctuation. Because of this, and because of the influence of W. M. Rossetti and the E manuscript in this respect, punctuation variants (except for obvious typographical errors) in the key editions have been given fully for the verse. For the Preface and the stage directions they have been given only w}ien changed meaning results* In certain instances^ clearly, one mark of punctuation may be considered the equivalent of another, but it has seemed desirable to furnish the exact evidence by which the reader can determine to his own satis- faction the presence or absence of shadings in emphasis.

Capitals. Inasmuch as capitals are frequently used to suggest personifi- cation, for emphasis, etc,, these variants have been admitted.

xx The Plan of 7Hv til it ion

Apostrophes and accents. If the line movement is clear, apostrophes and accents to indicate nonpronounced or pronounced syllables have not hwn given. If the movement is debatable (as at IV.367), the accent has been included.

Hyphens, Hyphenation has been indicated, as has use of compound words, inasmuch as both frequently result in modified emphasis.

It should be repeated that the above exceptions do not apply to the manuscripts or to Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839. The former have been compared in detail, and the latter in detail for the verse and the Preface.

With respect to the critical material, admission or rejection has been determined by the degree to which a better understanding of the poem will result. It is a rare work on Shelley that does not at some point refer to Prometheus Unbound, but too seldom is there a positive contribution to our understanding. Mere praise or censure, of course, can he found in any period and in any extreme, and, while some of the rhetorical efforts to outdo predecessors blaze brightly and are delightful to read, they offer little in the way of illumination, and would require an un justifiable amount of space were more than a representative sampling included* An exception has been made, however, in the inclusion of the contemporary reviews of the first edition, which hold a special interest and are given fully, insofar as they bear on Prometheus Unbound, in Appendix D»

In the Introduction the principal trends in critical thinking have Imm traced, to serve as an orientation for the more detailed consideration?! found in the Critical Notes. More general subjects have bean treated in the appendixes. Insofar as practicable, however, opinion has boon fuimmarizwi in the Critical Notes, at the point where it will be most pertinently useful to the reader. It is inevitable that over a period of time the id«a«

will recur, either independently or through the flattery of imitation* 1 have tried in these instances to give credit to the first occurrence, or to the first reasonably full development, of the idea,

Where critical reference has been made to a possible source or analogue, without quotation of the parallel material, quotation has been supplied or, where this has been impracticable, summarized* All quotation* from classical or major modern writers have been standardized by aubtitutbiif where necessary, of a single edition.

It is hoped that the wider and more immediate usefulness of the work will justify the decision to give all foreign4anguage items in tion, but I regret that space limitations have prevented the supplementary inclusion of the original texts for this rather large body of material

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound

A VARIORUM EDITION

Introduction

THE AIM OF this Introduction is twofold; (1) to outline the present body of knowledge concerning the text of Prometheus Unbound and the nature of the principal editions of the poem; (2) to survey the broader outlines of critical opinion with respect to the quality and meaning of the poem. De- tailed notes on text and interpretation will be found elsewhere in the book.

TEXTUAL CONSIDERATIONS GENESIS OF THE TEXT

Shelley's early interest in the Promethean story will be considered in the second major division of this Introduction, Our interest at this point centers on a journal entry by Mrs. Shelley under date of September [5] -14, 1818: "Mo writes his Drama of 'Prometheus,' " and on a letter of Sep- tember 22, 1818, from Shelley, in Padua, to Mary, at Este, in which he asked her to bring "the sheets of 'Prometheus Unbound,' which you will find numbered from one to twenty-six on the table of the pavilion" (Julian, IX, 332) ,l This is the first evidence we have that the poet had

*In the present million all prose (other than that found as prefaces or notes in the Oxford Standard Au thorn Marian of the Poetical IForh) follows the text of the Ingpen- IVck Julian Edition of Shulloy's Jforks (the data of this letter in given as ?Septembcr 22, but Mr«. Shdky'B journal shown it to be in fact of that date). Short titles have fre- quently bem employed in critical or biographical references, for which full identifica- tion can cam'ly be made by consulting the Bibliography.

Mrs. Shelley, in her note on Julian and Maddalo (note on the Poems of 1818 in Julian [III, 21^1), wrote: "I Cappuoeini [at Kate] was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, dotnoliHhed when the French suppressed religious houses; it was Hitunted cm tha very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk* a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the halkbor to a summer -house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began tha Prometheus"

Other pertinent references to, or probably to, the composition of Prometheus Un- bound m given in Mr». Shelley's journal and letters are as follows: "Shelley writes'* (September 15, 1818 f Abmger MSS, Reel 10] ; September [22] -24) ; "Write out Shelley's

4 Inlnxluctiwi

begun the actual composition of the poem, and the sheets probably a draft, are not extant.

That he wrote steadily is indicated by the next pertinent letter, dated Este, October 8, 1818, to Thomas Love Peacock: "I have be«n writing— and indeed have just finished the first act of a lyrical and classical drama, to be called 'Prometheus Unbound' " (IX, 336). But on January 24, 1810, from Naples, Shelley could only repeat to Peacock that the first act wan finished: "At present I write little else but poetry, and little of that. My 1st act of Prometheus is complete, and I think you would likts it" (X, 21). The failure to progress as rapidly as at first can be asoritwd to the distress following the death of Clara Shelley on September 24, 1818, and the subsequent journey to Rome and Naples, with many aigh tawing excursions to occupy the time. The delay, however, was only temporary, for by April 6, 1819, the poet could write to Peacock from Rome: f*My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall wnd it" (X, 4&).2

That the drama was not sent as promptly as intended is evident from another letter to Peacock from Livorno in July, 1819; "As to Oilier, 1 don't know what has been published, or what has arrived at hw hatuk My Prometheus though ready, I do not send till I know more** (X, 63) ,» But other considerations may have contributed to the delay. William Shelley died on June 7, and the poet was deeply affected by the logs of hw child. Indeed, although we know that Prometfwus Unbound was "finfohwd** by April 6, Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt from Livorno as late at* Augtmt 15: "Though surrounded by suffering and disquietude, and, latterly, almimt overcome by our strange misfortune I have not been idle. My ProraetlieiiH is finished" (X, 68).

Poem" (December 18); "Finish copying his Poem*' (December 19); "I painting * Sfhelley] is writing a poem so that the Me arte take up all our tiimT (to Hunt, April <i 1819); "Read Shelley's Drama" (April 25); "Copy Shelley'a Tromethniw' " 9x»pt*!tnl*r iwr"1?]5 "Rlad Trome,theus Unbound"* (October 17, 1820 (the publiNhecl ptmm|); Would you have the Goodness to order at your Stationers a doom plain bcmkn likr that the Prometheus was copied in" (to Maria Gisborne, February or March UCJO [Abinger MSS, Reel 6]).

Actually, "finished" would, at this time, apply only to the first throe Ant* Iniwiiiiirh as Act IV had not yet been projected, Edward Hungerford'a suggestion that MShf Hi* v must have been punning on the names of Prometheus and hi» brother Kplme»thc»u»" m referring to Act IV as an "afterthought0 (Shorn of Darkn***, p, 192) in attnuttivr, but 1 fcna no evidence that Shelley used the word.

^Charles and James Oilier were Shelley's publishers. Apparently Shelley «!«> wroti* of the poem to Leigh Hunt, or the latter learned of it, for he wrote to Shelfey in this same month: I long, by-the-by, to see Prometheus hnnidf. I have no doubt v<ui have handled his wearied virtue' nobly. It is curious, but I had thought « Hub white ago of writing a poem myself, entitled Prometheus Throw*!; m which I bttombfi to nave described him as having lately taken possession of Jupiter's seat. But thu mlmn on every account is in better hands. I am rather the son of one of Atl«'» *

than of Atlas himself' (Correspondence, 1, 132),

Introduction 5

Shortly thereafter, on September 6, the poet wrote Charles and James Oilier: '"My f Prometheus/ which has been long finished, is now being transcribed, and will soon be forwarded to you for publication. . . . The f Prometheus1 you will be so good as to print, as usual" (X, 79). Ap- parently Shelley intended to forward the manuscript, by way of John Gisborne, to England, where it was to be held by Peacock, for on Septem- ber 21 the poet wrote the latter: "I have sent you my Trometheus,' which I do not wish to be sent to Oilier for publication until I write to that effect. Mr. Giaborne will bring it" (X, 83). And on September 27 he wrote Leigh Hunt; UI have sent my 'Prometheus Unbound' to Peacock —if you ask him for it he will show it you" (X, 87).

But John Giflhorne's plans were changed, arid he did not go to England until the following May, That the Gisbornes were nevertheless interested in the matter of the manuscript is clear from a letter the poet wrote to Maria Gisborne from Florence on October 13 or 14 with respect to copies of The Ce.nci being printed in Italy, copies which he wished sent to England "by the next ship. , . . If Mr. G. is returned send the 'Prometheus' with them" (X, 94). And he confirmed this intent by writing to Charles and James Oilier the next day: "The 'Prometheus* . , - will arrive with it [The, OndJ, but in MS., which you can print and publish in the season" (X,95).

To Henry Reveley (son of Mrs. Gisborne by a first marriage), the young engineer with whom Shelley had become friendly* the poet wrote on October 28; "Please to let the Bill of lading be sent where the box should likewise be addressed Messrs, Oilier, Booksellers, Vere Street, Bond Street** (X, 100). But a later letter suggests that Gisborne finally sent the shipment (see below),

From these letters it seems probable, as Martin Freeman pointed out, that Peacock did not actually receive the manuscript unless a second transcription was sent him, and did not see it until after the Olliers had it (Text, pp. 2-3),

On November 2 the poem was in Shelley's mind as he wrote from Florence to Leigh Hunt; "I am about to publish more serious things [than Pater Ball the Third] this winter" (Julian, X, 104); and that he was anxious for an early appearance of the work is indicated by another letter to Hunt, also in November: "The Prometheus I wish to be printed and to come out immediately1* (X, 131). In the same vein, but with the mention of "additions" (Act IV at least), the poet wrote Charles Oilier on December 15 (or 25), at about the time that the ship sailed for England with the copies of The Cenci and the first three acts of Prometheus Unbound below) : f<Let Trometheus* be printed without delay* You wiE receive the additions, which Mrs* S, is now transcribing, in a few days* It has already been read to many persons" (X, 134), But first the Gisbomes wore to see the "additions." To them Shelley wrote on December 23:

6 Intmluction

"I have just finished an additional act to 'Prometheus* which Mary in

now transcribing, and which will be enclosed for your inspection before it is transmitted to the Bookseller. ... Be kind enough, an soon as you have read the Prometheus, to inclose it to 'Oilier & Co., Vert* Strret, London'" (X, 136).

Despite Shelley's desire for an early printing he had heard nothing from the Olliers by March 6, 1820, when he wrote them from I*wa:

I do not hear that you have received "Promethean" and "Tim (lend"; I tbnr fore think it safest to tell you how and when to get them if you have not yri done so.

Give the bill of lading Mr. Gisbornc sent you to a broker in the city* whom you employ to get the packages, and to pay the duty on the unixmmi Inrnkn, The ship sailed in the middle of December, and will assuredly have arriwl long before now.

"Prometheus Unbound," I must tell you, ia my favourite jwrn; I rhurgr y«wf therefore, specially to pet him and feed him with fine ink and good papr |X» 148J,

Without waiting for a reply to this latter he wrote again to Churltw Oilier on March 13 :

I am anxious to hear that you have reeieved \$ic\ the parcel from leghorn, aiitf to learn what you are doing with the "Prometheus," If it can Ix* done without great difficulty, I should be very glad that the revised cheats might Im by the Post to me at Leghorn.— It might he divided into four partition*, f«m<im# me four or five sheets at once [X, 151].

It is quite evident that Shelley was concerned about the accuracy of •the text. Distance, however, made it inexpedient for the proofs to be mmt to him, so he seized hopefully on the departure of the Giftbornes on May 2 to give him an advocate, and wrote (a till from Pisa) to Chariot Oilier on May 14:

As to the printing of the "Prometheus,'* I>e it as you will. But, m thin «a«*% 1 shall repose or trust in your care respecting the correction of the pww; enpednlly in the lyrical parts, where a minute error would be of much coiiAac{uem*». Mr, Gisborne will revise it; he heard it recited, and will therefore more readily any error. ... I ought to say that I send you poems in a few poatft, to print at tiir end of "Prometheus,'* better fitted for that purpose than any in your paft*t*Hiort [X, 167-168].

Having thus reconciled himself to a situation he clearly disliked, Shelley sought reassurance by writing the Gisbornes on May 26:

I write you thus early, because I have determined to accept your kind offer about the correction of Prometheus. The bookseller makes difficulties about nomling the proofs to me, and to whom else can I so well entrust what I am m much interested in having done well; and to whom would I prefer to owe the recollection of an additional kindness don© to me? I enclose you two little papers of cor- rections and additions; — I do not think you will find any difficulty in interpolating them into their proper places [X, 175] .

The poems that were to complete the volume were ready about May 30, for on that date the poet wrote Charles Oilier; "Mrs. Shelley ia now train-

Introduction 7

scribing for me the little poems to be printed at the end of Prometheus; they will he sent in a post or two" (X, 177). And shortly thereafter, in June or July,4 he requested the Gisbornes to send "6 copies of Prometheus (if printed)" (X, 184), again demonstrating his eagerness to see the volume*

At about this time also he learned that Peacock was to assist in the proofreading. There is no indication as to what had occurred with respect to Peacock's relationship to the project since the time of the earlier com- munication, and in the letter to him from Leghorn on July 12 Shelley said merely; trl make bold to write to you on the news that you are cor- recting my 'Prometheus/ for which I return thanks, and I send some things which may be added" (X, 186) .6

It is almost certain that the poem was published in August, even though as early as July 7 Mrs* Shelley wrote to Maria Gisborne in England: "I hope you will bring Prometheus with you" (Letters, I, 112); and even though on July 20 the poet, in Pisa, wrote to Thomas Medwin; "I hear it is just printed, and I probably shall receive copies from England before I see you1* (Julian, X, 192), and on July 27 to Keats: "I always tell Oilier to send you copies of my books.— 'Prometheus Unbound" I imagine you will receive nearly at the same time with this letter" (X, 194). Mrs. Shelley's would have been a natural request, whether or not they had received a report of publication, and Shelley's comments may well have stemmed from the prepublieation announcement of the book in the London Majg&im for June (see Appendix D, item I), It can be assumed that the Gisbornes, from their close association with the poem, would be on the alert for the appearance of the volume. On August 3 Maria noted that "Mr. Fen wick called yesterday evening with the books which he had undertaken to procure for us" (Journals^ p, 41), but there is no certainty that the poem was among them. In her entry for the twenty-second she wrote that Godwin "has not seen the Prometheus, and does not think he shall read it through" (p. 45), and the suggestion in this that she had seen it is confirmed, and a mid-August date at the latest established, by her letter to Mrs. Shelley on the twenty-third, in which she wrote: "We gave [Mr, Gisborne's sister] a copy of the Trometheus,' which she had promised to study. We have given her a little preparatory lecture, and read some part of it with hern (p. 67). Leigh Hunt, too, might be expected to watch for the appearance of the volume, and he wrote to Shelley, also on the twenty-third; **I have just seen the Prometheus" (Correspondence, 1, 158). And Horace Smith wrote to the poet on September 4: "I got from Oilier last week a copy of the Prometheus Unbound" (Abinger MSS, Reel 14).*

4 The date is uncertain because the latter is torn. * Whether thwe addition* were corrections or short poems is not known. *The I^ndon Magazine for September, in a notice of the book, postponed considera- tion until October bacauwe it had *fjiist come out this month" (see Appendix D), hut

g Intrduction

It would appear, however, that the Shelleys did not see the book until October. On June 18 Mrs. Shelley wrote to Maria Gisborne (in London) : "As to the books you had better do nothing about them[;] we are too unsettled— so do not send them" (Letters, I, 109) ; and on July 7, as we have seen, she asked that Maria "bring Prometheus with you." The Gisbornes reached Genoa on October 3 but went directly to Leghorn without seeing their friends (White, Shelley, II, 229). Mrs. Shelley noted their return in her journal for October 10, and the poet wrote them on October 11: "If you happen to have brought a copy of Prometheus send it too" (Julian, X, 210). For October 16 Mrs. Shelley's journal carries the notation: "Go to Leghorn"; and for the seventeenth: "Read Prome- theus Unbound — papers — & Indicators" (Abinger MSS, Reel 10)* The poet's first extant reference to the volume was on November 10 when, from Pisa, he wrote to the Olliers with evident disappointment:

Mr. Gisborne has sent me a copy of the "Prometheus," which is certainly mo«t beautifully printed. It is to be regretted that the errors of the press are so numerous, and in many respects so destructive of the sense of a species of poetry which, I fear, even with [without?] this disadvantage, very few will understand or like. I shall send you the list of errata in a day or two [Julian, X, 219].

To Peacock he did not reveal his feelings, but wrote on ?November 15 a sentence that, in view of the foregoing, has an ironic note: "Thank you for your kindness in correcting Trometheus/ which I am afraid gave you a great deal of trouble" (X, 222).

It was not until January 20, 1821, that Shelley finally sent the errata to the Olliers with the following: "I send you . . . the Errata of 'Prome- theus,' which I ought to have sent long since—a formidable list, as you will see" (X, 232) ,7 Nor did he quickly forget the inaccuracies. On May 4, in a letter to Byron, it may have been either the errors of the printing or a momentary change of heart with respect to the quality of the poem itself that led him to write: "The 'Prometheus' is ... a very imperfect poem" (X, 266) ; and on June 8 he was again outspoken to Charles Oilier, to whom he wrote: "I shall send [Adonais to] you, either printed at Pisa, or tran- scribed in such a manner as it shall be difficult for the reviser to leave such errors as assist the obscurity of the 'Prometheus' " (X, 273) ,8

it is quite possible that the notice itself was written in August for the September issue* The poet instructed Oilier to send copies of the book to Hunt, Godwin, Hogg, Peacock, Keats, Thomas Moore, Horace Smith, and Byron (Julian, X, 81). Godwin was, ap- parently, as good as his word, for his diary entry of September 19 listed among his reading: "Prometheus Unbound, Act 1" (Abinger MSS, Reel 2), and I have found no evidence that he returned to the poem.

7The letter was misdated 1820.

8Charles D. Locock interpreted this reference to transcriber and reviser as indicative of Shelley's own opinion of the cause of the errors (Edition, I, 595-96). But might it rather be that Oilier had attempted to justify the errors by pleading poorly written or poorly proofread copy?

Introduction 9

THE FIRST EDITION

The foregoing section has traced the evidence relevant to the writing, publication, and first reaction of Shelley to what he considered his finest poem. The copy from which the printer worked is not extant (although Mrs. Shelley made every effort to get all manuscripts from Oilier after the poet's death, and Peacock, early in 1823, supposedly sent all the publisher had [see Mary Shelley, Letters, I, 195, 206, etc.]), but the E manuscript and such drafts of the poem as remain to us will be examined in their proper place. Here the general characteristics of the edition of 1820 should be noted.

There were two issues of this edition. In the first a typographical error on the Contents page gave Miscellaneous as Misellaneous. This page was then reset, with the word spelled correctly, for the second issue.9 But before the second issue was printed, the d! of wind! dropped out in II.i.195, leaving:

Asia. How the notes sink upon the ebbing win

This hiatus remains in the Huntington Library copy of the book, but in the Library of Congress copy the d! has been written in by hand.10

The book appeared as a demy-octavo volume, with leaves measuring $% by 8% inches, bound in dark blue-gray paper boards, with white back label reading: Prometheus/ Unbound/ 9s. There were fourteen sheets of eight leaves each, and signatures [A] to 0, with J omitted. Each signature was repeated on the second leaf with a following 2 (B B2; C C2; etc.). Roman numerals were assigned the pages preliminary to the text of the poem, with the first to appear being yiii, and the material was distributed as follows: [i] the half-title: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND/&C &c; [ii] advertisements of The Cenci, The Revolt of Islam, Rosalind and Helen, and Alastor. At the bottom of the page: Marchant, Printer, Ingram-Court, Fenchurch-Street, London.; [iii] title page: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND /A LYRICAL DRAMA/IN FOUR ACTS/WITH OTHER POEMS/ by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY/AUDisNE a«c, AMPHIARAE, SUB TEKRAM

Locock also felt that "some explanation is due, or at any rate some hypothesis which will explain how the superior readings of the manuscript became converted into inferior readings in the first edition, for the most part uncorrected in Mrs. Shelley's editions." He suggested three possibilities: (1) printer's errors; (2) faulty transcription by Mrs. Shelley ("nearly all the mistakes made are such as might easily arise in copying [the] MS."), whose accuracy Shelley would "no douht" take for granted; and (3) Peacock's errors in proofreading, or actual alterations on Peacock's responsibility (p. 595).

9In the copy owned by Thomas Wise, apparently unique, both leaves were present, the canceled leaf in its original position, the cancel-leaf inserted between signatures A and B (Shelley Library, p. 56).

10It should be noted also that the Library of Congress copy is incomplete, lacking pages i and ii of signature A, and the final leaf (O8) of advertisements. The Huntington Library copies are complete.

\Q Introduction

ABDiTE?/LONDON/C AND J. OLLIER VERE STREET BOND STREET/1820; [iv] blank; [v] as follows:

CONTENTS.

Page Preface vii

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 1

MISELLANEOUS POEMS

The Sensitive Plant 157

A Vision of the Sea 174

Ode to Heaven 182

An Exhortation 186

Ode to the West Wind 188

An Ode, written October, 1819 before the Spaniards had

recovered their Liberty 193

The Cloud 196

To a Skylark 201

Ode to Liberty 207

[vi] blank; [vii] -xv Preface; [xvi] blank; [xvii] half-title: PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.; [xviii] DRAMATIS PERSONS; [19] -153 PRO ME- THEUS UNBOUND;11 [154] blank; [155] half-title: MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.; [156] blank; [157] -222 miscellaneous poems as in Contents above (each page is headed with the title of the poem thereon) ; [223-224] advertisements of works recently published by the Olliers, with the Marchant imprint repeated at the bottom of [224] as on page [ii] ,12

Details of this first edition will be apparent from the present text, which is based on the Huntington Library copy of the first issue.

uThe play begins on page 19 rather than on page 1 as the Contents indicates, the printer having shifted from Roman to Arabic numbering without repeating. Inasmuch as the other page references in the Contents are correct, the Prometheus Unbound reference would appear to be either a typographical error or an oversight in checking paging.

I2In 1823 the remainder sheets of four works — Rosalind and Helen (1819) , Prometheus Unbound (1820; but called Prometheus Unmasked on the inclusive title page), Tlie Cenci (Second Edition, 1821), and Hellas (1822) — were bound into a single volume for the Olliers, W. Simpkin, and R. Marshall. Each of the separate books was bound in, just as it stood, with the original half-titles, title pages, advertisements, etc., retained. In this composite volume Prometheus Unbound was of the second issue, with Miscel- laneous correctly spelled. Thomas Wise noted (in the 1920's) that "during recent years nearly every available copy has been broken up, the collective Half-titles and Titles have been sacrificed, and the three first editions have been separately bound, . . , This is the reason why the first editions of Prometheus Unbound, Rosalind and Helen^ and Hellas are invariably in modern bindings" (Shelley Library, 1924, pp. 69-70).

Introduction 11

EDITIONS SUBSEQUENT TO THE FIKST

Any hope that a corrected edition of the poem would be forthcoming within a reasonable time was finally lost when, after the poet's death, Sir Timothy Shelley forbade Mrs. Shelley, on penalty of revocation of allow- ance, to publish any of the poet's works while the baronet lived. Possibly it was this proscription that prevented her cooperation with A. and W. Galignani in the projected Paris edition of the works of Shelley in 1826. In any event, nothing more came of the proposal until, in 1829, they under- took a new project, to comprise the poetical works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats in one volume. For this Mrs. Shelley drew a pencil sketch of the poet, from which an unsatisfactory engraving was made.13

The Galignanis used the published editions of Shelley's poems as basis for their text. That they received editorial assistance from Mrs, Shelley is clear from her letter to Cyrus Redding (who assisted the Galignanis) in ?January, 1829: "I send you the Errata of the Prometheus [the Adonais, and Hellas]" (Letters, II, 10). The extent of these (or of the Galignanis' use thereof) is suggested by the following comparison: in addition to the consistent use of the apostrophe to indicate an unpronounced syllable, the Galignanis made ninety-two punctuation changes in the text of Prometheus Unbound, all except eighteen of which are to be found in Mrs. Shelley's edition of 1839. With respect to verbal changes, the two agreed in the consistent spelling through and in the use of a for an before h; but of other changes from 1820 Mrs. Shelley in her edition made twenty-eight, of which only five are found in the Galignani edition.14

In addition to the Galignani edition of the poems there were several pirated issues both in England and in America,15 in none of which was any attempt made at critical determination of the text. Their value lies in evidence of continuing interest in Shelley's writings, although, as Newman Ivey White noted, "The first growth of Shelley's fame owed a noticeable debt to the accidental factor of his connection with Byron" (Shelley, II, 399) . It might be further pointed out that in a number of the editions of the period 1829 to 1838 the poet had also to share the company of Cole- ridge and Keats, for the Galignani combined edition set the pattern.

By 1839 Mrs. Shelley had completed the edition of the poet's work on which she had been engaged for several years, and it appeared, published by Edward Moxon, in four small volumes. In a second one-volume quarto edition certain corrections necessary to the first 1839 edition were made.

13See Walter Peck, Shelley, II, 440-41. The Early Collected Editions of Shelley's Poems, by C. H. Taylor, Jr., appeared too late for consideration here. It throws fresh light on editions to 1839, and offers evidence that Mrs. Shelley in 1839 used the Galignani edition as printer's copy for her second volume, including Prometheus Unbound, making her changes and corrections on the proofs.

14See M. variant readings at 1.637, 733; ILii.53, 71; II.iv.100.

15See N. I. White, Shdky, II, 394-99.

12 Introduction

For the first time since 1820 it was possible to bring to Prometheus Unbound the textual corrections desired by Shelley, and in her note to the poem Mrs. Shelley stated: "I may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that the verbal alterations in this edition of Prometheus are made from a list of errata, written by Shelley himself (see Appendix C). It is clear, however, from study of the variant readings, that Mrs. Shelley's text for the poem might not have been completely satisfactory to the wishes of the poet, for in the E manuscript copy, on which Shelley ap- pears to have worked even after the poem was published, there are some 150 readings (exclusive of punctuation differences, in which E is faulty) that differ from both the 1820 and the 1839 editions. It must be assumed, from the evident care with which the poet revised his work, that the errata and emendations there given represented Shelley's own final word on his dissatisfaction with the first edition. The conclusion dictated by this circumstance is that Mrs. Shelley did not make full use of the materials available to her with respect to this poem. Charles D. Locock, indeed, asked:

May we suppose that Mrs. Shelley never made use of [the "formidable list" of errata] at all? that what she did use was a. preliminary list, — the list which Shelley "hoped to despatch in a day or two" (November 10, 1820) — not the "formidable list" . . . which may in the course of nine [sic] years have been mislaid? Failing this hypothesis, we can only assume that Shelley's "formidable list" was not nearly so formidable as it might have been" [Edition, I, 5961.

Nevertheless, credit must not be withheld for the work Mrs, Shelley did. Possibly William Michael Rossetti's comment in the Preface to his 1870 edition is most pertinent:

Mrs. Shelley brought deep affection and unmeasured enthusiasm to the task of editing her husband's works. But ill health and the pain of reminiscence cur- tailed her editorial labours: besides which, to judge from the result, you would say that Mrs. Shelley was not one of the persons to whom the gift of consistent accuracy has been imparted; for even this too is a gift in its way, not wholly to be improvised for the occasion [Edition, I, xii].

The first effect of Mrs. Shelley's work appears to have been on the pirated edition of Charles Daly, originally published in 1836. In 1839 there appeared "A New Edition, Revised and Corrected, by G, Cuning- ham." The work (which omitted Shelley's Preface) was clearly dependent on both of Mrs. Shelley's editions, and the haste with which it was brought out to appear in the same year with hers is evidenced by the many typo- graphical errors and the general carelessness present in the text.

Mrs. Shelley's influence was strong also on the first American edition of Shelley's poems, the work of G. G. Foster, published in Philadelphia in 1845. The publisher took occasion to advise the reader that "it has been carefully edited— so much we have a right to say," although he did not feel "called upon to assume the responsibility" for Foster's extravagant

Introduction 13

estimate of the poet in the memoir (Edition, p. 5). Foster acknowledged his dependence on Mrs. Shelley's edition, and reproduced her notes to the poems. Indeed, one might expect a reasonably literal faithfulness to her work in view of a statement made when Poe suggested that Foster make a word change in The Indian Serenade. Foster wrote: "But I have not felt at liberty to change the text sanctioned by Mrs. Shelley — whom I regard as the evangelist of her transfigured lord" (p. 20).

Actually, however, Foster was not as faithful to Mrs. Shelley's verbal usage as his answer to Poe would suggest, although some of his differences may have been the result of accident;16 and his complete independence in his use of punctuation and capitalization in Prometheus Unbound was second only to that of W. M. Rossetti. Indeed, the two agreed at so many points that one must wonder whether there was not more than coincidence in Rossetti's apparent use of the American work. Of course, coincidence alone can account for frequent agreement between Foster and the E manuscript, but the number of occurrences is interesting.

Foster's text, the pirated texts, and those of Mrs. Shelley continued to be reissued in England and America, and translations appeared in Italy, France, and Germany during the next decades,17 but it was not until 1870 that another carefully prepared edition was offered, by William Michael Rossetti.

Rossetti's editorial aims were acceptably modest: to correct "absolutely wrong" grammar, rime, and meter, and to emend conjecturally only as "a stop-gap expedient against a patent and formidable blunder," or when the conjecture was "convincing in a very high degree indeed" (Edition, I, xv-xvii). His practice with respect to Prometheus Unbound^ however, was not so restrained, especially in the matter of punctuation, in which his changes were more extreme even than those of Foster. Like Foster, how- ever, he frequently hit upon the pointing Shelley himself used in the manu- script; and Rossetti's verbal conjectures and emendations showed imagin- ative insight, even when they were not supported, as they frequently were, by the later evidence in Shelley's hand.

l6See Fs variant readings at 1.54, 386, 449, 539, 716; ILL164; II.iv.165; II.v.77; IILi.6; III.ui.131; III.iv.58; IV.184, 399. With respect to punctuation, Foster was generally erratic and, like Shelley in E, used many dashes. He used fewer capitals than did Mrs. Shelley, consistently used while for whilst, and normally spelled veil, vail.

17See Julia Power, Shelby in America, passim; and White, Shelley, II, 639-41. The more important translations of Shelley's poetry that have included all or parts of Prometheus Unbound have been those in German by Julius Seyht (1844), Adolf Strodt- mann (1866), Helene Richter (1887), and Arturo Graf (1896); in Italian by G. Aglio (1853), Enrico Giacohini (1890), Mario Rapisardi (1892), Giuliano Bonazzi (1892), Ettore Sanfelice (1894), Carlo Faccioli (1902), Adolfo de Bosis (1922), and R. Piccoli (1924); in French by Felix Rabbe (1885-1887), Tola Dorian (1912), A. H. Koszul (1929), Maurice Castelain (1931), and Louis Cazamian (1942); in Hebrew by Moishe Blaichman (1953); in Braille (National Institute for the blind, London, 1922).

14 Introduction

It was at this point that the influence of the E manuscript of the poem first became evident, for Miss Mathilde Blind checked certain (but only a few) of Rossetti's emendations against it in her review of his edition, in the Westminster Review for July, 1870. Rossetti, of course, did not have access to the manuscript, and he gave no evidence of knowledge of its existence in his Preface or notes.18 He was, however, quick to profit from Miss Blind's corrections, and he incorporated them in his 1878 revised edition.19

Following Rossetti's first edition, two others appeared that leaned heavily on his work. Miss Blind herself edited a selection of the poems (1872) in which she included Acts I and IV of Prometheus Unbound; and William B. Scott in 1873 brought out the poetical works, including all of the drama except the Preface. Both of these editions incorporated the changes suggested in Miss Blind's review of Rossetti, but otherwise (except for a few minor changes in punctuation or capitalization) they were in effect reproductions of the Rossetti text.

Quite different, however, was Richard Herne Shepherd's 1874 text ("now first given from the author's original editions"). Despite Rossetti's state- ment that "Mr. Shepherd is just as ready (tho' not so prolific) with con- jectural emendations as I was — Wart' Silenus . . . (which I am sure is wrong) — and another 'Passionless, NOT yet free from guilt and pain,' wh. seems to me the grossest and silliest misconception of the whole purport of the poem" (Garnett, Letters, p. 46), Shepherd was, if compared with Rossetti, manifestly restrained in his text. Indeed, the emendations re- ferred to by Rossetti were not incorporated in the 1874 edition, most of the changes there having to do with punctuation, in which considerable refinement on the earlier editions was evidenced. Actually it was to the "original editions" that he turned, and, except as to punctuation,20 his Prometheus Unbound followed the 1820 text almost slavishly at times. The principal value of his work was to be found in the correction of the extremes to which Rossetti had gone, although this must remain a ques- tionable value in view of the opposite extreme sought by Shepherd.

Harry Buxton Forman's impressive and influential edition of the poetical works first appeared in four volumes in 1876, with a reissue, containing Mrs. Shelley's notes, in 1882. He followed Mrs. Shelley in correcting obvious errors in the 1820 edition, and he profited from Miss Blind's article, but unfortunately he did not have access to the E manuscript itself

18Richard Garnett's examination of Shelley's notebooks in 1862 likewise resulted in no mention of E, and it is probable that he did not see it. He described the "extremely confused state of these books, and the equal difficulty of deciphering and connecting their contents" (Relics, p. xi), which would be true of the draft materials, but not of K.

19See R2 variant readings or conjectures at 1.244, 345, 774; ILi.122: II.ii.50, 53, 87; IILii.22; IV.95, 387.

20E.g., at 1.619; II.ii.38, 50, 93; II.iv.100; II.v.54; III.i.5, 20, 69; IILii,39; HI.iii.55, 102; III.iv.121; IV.208, 274, 282, 355, 575. Shepherd also employed, as had Galignani, *d to indicate the unpronounced syllable.

Introduction 15

and so continued or initiated a number of errors, some almost certainly typographical.21 It will be noted in the variant readings that Forman was conservative in following Shelley's first edition (and this was an important corrective to Rossetti), and his changes, notes, and conjectures evidenced critical restraint in the absence of the as yet unavailable manuscript. Possibly the knowledge, through Miss Blind's article, that such a manu- script existed contributed to this quality in his work.

In the Introduction to his edition of 1890, Edward Dowden acknow- ledged his indebtedness to both Rossetti and Forman, and commented:

Mr. Forman's annotated edition is unquestionably that to which appeal must be made in any question of doubt on any point of Shelley scholarship. But perhaps if Mr. Rossetti modified the text of the early editions somewhat too freely, Mr. Forman has sometimes been over-conservative of peculiarities of spelling and obvious errors of punctuation. When these cloud the sense, it seems permissible to make a correction in an edition designed for general use [Edition, p. xxxv] .

In attempting to strike a compromise between the two extremes, however, Dowden was not always successful, and he frequently held more closely to the 1820 edition than was desirable or justifiable in view of Mrs. Shelley's emendations (see 1.106, 619; IV.559). His general tendency was toward a conservatism little less stringent than that of Forman, from whom he adopted a number of readings, including two Forman errors (at 1.519 and IV.355). It is possible that at points of agreement with Rossetti some of the Dowden readings were taken from that edition, or were independent, but the evidence would suggest a greater dependence on Forman.

The year 1892 marked the centenary of Shelley's birth, and was the occasion for several items of importance. Forman's conservative point of view, continued in his new five-volume edition, was followed also by George Edward Woodberry in his Centenary Edition (and, in 1901, in his Cambridge Edition, in which his critical notes are to be found), although Woodberry appears to have been influenced more than was Forman by Rossetti's punctuation changes.22 The Centenary Edition, however, ad- mirable as it was, was scarcely as complete as would be suggested by Woodberry's statement that he gave "all the variations, line for line, with complete notes" (Power, Shelley in America, p. 179). But he did give for the first time a description and collation of the 1820 edition, and indicated much more completely than had Forman the principal variants, conject- ures, and emendations (mainly verbal) in the editions of Mrs. Shelley, Rossetti, Forman, and Dowden, as well as noting the corrections to

21See especially 1.519, 774 (after Blind); II.iii.34; II.iv.100; TI.v.76; III.i.13; III.ii.34; IV.355. A new five-volume edition in 1892 contained a few refinements in punctuation, corrected born to borne (1.733), and significantly modified the punctuation at II.i.155 and ILii.22-23. Otherwise he retained his 1876 text.

220n his own part he substituted many semicolons for the colons of 1820. For verbal influence from Forman see 1.774 and II.v.76.

^g Introduction

Rossetti made by Miss Blind through her use of the "incomplete MS." (Centenary Edition, II, 426). Unfortunately, the variant readings for Prometheus Unbound were in error in several instances (probably the result of faulty proofreading), and incomplete in others, thus vitiating (lie authority of Woodberry's work.

The centenary year, 1892, also saw the publication of the first English language edition of Prometheus Unbound as a separate item in the edition of Vida Scudder. (There had been a separate German translation of the poem in 1876, and separate Italian and Danish translations appeared in 1892.) This was also the first "student's edition," provided with an ex- cellent body of critical and interpretative notes but with little contribution to the establishment of the text. Miss Scudder herself indicated that she followed Forman's text "except in two or three instances" (Edition, iv). This was not strictly true, for actually she followed or agreed with Rossetti in a number of punctuation choices and, possibly through typographical error, introduced four verbal alterations of her own.23

William J. Alexander's edition of a selection of the poet's work was published in 1898. In this, Alexander noted that he followed Forman for his text, and, except for minor matters of punctuation and spelling, and one verbal difference (at III.i.13), he did so. In the same year, also, a separate edition of the poem by G. Lowes Dickinson proved less dependent on any one predecessor. Rossetti, Forman, and Wbodberry appear to have influenced the text, but Dickinson initiated several readings, some of them possibly typographical errors.24

In the meantime the E manuscript had been presented to the Bodleian Library by Lady Jane Shelley and had been made available to scholars in 1893. Following its examination and description by Zupitza-Schick (to be considered below), and the publication of Charles D. Locock's An Examin- ation of the Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (1903), the first editorial use made of the findings was that of Thomas Hutchinson in 1904. Hutchinson's edition was well received and quickly became the most in- fluential after Forman; yet it was an edition that, in certain details, left much to be desired. Although Hutchinson wrote in his note on Prometheus

23At 1.112 (possibly after Scott), 172; III.iii.142; IV.383. At 1,338 both halves of the divided line were numbered separately, an error that altered the numbering to the end of the act. The numbers have been corrected for the present edition.

Since 1892, and with increasing frequency during the past two or three decades, selections of Shelley's poems, many times including Prometheus Unbound, have been published either as individual volumes or in anthologies of poetry, primarily for class- room use. Inasmuch as the compilers of such selections have been satisfied to adopt their texts with but minor changes from earlier editors (usually Forman or Hutchinson), their textual variants—with the exception of those in, Grabo and Freeman's Tlte Reader's Shelley (see below, p. 19)— have not been considered for the present edition, although any original interpretative notes have been given due attention.

24See Textual Notes at 1.104; II.iii.47; II.iv.47; III.iv.150; IV.3, 552,

Introduction 17

Unbound: "Our text is that of 1820, modified by ed. 1839, and by the Bodleian fair copy" (Edition, p. 200), it is evident from the variant read- ings that he adhered closely to the text of Forman, whose work he praised in his general Preface.25 Hutchinson did, however, introduce for the first time some of the readings of E that had been recorded in Locock's Examin- ation (he made no mention of the work of Zupitza-Schick), and his work thus assumed an important position in the textual history of the poem at the turn of the century.

In the following year, 1905, a beautiful library edition of Shelley's poems was edited by Nathan Haskell Dole, most of whose readings followed Forman;26 and in 1907 Andr<§ Henri Koszul, who edited the poetical works for the Everyman's Library, acknowledged, in his Introduction, the use of Locock's Examination but did not mention Hutchinson, whose text he clearly followed in many details not mutually ascribable to Locock, as well as in some errors initiated by Hutchinson.27 This popular edition has been widely read but, fortunately perhaps, not widely imitated by other editors.

In 1908 the most complete use of the E manuscript readings to that date was made by Richard Ackermann in his separate edition of the poem. Ackermann's text incorporated the principal findings of Zupitza-Schick, which, as we shall see below, were reported in much fuller detail than were those in Locock's Examination. As a result, he gave more of the E readings than did Hutchinson, although not as many (especially with respect to punctuation) as Locock was to give in his 1911 edition. Ackermann's use of E was necessarily incomplete, however, since he did not work directly from it, but a comparison of his readings will reveal the advance he made on Hutchinson.

Shortly thereafter, in 1910, two "reprintings" of the 1820 volume ap- peared. One of these, with no editor named, was published by Henry Frowde, London, The other was edited, with excellent notes and a brief life of Shelley, by Arthur M. D. Hughes. An examination of the texts reveals that actually, insofar as material common to both books is con- cerned (the Frowde had no notes or memoir), the two were printed from the same plates. The Frowde contained a portrait of Shelley not found in Hughes, and a note stating that the 1820 volume "contains many errors, which it would have been pointless to reproduce. The present text is

25E.g., he continued Forman readings unsupported by his cited sources (1.519; ILiv.125; II.v.76; ni.ii.34; IV.355). He also continued a verbal error of Miss Scudder (1.112), although this may have been coincidence, and introduced two of his own (II.L200; IV.435) which influenced later editors.

26Dole continued Forman's errors (notably at 1.519; II.iv.125; II.v.76; IV.355), introduced two of his own (II.iv.80 and ni.iii.75), and accented the edfor pronounced end syllables.

27For KoszuTs own changes see Textual Notes at 1.10, 309, 637, 724; II.i.192; II.iv.39; III.iii.36, 77; HI.iv.106; IV.264, 403, 445.

18 Introduction

therefore composite." Hughes, in his notes, acknowledged existence of the manuscript and previous editions of the poems, but stated that "except in one or two instances I have adopted the corrections made by jfffutchin- son]" (Edition, p. 162). Actually, his text (and therefore the Frowde also), except for some five or six minor differences in punctuation and the cor- rection of rapped to rapt at L527, reproduced that of Hutchinson.

In 1911 appeared the important edition of Shelley's poetical works from the hand of Charles D. Locock, the first editor to bring the results of a personal study of the manuscript to his text of Prometheus Unbound. In his Examination (1903), Locock had suggested that a manuscript reading should be given precedence over the printed texts if it ce(l) gives sense instead of nonsense, or (2) is metrically more correct, or (3) is manifestly superior in sense and sound, or (4) is likely to be misread, or (5) is likely to be misprinted" (Examination, p. 1). In the main, this would indeed seem to be the basis for such readings and punctuation as he admitted, although he was probably unnecessarily influenced by the manuscript in his incon- sistent use of capitals and in the frequency with which he employed dashes. As to verbal variations, Locock found in the manuscript 13628 that differed from both the 1820 and Mrs. Shelley's editions, and he wrote: "Forty-nine of these 136 variants seem to me so superior to the readings of the printed texts, that it is inconceivable that Shelley (who never altered for the worse) could deliberately have abandoned them. I have introduced them, accordingly, into the present text" (Edition, I, 595). Locock's edition also offered the reader the most significant body of textual and interpretative notes to that date, and these were especially full and penetrating with respect to Prometheus Unbound.

Following Locock, the next edition of importance was that of Charles H. Herford, with Lyrical Poems published in 1918 and Dramatic Poems in 1922. Herford acknowledged that his text was based on that of Hutchinson and, except in minor details (principally of punctuation) he, like Koszul and Hughes before him, followed that editor closely, with the result that his work added little of interest to the textual history of the poem.

Nor did the handsome ten-volume Julian Edition of the complete works, edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (Volume II, containing Prometheus Unbound, appeared in 1927), give the definitive treatment of the poem that was expected. Although the editors offered a nice balance with respect to the 1820 text, the changes made by Mrs. Shelley, and some of the readings of the manuscript as given by Locock, and gave for the first time some sixty lines of early drafts from manuscripts then in the possession of Sir John C. Shelley-Rolls, there was no independent examina-

28Martin Freeman found "more than 150" (Text, p. 9). The discrepancy was probably the result of differences in reading, or possibly of Freeman's inclusion in his count of such slight differences as checked, checked, which Locock (who did not list his readings in full) may have treated as punctuation rather than as verbal changes.

Introduction 19

tion of the E manuscript, and the Ingpen-Peck text was no more exact or final than were several others that preceded it. Indeed, there were several inexcusable errors, typographical or of reference, and frequent failure in the notes to distinguish between the two issues of the first edition and the two 1839 editions of Mrs. Shelley. Because of the general importance of the Julian Edition, however, and to indicate the nature of the editorial policy at the time, full variant treatment has been given in the present work, but obvious errors or misprints in the notes have been passed over silently.

From the foregoing survey of the textual history of Prometheus Unbound it will be clear that no serious evaluation of the relationship between the manuscript copy and the accepted editions had been made since the work of Ackermann and Locock, both of whose editions, as we have seen, were deficient in certain respects. To the problem of re-evaluation, and to the determination of a more nearly definitive text, Martin Joseph Freeman addressed himself in A Text of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, a disserta- tion submitted for the doctoral degree at the University of Chicago in 1934. As part of his thesis Freeman transcribed afresh the manuscript materials, related his readings to earlier transcriptions and selected editions, and made his final text the basis of the poem as published in The Reader's Shelley (1942), edited in collaboration with Carl Grabo.

The Freeman text was kept extremely close to the manuscript readings, as might be expected in the light of his statement that "the manuscript readings should, except in those instances where it appears more reasonable to suppose that the poet made even later changes, take precedence over the First Edition" (Text, p. 38). But Freeman's text demonstrated that there is a point beyond which fidelity to the manuscript should not go. It must be remembered that Shelley was clearly not attempting a printer's copy. He was frequently inconsistent in punctuation and capitalization, and to carry these inconsistencies into a text that is not in itself a trans- cription of the manuscript is to misinterpret editorial responsibility.29

With respect to word changes the matter is different: certainly the final changes made by the poet should take precedence over a first edition or

29The promise of Freeman's full transcriptions of the manuscripts to one faced with deciphering Shelley's handwriting, as was the present editor, proved illusory. Many errors remained in the transcription, and, while some of these were defensibly debatable readings, others represented omission of words or figures clearly present in the manu- script, obvious misreadings, many typographical errors, and frequent failure to indicate deletions. As a result it has been necessary to re transcribe the manuscript materials in their entirety. Yet I would be remiss did I not acknowledge the help available in Freeman's work, for in combination with the transcriptions of Zupitza-Schick and Locock it has many times confirmed my own tentative readings or forced me into further consideration of questionable passages. See Textual Notes for the principal errors and also the frequently excellent conjectures of Freeman.

20 Introduction

any subsequent edition that did not have the manuscript in its final form as a check-copy. Here the only problems are the determination of what were actually the "final changes," and the extent to which a given editor is more successful than his predecessors in transcribing difficult handwriting. In the present instance Freeman differed from Ackermann and Locock in eleven readings (at Preface 98; 1.35, 208-9, 253; II.iii.38; III.i.3; III.iv.114, 151, 165; IV.165, 171). But four of these changes (Preface 98; III.iv.151; IV.165, 171) were without manuscript authority, even in Freeman's trans- cription; three were choices in debatable readings (II.iii.38; III.iv.114, 165) ; and one (1.208-9) resulted in a tetrameter questionably defended by Free- man. The three remaining adoptions had all been noted and rejected by Locock. Moreover, there are several uncanceled Shelley readings (notably some of the stage directions) not adopted by Freeman, presumably on the assumption that they did not represent final changes.

THE MANUSCRIPT MATERIALS

As has been noted above, the most important item of the Prometheus Unbound manuscript materials was presented to the Bodleian Library by Lady Jane Shelley, and became available to scholars in 1893. Of the four notebooks in which this material is to be found, MSS Shelley E.I, E.2, and E.330 contain, in Shelley's hand, a copy of all but ten lines of the poem (eight of which are in- a notebook, to be described below, in the Huntington Library). The fourth notebook, MS Shelley D.I, contains the poet's translations into Italian, probably as an exercise, of II.v.48-71 and IV.1-82 (see Appendix B) .

Generally speaking, and certainly so in comparison with most of the extant drafts, these notebooks are reasonably legible to one who is willing to acquaint himself with Shelley's handwriting. There are, however, certain transcriptional difficulties that should be noted. It is, for example, frequently difficult or impossible to distinguish small and capital letters c, e, 7?i, 7i, o, and 5, or to determine whether a small or a capital letter was written first when Shelley alters one by overwriting with the other; the loop on small e is often suppressed or missing, leading to confusion with i in those instances where he fails to dot the i, or to place the dot correctly over it — a situation that is made more difficult by his own confusion with

30 These notebooks differ slightly in size and number of leaves. E.I has 46 leaves, 5% by 8H inches; E.2 has 43 leaves, S1A by S1A inches; E.3 has 38 leaves, 5M by 8M inches; and D.I has 156 leaves, 6M by 8% inches. Locock gave the E notebooks as all 5% by 8 Ys inches (Examination, p. 28).

The back cover of E.I and the front cover of E.3 are missing, a circumstance that led Julius Zupitza to question whether these notebooks might originally have been one, cut down the back binding. Joseph Schick, however, pointed out that the half -covers and ornamentation do not match in such a way as to justify this assumption, and that the evidence of E.2, which continues directly from E.I, would argue against it. The slight difference in page size should also be noted.

Introduction 21

respect to ei and ie (he clearly writes thier at times, as well as viel, weild> and ivierd) ; se frequently looks like a poorly written e; the final re (where, there) are occasionally indistinguishable from n; there are many irrelevant ink splatters which may be confused with punctuation, as may an occa- sional pen movement at word ends; hyphens are sometimes reduced to dots; and dashes differ widely in length.

As to punctuation, Miss Blind was scarcely correct when in her review of Rossetti she wrote that the E manuscript was "always carefully punctu- ated." Except for the question mark, which is usually present, punctua- tion is frequently omitted at line ends. Within the lines Shelley is more (but certainly not "always") careful, although many times the dash is substituted for more exact marking, and ambiguity through altered punctuation often plagues the reader. All such difficulties have been treated either in the Variant Readings or in the Textual Notes of the present edition, as have Shelley's misspellings and other orthographic idiosyncrasies.

Except for general dates supplied by the letters, there is no way to determine with any certainty when the different parts of E were written, or when the additions and changes were made in it;31 nor can one state finally what was its relationship to the 1820 edition. Freeman went so far as to state it as his opinion that it was "the only fair copy of the poem ever made by Shelley," holding that "the evident care with which it was made; the fact that it contains all of the poem but ten lines; the fact that it contains all of the preface — everything, except in a few instances, most carefully written, as Shelley's writing goes — lend support to this view" (Text, pp. 37-38), Locock, however, in general agreement with Zupitza- Schick, thought it an "intermediate draft" and probably the first fair copy made by the poet (Examination, p. 29).

Conclusions with respect to many of the problems relative to the manu- script must remain tentative, especially in view of the manner in which the poet used the notebooks, but the more general evidence relative to Prometheus Unbound may be summarized here (for matters of detail see the Textual Notes).32

81Little can be learned from the appearance of the manuscript. Shelley changed pens, or sharpened the pen being used, frequently. At other times a pencil was used. At times, also, the ink grew weak and was apparently changed or renewed. But whether or not there was a time lapse between these changes cannot he determined. Freeman attempted to reconstruct the progress of the writing, noting the lines at which pens were changed, etc., and speculating on the degree to which such evidence might in- dicate early or late changes and additions. But he recognized that, heyond a few reasonable conjectures (listed in the Textual Notes of the present edition), "neither Shelley's numbering of the lines nor variation in handwriting permits safe con- jecture" (Text, pp. 23-31).

82There is in these, as in the other Shelley notebooks, material not related to Prome- theus Unbound, This includes, for E.I, E.2, and E.3, an Italian street address; a line,

22 Introduction

Shelley started to copy the play not, as might be expected, at the be- ginning of the first notebook (E.I) but on page 18r, where he placed the title, subtitle, and dramatis personae. He then proceeded to 18V for Act I and copied this act (to line 498) on the verso pages, leaving the recto pages blank for corrections and additions to the text. Apparently, therefore, pages lr to 17V were originally left blank, possibly with the intention of reserving the space for a preface to be added later.

Act I, beginning with line 499, was then continued immediately in the second notebook (E.2), and the foregoing procedure of verso pages for the text, recto for corrections and additions was followed. This act was com- pleted on page 20V, with Act II following on 21V and continuing to the end of the book (page 43V, line II.iv.74). Again Shelley continued directly into the next notebook (E.3), with the next line of Act II starting on page lv and ending on 10V. Act III followed on llv and was completed on 36V.

"climb from /cAijua£ a [lall] ladder"; two lines of Greek (identified by Zupitza-Schick as from Philoktet 387-88) ; pencil and pen sketches of trees, towers, a bridge, a head, a harp, sailboats, and at E.3 39r a full-page and more detailed pencil and ink drawing of a view across large shore rocks to a small island of rock, flanked by two sailboats and topped with trees, and with a cave in the rock; many mathematical computations other than those pertinent to his Prometheus Unbound line count; three lines not in Shelley's hand and signed "Clare"; a list, also not in Shelley's hand, of eight of the longer poems; a penciled copy, plus one stanza in ink, of the Invocation to Misery; a copy, in ink, of the Ode to Heaven; and a translation of slightly less than half of Plato's Ion. In addition, there are two fragments possibly written with Prometheus Unbound in mind. For the first, see Textual Notes at II.iii.98. The second, on E.2 23r inverted, was thought by Kroder (I believe correctly) to be pertinent rather to The Mask of Anarchy. I treads:

screams

When a Nation [cries] aloud Like an eagle from the cloud When a

[When the right]

Watch the look askance & cold — See neglect, & falsehood fold.

Since the Ion fragment is scattered through notebook E.I much as is Act IV, it might be questioned whether it was not written in before that act. Several circum- stances argue against this: The translation starts on page 16V and, after carrying irregularly to the end of the book, finishes on the (inverted) two pages lv and lr, and the paste-down immediately preceding the opening of Act IV. Had Act IV not already been written in, there would have been no reason for not placing the Ion on the blank pages used for that act. Secondly, on 36*, at the top of which the final line of Act IV is written, the Ion picks up below the line (and the act count written under it), with an ample spacing that would not have been present had the translation been written first. And, finally, by the time the poet wrote in the Ion he was willing to use pages opposite Act I on which additions or corrections to the act had been made, even at times writing the translation over these changes. He had skipped these pages when copying in Act IV,

Introduction 23

With the original three-act version of the play thus completed (except for certain changes and additions that may have been added at any time later), Shelley probably turned to his Preface. At first this consisted only of the opening four paragraphs of the final version. It will be recalled that pages 1 to 17V of notebook E.I had been left blank. The four paragraphs were copied on pages 14r, 14V, 15r, 15V, and 16r, which still left three pages blank before the title page. It is possible that Shelley misjudged the space that would be needed, but equally possible that he purposely left space for later addition to the Preface. In any event, before the final five paragraphs were written, under circumstances to be described below, other material was assigned to these blank pages, and the balance of the Preface was written in notebook E.3.

The first three acts of the poem were, according to Shelley, finished by April 6, 1819, and Act IV at least by December (see above, pp. 4-6). When Shelley copied this final act into the notebook is not known, but it was almost certainly the next major item to be included in E.I. Using only completely blank pages for the lines, the poet wrote the first verses of Act IV on page 2r. At this point he abandoned his previous procedure and wrote on both recto and verso pages to the bottom of 13V, which brought him (at IV.427) to the Preface. He then skipped over the blank pages 16r, 17r, and 17V, probably still to reserve them for possible later addition to the Preface, and continued Act IV on the blank recto pages opposite Act I. Pages 19r and 20r were skipped because they contained corrections or additions to the first act; and 21r, although blank except for one word at the bottom, was also skipped. Shelley then continued Act IV on 22r, skipped 23r and 24r because they were not completely blank, and resumed on 25r. Pages 26r and 27r had been used for additions, so Act IV was carried to 28r and through the recto pages to 31r. Pages 32r and 33r had Act I changes, and Act IV was completed on 34r and 35r, except for one line at the top of 36r.

Between this time and the time of Shelley's decision to add to the Preface, all pages of notebook E.I were used for other writings (the pages apparently reserved for addition to the Preface were given to the opening of the Ion translation). Possibly the poet had determined to let the four paragraphs stand without addition, since they commented adequately on the subject matter of the poem, its relationship to the Greek models, and the circumstances under which it was written. But the last five paragraphs, with their strong defense against the charge of imitation, were called forth by an attack against Shelley in a review of The Revolt of Islam published in the Quarterly Review for April, 1819. In this review, after commenting on resemblances to Southey, the writer (John Taylor Coleridge) stated:

[Shelley] draws largely on the rich stores of another mountain poet, to whose religious mind it must be matter, we think, of perpetual sorrow to see the phil- osophy which comes pure and holy from his pen, degraded and perverted, as it

24 Introduction

continually is, by this miserable crew of atheists or pantheists, who have just sense enough to abuse its terms, but neither heart nor principle to comprehend its import, or follow its application [pp. 461-62].

This review did not reach Shelley until October, and it was almost certainly at that time that he wrote his answer: the final five paragraphs of the Prometheus Unbound Preface.

Shelley thought, erroneously, that Southey had written the article, and so declared in a letter from Florence to the Olliers dated October 15, 1819. He added:

The only remark worth notice in this piece is the assertion that I imitate Wordsworth. It may as well be said that Lord Byron imitates Wordsworth, or that Wordsworth imitates Lord Byron, both being great poets, and deriving from the new springs of thought and feeling, which the great events of our age have exposed to view, a similar tone of sentiment, . imagery, and expression. A certain similarity all the best writers of any particular age inevitably are marked with, from the spirit of that age acting on all. This I had explained in my preface [to The Revolt of Islam], which the writer was too disingenuous to advert to [Julian, X, 95-96].

The pertinent sentences from that earlier preface were as follows:

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from sub- jection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. . . . And this [the influence of the age] is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape.

Urged on by the challenge of the review, Shelley restated his position for inclusion in the Preface to the new poem. Having made a rough draft of the new material (see Appendix A) for all but the last paragraph (which was worked up in E.3), Shelley, if we may judge by the pen and ink used, copied it almost immediately into E.3 (Freeman, Text, p. 23). For this purpose he turned the notebook upside down and began writing on page 38r, continuing on 38r, 37V, 36r, 35r, 32r, 3'lr, and 30r. The skipped pages had already been used for the text of Act III or for additions thereto.

Shortly after the E manuscript became available to scholars in 1893, Julius Zupitza made a careful study of the notebooks. He took as his com- parative text that of Forman, and indicated the differences to be found in the manuscript. He also described the manuscript in some detail, gave the canceled readings and the alterations made by Shelley as he worked over the lines, and, although his work was not complete in every detail, he of- fered the first nearly full picture of the nature of the manuscript and its contents. Before his materials were ready for publication, however, Zupitza died, and Joseph Schick worked the data into final form, adding

Introduction 25

comments of his own and, after checking earlier editions against the manuscript in respect to certain of the debated readings, indicating whether support or refutation was to be found in Shelley's hand. The results ("Zu Shelleys Prometheus Unbound") were published in three articles in 1899. One may disagree with some of the Zupitza-Schick readings, and point out some of the omissions and errors, but all who work with textual matters in Shelley's poem must acknowledge a debt for the care and skill with which this preliminary work was done. In such matters, involving chirographical difficulties, approximation to the truth can come only through re threading of the maze by many minds, with each later transcriber resting heavily on the work of those who have gone before.

So it was that Locock, in his Examination (1903), acknowledged that he had compared his work with that of Zupitza-Schick, and his readings were usually in general agreement with those of the German scholars (differences and conjectures will be treated in the Textual Notes of the present edition). But his aim was much less inclusive than theirs, and he attempted no de- tailed analysis of the variant readings. Also, while he admitted the im- portance of variations in punctuation, he did not list them but instead in- vited scholars to write him with respect to questions in this field. This must be considered a serious lack in his work, for, although Shelley was frequently faulty in his punctuation, any light that can be thrown on his phrasing is of importance. As might be expected, however, the fact of Locock's publication in English gave such readings as he discussed con- siderable weight, especially when they appeared in the widely influential edition of Hutchinson in the following year, and in Locock's own edition in 1911.

No further work of note was done on the manuscript until, as we have seen above, Martin J. Freeman sought to establish a more exact text for the poem as his doctoral dissertation in 1934.

The manuscript materials next in importance to those just described are to be found in the early drafts that occupy parts of two notebooks presented to Richard Garnett by Lady Jane Shelley and, through later sales to W. K. Bixby and Henry E. Huntington, now housed in the Huntington Library. These notebooks, catalogued as Huntington MSS 2176 and 2177, contain, in addition to much material not pertinent to Prometheus Unbound., drafts of parts of the latter poem in handwriting that confirms Trelawny's description of Shelley's poem, With a Guitar, to Jane: "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in most admired disorder; it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks."38 Compared with these pages, the E copy is

83Quoted in Zupitza-Schick ("Prometheus," Archiv, GUI, 310). Compare also Mrs. Shelley's statement with respect to Posthumous Poems (in her note on Poems

26 Introduction

indeed "fair," and after Harry Buxton Forman had transcribed and edited the draft notebooks for the Bibliophile Society of Boston (1911) he was justly praised by "HHH," who wrote the Preface and who offered the following comment:

The task of deciphering the contents of these Note Books seemed impossible; it could be accomplished only by one thoroughly familiar with Shelley's hand- writing, and with an intimate acquaintance with practically his entire works, as well as a knowledge of his habits and characteristics, and the methods he em- ployed in constructing his work. Shelley adopted no systematic order of paging in these books — sometimes he would write in the front, then in the back, then with the book bottom side up, and frequently he wrote up and down the pages length- wise after having written across them — and never any too plainly. Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and English are all mixed up together, and lines in one language often appear written directly or diagonally across other lines written in another language. . . . Fragments of poems here and there all through the books had to be puzzled out and transcribed, and then fitted together with their related parts, wherever they might be found. . . . Imagine one coming across a disconnected passage and, after disentangling it from the confused mass of crisscross lines, being able to identify it as the five hundred and ninety-first line of Prometheus Unbound [Note Books, pp. xi-xii] !34

Huntington MS 2176 contains the following draft lines for Act IV of Prometheus Unbound: 185-93, 319-27, 370-423, 431-36, 444-48, 457-70, 481-92, 500-16, 519-23, and 529-38. These lines are not, of course, given in the order indicated, as the above comment makes clear, and their complex development and paging will be evident if the transcription in the present edition is consulted (see Appendix A).

Huntington MS 2177 contains less Prometheus Unbound material Four of the five final paragraphs of the Preface are in draft (the fifth appears to have been worked up originally in Bodleian E.3 at the time these four were copied therein), as is the "Song of the Spirits" (the "Down, down" lyric at II.iii.54-98), and an earlier draft of IV.397-99. Some speculation has been offered as to the order in which the stanzas of the "Song of Spirits" were written (the notebook order is iii, ii, i, iv, v), but Shelley's habit of using pages or parts of pages without regard for textual continuity must rule out any certainty on this problem.

Other manuscript material in the form of drafts bearing on Prometheus Unbound remained in the possession of Sir John Shelley-Rolls until 1946,

of 1822) : "Did anyone see the papers from which I drew that volume, the wonder would be how any eyes or patience were capable of extracting it from so confused a mass, interlined and broken into fragments, so that the sense could only be deciphered and joined by guesses which might seem rather intuitive than founded on reasoning." Of these two notebooks, HM 2176 has 56 leaves, 4 by 5M inches, and HM 2177 has 94 leaves, 3 5A by 5 Y* inches.

34The line number was apparently hypothetical, as there is no draft for line 591 of any act in these notebooks.

Introduction 27

when his collection of Shelleyana was presented to the Bodleian Library.35 Previously, however, six passages (involving fifty-two text lines) had been transcribed for the Julian Edition of the works (see 1.766, 772-79; II.i.133- 40; II.ii.2, 5-23, 41-56), and two additional passages (twenty -six lines con- jectured to be for Prometheus Unbound) had been included in the Shelley - Rolls-Ingpen Verse and Prose (1934). In each instance only a somewhat faulty abstract of the passage was given, with no indication of the changes made by the poet in working out his drafts. Unfortunately, the gift of Shelley-Rolls has not yet been indexed or fully described (leaving one the anticipation of later discoveries), but, through the courtesy and diligence of the Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, the two passages given in Verse and Prose and three of the passages given by Ingpen-Peck have been identified (MS Shelley adds, e.12) and photostated for my independent examination, thus permitting a complete transcrip- tion for the first time. In addition, my attention was directed by the Keeper of Western Manuscripts to another draft fragment (II.iii.28-42, in MS Shelley adds, c.4) and a part of the Preface (in MS Shelley adds. e.ll), photostats of which were supplied to me for first transcription (see Appendix A).

The final item of manuscript remains is a rough draft of IV.327-31, written on the verso of page 16 (Shelley's numbering) of a manuscript of The Mask of Anarchy. The manuscript was reprinted in facsimile by the Shelley Society (with an introduction by H. B. Forman) in 1887, and I have worked from this facsimile for the transcription in Appendix A.

CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS36 GENESIS OF SHELLEY'S INTEREST IN THE THEME

Evidence of Shelley's interest in the Promethean theme is of two types: his direct references to or use of the myth, and expressions in his work that reflect the ideas inherent in the myth. Of the former, the first item of possible significance is the letter written to Clio Rickman on December 24,

88 For a description of these materials see Neville Rogers' "The Shelley-Rolls Gift lo the Bodleian Library," TLS, July 27, August 3, and August 10, 1951.

36In this part of the Introduction only the fairly general trends in critical opinion have been indicated, with more specific references to acts, scenes, or lines reserved for the Critical Notes. Here, also, no attempt has been made to list all of the pertinent critical comments (which could result only in tiresome duplication), but frequent quotation rather than mere summary has been used in order that something of the spirit of the criticism might be communicated.

A topical rather than a purely chronological approach has seemed most meaningful and has been employed, although within each subsection a chronological listing of items has been approximated, with such deviations as unity of thought has dictated. Since chronology is of importance in such a survey, however, dates have been included in either the text or the references, in order that the reader may at all times be oriented in the midst of what will frequently be unfamiliar names.

28 Introduction

1812, in which he ordered, among other books, a copy of Aeschylus, with the direction that it should be an "original and translation, if possible, united" (Julian, IX, 35-36). It may, of course, be assumed that Shelley knew the myth as such from his earlier studies, and in 1813 he made use of it in a manner strangely different from that to be found in Prometheus Unbound. In a note to Queen Mab VIII.211-12 (incorporated also into A Vindication of Natural Diet, 1813), he followed the interpretation found in John Frank Newton's Return to Nature; or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (London, 1811), in which Prometheus was made responsible for the ills of the world because he taught the use of animal food. In view of the varied interpretations to be given later to Shelley's poem, it is inter- esting to note his own emphasis at this time, and his awareness of the uncertainties of allegorical interpretation:

The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally admitted to he allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesoid says thai, before the time of Prometheus, mankind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. . . . How plain a language is spoken by all this! Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice rose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and inequality were then first known, when reason vainly attempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion.

Shelley then quoted further from Newton to show that "Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the newly -formed creature, and left him to experience the sad effects of them." As Douglas Bush remarked: "No one could predict Prometheus Unbound from Shelley's interpretation" of the myth in this note (Mythology, 1937, p. 133).

It is clear that by 1816 the Aeschylean play was of active interest to the poet. Mrs. Shelley's list of his reading included it for the year, and Thomas Medwin recorded that in the same year the poet translated it for Byron at Lake Geneva (Shelley, p. 161); even as, in 1820, he was to make an oral translation for Medwin, "reading it as fluently as if written in French or Italian," and his words "often flowed on line after line in blank verse, into which very harmonious prose resolves itself naturally" (pp. 242-43). It is, of course, not surprising that by 1820 Shelley had thus completely mastered the text.

In March, 1818, Shelley recorded the passage of Les Echelles in Savoy, on the journey to Italy, and called upon Aeschylus for comparison: "The

Introduction 29

scene is like that described in the Prometheus of ^Eschylus. Vast rifts and caverns in the granite precipices, wintry mountains with ice and snow above; the loud sounds of unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only to be scaled as he described, by the winged chariot of the ocean nymphs" (Julian, IX, 293.)37 And later in the same year, after completing Act I of the drama, he wrote to Thomas Love Peacock on October 8 asking "what there is in Cicero about a drama supposed to have been written by /Eschylus under this title [Prometheus Unbound}" (IX, 336. See Appendix E for the Cicero passage).

Carlos Baker called Prometheus Unbound "Shelley's first successful at- tempt to synthesize the ideas which he had handled (separately or con- fusedly) in the works of his apprentice period5' (Shelley's Major Poetry, 1948, p. 6), and the "internal evidence" of Shelley's interest in the Prome- thean theme is to be found in related ideas used in these earlier efforts. Many echoes will be found recorded in the Critical Notes of the present edition, but here we may observe some of the broader aspects of the prob- lem, such as the relevance, noted by N. I. White, of the letter of October 18, 1811, to Elizabeth Hitchener: "I have long been convinced of the eventual omnipotence of mind over matter; adequacy of motive is sufficient to anything, and my golden age is when the present potence will become

omnipotence Will it not be the task of human reason, human powers?"

(Shelley, I, 195; Julian, VIII, 160).

A wide range of early prose and poetry has been marshaled to show the anticipations of thought in Prometheus Unbound,™ but by far the larger

370n her return to England in 1823, Mrs. Shelley passed this scene once more and wrote to Leigh Hunt, on August 1, that the "dark high precipices towering above gave S[helley] the idea of his Prometheus" (Letters, I, 23940).

88Typical comments: Gliasta and The Wandering Jew: "The angel choruses of Prome- theus Unbound stumbled through the measures of [these pieces] before they learned to dance to the music of the spheres" (E. S. Bates, "Mad Shelley," 1929, p. 140); The Necessity of Atheism: "[The] attitude of protest and rebellion [gives way] to a positive faith in man's capacity for self -emancipation from himself by the strength of his own spiritual nature, which is akin to the universal soul of intellectual beauty and love" (J. S. Thomson, "Unbinding of Prometheus," 1945, p. 10); Alastor: "[The] massive feeling for the Earth [is] a true forerunner of the mighty Earth -song Prome- theus" (G. W. Knight, Starlit Dome, 1941, p. 207); The Assassins: "[It] breathes that spirit of domestic peace and general brotherhood founded on love, which was developed afterwards in the 'Prometheus Unbound' " (Mrs. Shelley, Preface, 1839, p. x) ; Essay on Christianity: "[A] kind of prose gloss on Prometheus Unbound" (0. Elton, Shelley, 1912, p. 74) ; Rosalind and Helen: indicative of Shelley's interest in the victory of the Good (H. Druskowitz, Shelley, 1884, p. 252) ; Frankenstein (assuming Shelley's collaboration): similar in the theme of "victorious pantheism" (A. Delrieu, "Po&tes modernes," 1843, p. 197) ; Julian and Maddalo: like Prometheus Unbound a projection of Shelley's own tragedy, with the "hysterical agony of the madman" idealized into the "god-like agony of Prometheus, with less emphasis upon personal, and more upon vicarious suffering," but with both showing evil overcome by the practice of will

30 Introduction

numbers of such comparisons have been those relating to Queen Mob and The Revolt of Islam, with Carl Grabo noting that both poems (and The Wandering Jew) were like Prometheus Unbound in theme: "the rebel and heretic defying tyranny, whether secular or divine, and, though suffering torments, remaining master of his soul and in his steadfastness giving assur- ance of the tyrant's ultimate overthrow" (Newton among Poets, 1930, p. 28). With respect to Queen Mab, three points of view have prevailed. The first has held that Prometheus Unbound was very close to Queen Mob in theme. Thus Delrieu felt that the "insolent spinozism" of the Queen Mob notes was now given in abstract form fTo&tes modernes," 1843, p. 186);

(B. Kurtz, Introduction, 1933, pp. xlii-xliii; Pursuit of Death, 1933, pp. 145, 150) ; A Philosophical View of Reform: "The main historical action is the same . . . namely a symbolic depiction of the age from the French Revolution to the establishment of the tyranny of the Quadruple Alliance and a projection of that age into the future" (K. N. Cameron, Edition, 1951, p. xxi); The Witch of Atlas (although written after the drama): "[The] best preface to the study of Prometheus,'" for it is identical in "philosophy, symbolism, and imagery," since it and The Cloud "were fashioned from poetic materials rejected in the shaping of Prometheus . . . because they did not suit the theme and scope of that grave and profound poem" (C. Grabo, Meaning of the Witch, 1935, pp. vii, 21, 108).

The most extensive single effort to trace the pre -Promethean ideas in Shelley's works, however, has been that recently undertaken by Bennett Weaver, who pointed out that "up until the writing of Prometheus Unbound the mass of Shelley's prose is greater than that of his poetry, and the main tendency of his thinking in the prose is toward the principles celebrated in the drama." He noted that as early as 1812 An Address to the Irish People and Proposals for an Association contained six of the "most important concepts" that eventuated in Prometheus Unbound: (1) tyranny, power, and evil; (2) virtue and wisdom as true power; (3) love as the solution; (4) need for succor for man; (5) the self-destruction of despotic power; and (6) the eventual triumph of good. Moreover, these ideas continued to dominate the prose, especially A Letter to Lord Ellenborough, A Vindication of Natural Diet, A Refutation of Deism, Tlie Assassins, Essay on Christianity, A Proposal for Putting the Reform to the Vote, An Address on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, and Speculations on Morals ("Pre-Promethean Prose," 1948, passim) .

Weaver also traced, with particular emphasis on the reflection of Shelley's own personality in his characters, the earlier interest in the theme as found in three longer poems : Prince Athanase, Rosalind and Helen, and Julian and Maddalo. In these Weaver found such Promethean concepts as (1) acquaintance with suffering and grief; (2) love of fellow men and the desire to save them; (3) calm, steadfast invincibility; and (4) tyranny that will destroy itself and be lost in eternity ("Pre-Promethean Poems," 1950, passim).

This investigation was extended in another article ("First Beginnings," 1953). With particular reference to the juvenilia, which he considered "too long neglected," Weaver traced, among other ideas, the concepts of eternity; aloneness deepening into madness (the madness not applicable to Prometheus, of course) ; the deeper love; and, especially, social sympathy and indignation against tyranny. Specific comparisons will be found in the Critical Notes.

Weaver's essay, Prometheus Unbound, regrettably appeared too late for detailed inclusion in the present work. It is a wisely written study of the poem, offering a balanced, tempered reading illuminated by many fresh insights and mature judgments.

Introduction 31

and William Michael Rossetti found the argument in the two poems to be the same: "the power of man, too truly and too bitterly proved in the past and in the present, to turn his earth into an approximate hell; and his power likewise, if he so wills it, by a gradual but energetic change of spirit, to turn his earth into an approximate heaven" ("Prometheus as Poem," 1887, p. 144). Paul Elmer More stated flatly: "Prometheus is only Queen Mob writ large" ("Shelley," 1910, p. 14) ; and while Joseph Barrell would not go this far he did feel that the "essential Shelley" was fundamentally emotional rather than intellectual, and that at the end of both poems he returned to this emotionalism (Shelley and Thought, 1947, p. 158).

The second point of view, more widespread, has recognized advances made in Prometheus Unbound on the ideas of Queen Mob. Thus Medwin, in discussing Shelley's attitude toward materialism, but without naming the earlier poem, wrote:

A sufficient answer to the eloquent, but specious reasoning of Mirabeau, the Materialism of the Systeme de la Nature, so unanswerable to the mere matter-of- fact mind, is given in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. It is the best practical refutation of the maxim, that "there is nothing in the intellect, that was not first in the senses," and of all the sorrowful deductions therefrom [Shelley, 1847, p. 431].

Thornton Hunt stated this view clearly in finding "a more distinct present- ment of the original ideas [of Queen Mob and The Revolt of Islam], coupled with a much more measured suggestion for acting on them, and a far less bitter allusion to the obstacles; while the charity and love are more all- embracing and apparent than ever" ("Shelley," 1863, p. 201). This position was amplified by John Todhunter:

Queen Mob is chiefly interesting as being the forerunner of Prometheus Unbound, containing as it does the first rough sketch of the philosophy which, purified and perfected, is embodied in the great lyrical drama in a mythical form. There, however, we find some glimpses of an evolution -theory which are not discernible in the juvenile poem [Study, 1880, p. 4.6] .

George Gordon wrote: "The new world of the Prometheus ... is far from the Arcadia of Queen Mob, and farther still from anything which men can hope for within a time worth measuring. The passion for reform is lost in the rapturous contemplation not merely of the world made better, but of a better world" (Shelley and the Oppressors, 1923, p. 11). Carl Grabo stressed the difference between the materialistic and deterministic phase of Shelley's scientific thought in the earlier poem, and the reconciliation of science with Piatonism in the later work (Newton among Poets, 1930, p. xi), and Grabo stated: " Prometheus Unbound is the work of a poet who has ceased to be a reformer and has become a philosopher" (Interpretation, 1935, p. 8).39

89Carlos Baker, in a study that appeared too late for detailed inclusion in the present work ("Bottom of the Night," 1957), found Prometheus Unbound "the key poem in the development of [Shelley's] humanism," which was the "second of his way -stations" (the first: philosophical materialism [materialistic Necessity]) (p. 195).

32 Introduction

The third point of view has been concerned with the changes from Queen Mob to be found in the lyrical drama. Thus Grabo pointed out thai Shelley reversed his earlier idea that mind is but a function of matter, and in Prometheus Unbound the will became free (Interpretation, 1935, p. 168); and N. I. White noted several important differences in the two poems: (1) vegetarianism and the evils of marriage are not mentioned in Prome- theus Unbound; (2) Christ, an imposter in Queen Mob, is given sympathetic treatment in the later poem; (3) evil becomes "a subtle perversion of thought" rather than an external phenomenon, as in Queen Mob; (4) free- dom of the will, denied in Queen Mab, becomes "the one quality that bulwarks humanity against an eternity of oppression"; and (5) the neces- sity of Queen Mab is replaced by love in Prometheus Unbound (Shelley, 1940, II, 125-26).

Comparisons with The Revolt of Islam have been in much the same vein. Leigh Hunt, on first reading Prometheus Unbound, wrote to Shelley on August 23, 1820: "What noble things in it! What grand lines and affection- ate thoughts! But it is liable to some of the objections against the Revolt of Islam" (Correspondence, I, 158). Mrs. Shelley, in her note to Prometheus Unbound, compared Laon to the "more idealized" Prometheus, and de- scribed Shelley's favorite subject as "the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all — even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance on the ultimate omnipotence of Good" (see Appendix C). John Addington Symonds suggested that Prometheus and Jupiter "give the form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahrirnan dualism already ex- pressed in the first canto of [The Revolt of Islam]; but instead of being represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into the region of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry" (Shelley, 1878, pp. 121-22). Stopford Brooke wrote that in the earlier poem "there is no artistic fusion of the poetry which aims at giving a high pleasure with that which aims at awakening man to his duties. That fusion was made in the Prometheus Unbound" (Edition, 1882, p. xv); but he noted also that the subject in both poems "is at root the same," and "the things opposed are the same, the doctrine is the same, but the whole method of approaching his idea and fulfilling its form is changed, and all the questions are brought into that artistic representation which stirs around them inspiring and enduring emotion" (p. xxvi). Brooke also held that, had Shelley remained in Eng- land, "I do not think he would have worked on this matter in the ideal way of Prometheus Unbound, because continual contact with the reigning theology would have driven his easily wrought anger into direct violence [as in The Revolt of Islam]" ("Thoughts on Shelley," 1880, p. 126).

Carlos Baker noted that in The Revolt of Islam Shelley adopted from Peacock's Ahrimanes the idea that the world was governed by a Necessity

Introduction 33

which dwelt apart, '"ready, if the world were ready, to usher in a new order." The plan of Prometheus Unbound, Baker held, was similar; but, "where the revolution failed in Islam, having been superinduced by out- ward action, that in Prometheus Unbound, having involved and taken place in man's whole mental constitution, must succeed" (Shelley's Major Poetry, 1948, pp. 101-2). And finally, Kenneth Neil Cameron commented:

His object in writing Prometheus Unbound was the same as his object had been the previous year in writing The Revolt of Islam: "[Gloom] and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappoint- ment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. . . . But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have composed the following Poem" (Shelley's Preface) [Edition, 1951, p. xxii].

TRENDS IN CRITICAL OPINION

Hie first expressions of critical opinion with respect to Prometheus Un- bound came from the poet himself. After completing Act I he was almost apologetic as he wrote to Peacock on January 24, 1819:

I consider Poetry very subordinate to moral and political science, and if I were well, certainly I should aspire to the latter; for I can conceive a great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonising the contending creeds by which man- kind have been ruled. Far from me is such an attempt, and I shall be content, by exercising my fancy, to amuse myself, and perhaps some others, and cast what weight I can into the right scale of that balance, which the Giant of Arthegall holds40 [Julian, X, 21].

As the work progressed there were some twenty evaluations of the drama by the poet, encompassing four general areas of consideration.

Most frequently Shelley stated without hesitation that the poem was his favorite, superior to his other work, and would please the person to whom the letter was addressed. Typical was his statement to the Olliers on October 15, 1819, that it was "a poem in my best style, whatever that may amount to," and that "It is the most perfect of my productions" (X, 95); and his comment to Trelawny: "If that is not durable poetry, tried by the severest test, I do not know what is. It is a lofty subject, not inadequately treated, and should not perish with me" (Trelawny, Records,

4t)Peacock explained the reference as follows: "The allusion is to the Fairy Queen book v, canto 3. The Giant has scales, in which he professes to weigh right and wrong, and rectify the physical and moral evils which result from inequality of condition. Shelley once pointed out this passage to me, observing, cArtegall argues with the Giant; the Giant has the best of the argument; Artegall's iron man knocks him over into the sea and drowns him. This is the usual way in which power deals with opinion.' I said, 'That was not the lesson which Spenser intended to convey.' Terhaps not,' he said; 'it is the lesson which he conveys to me. I am of the Giant's faction.' In the same feeling, with respect to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, he held that the Enchanter in the first canto was a true philanthropist, and the Knight of Arts and Industry in the second an oligarchical imposter overthrowing truth by power" (Letters, p. 319).

34 Introduction

1878, I, xv). Again to Trelawny he said: "It is original; and cost me severe mental labour. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble" (p. 118) .41

The originality of the poem, noted in the preceding quotation, was par- ticularly stressed by the poet on four different occasions. To Peacock, April 6, 1819, he wrote: "It is a drama with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted" (Julian, X, 48); to the Olliers on September 6 he called it "perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it" (X, 79); in greater detail, to Medwin on July 20, 1820, he described it as

a composition of a totally different character [from The Cenci]* I do not know if it be wise to affect variety in compositions, or whether the attempt to excel in many ways does not debar from excellence in one particular kind. "Prometheus Unbound," is in the merest spirit of ideal Poetry, and not, as the name would indicate, a mere imitation of the Greek drama, or indeed if I have been successful, is it an imitation of anything [X, 191-92] ;

and in a letter of July 27, telling Keats to expect a copy of Prometheus Unbound, Shelley wrote: "In poetry I have sought to avoid system and mannerism" (X, 194).

Shelley was also aware that the poem was of such character and quality that it could not be popular. He wrote the Olliers on March 6, 1820, that, teif I may judge by its merits, the Trometheus' cannot sell beyond twenty copies" (X, 148) ; to Medwin on April 16: "Not that [the poems in the 1820 volume] will sell; they are the reverse, in this respect, of the razors in 'Peter Pindar,' A man like me can in fact only be a poet by dint of stinting him- self of meat and drink to pay his printer's bill — that is, he can only print poems on this condition" (X, 157); and to Hunt on May 26: ccit is written only for the elect" (X, 171). In November he was happy that Claire Clairmont liked the poem: "My verses please so few persons that I make much of the encouragement of the few, whose judgment (if I were to listen to Vanity, the familiar spirit of our race) I should say with Shakspeare and Plato 'outweighed a whole theatre of others' " (X, 226). On February 16, 1821, he wrote the Olliers again: "For Trometheus' I expect and desire no great sale" (X, 237). And as late as January 26, 1822, in a letter to John Gisborne, he declared that "Prometheus was never intended for more than 5 or 6 persons" (X, 354). It would appear, however, that he was sufficiently human to hope, for on February 22, 1821, he wrote to Charles Oilier: "Pray tell me how the Trometheus Unbound' was received" (X, 244).42

41See also Julian, X, 48, 79, 87, 131, 135, 148, 155, 157, 168, 171, 319.

42The number of copies printed for Oilier is not known, making it difficult to estimate sales, but as a possible comparison there were, according to F. L. Jones, five hundred copies of Posthumous Poems printed (Mary Shelley, Letters, I, 264n). On January 11, 1822, John Gisborne wrote to Shelley: "I cannot help thinking that the Prometheus must have had a more extensive sale than you are aware of. I have been reading the quarterly review upon it, and taking it for granted that the reviewers know their

Introduction 35

Finally, Shelley was conscious of the possible obscurities with which the poem was soon to be charged. In dedicating The Cenci to Leigh Hunt he wrote: "Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. . . . [They] are dreams of what ought to be, or may be" (Dedication of The Cenci). 43 Even more to the point, Trelawny reported Shelley to have said:

Mine is a life of failures. Peacock says my poetry is composed of day-dreams and night-mares. . . . Jefferson Hogg says all poetry is inverted sense, and consequently nonsense. Every man should attempt to do something. Poetry was the rage of the day, and I racked my imagination to be a poet. I wrote, and the critics de- nounced me as a mischievous visionary, and my friends said that I had mistaken my vocation, that my poetry was mere rhapsody of words; that I was soaring in the blue regions of the air, disconnected from all human sympathy [Records, 1878,1,135-36].

With respect to Prometheus Unbound itself Shelley wrote the Olliers on November 10, 1820, regretting that the errors of the press were so numer- ous, tcand in many respects so destructive of the sense of a species of poetry which, I fear, even with [without?] this disadvantage, very few will understand or like" (X, 219) ; and again to Charles Oilier, on June 8, 1821, he told of his intention to print or transcribe Adonais "in such a manner

business, their criticisms may be considered much more ample and elaborate than they would have been on a work of very limited circulation. I believe very many of their readers will admit the charge of unintelligibility on most of the passages which they quote. La schiera dei sciocchi e infinita! ['The company of the stupid is infinite!']'' (Abinger MSS, Reel 14). Another item in the Abinger MSS (Reel 16) is in error. It is an index of several letters written by Leigh Hunt, the subject of one of which to Shelley (dated April 6, 1820, before publication of the poem) is given as follows: "The Prome- theus Unbound 1st Edition nearly exhausted." The letter, while not in the collection, nor in the editions, is given in Shelley and Mary (II, 489) and shows the reference to be to The Cenci. The final bit of evidence, found in a letter from Charles Oilier to Mrs. Shelley, dated November 17, 1823, offers little positive information. In it he advised her that he had sent to John Hunt (who was to publish Posthumous Poems), at her request, "such copies of Mr. Shelley's works as remained in my possession," including twelve copies of Prometheus Unbound in "quires." He noted also, however, that "the unsold stock of those [works] which were printed at our sole expense were disposed of in the general sale of our property; but, as I thought that, when you came to England, you might like to have a copy or two of each, I reserved some few for that purpose"; and that "the sale, in every instance, of Mr. Shelley's works has been very confined" (Abinger MSS, Reel 15). If a possible edition of five hundred is assumed, twelve re- mainders would indeed be a respectably small number, but that the twelve copies of Prometheus Unbound sent to Hunt may well have been only those "reserved" is sug- gested by the fact that exactly the same number of copies of Hellas, Rosalind and Helen, and The Cenci, in quires, were among the items listed for Hunt (ibid.).

43Later, Charles Middle ton in a unique (and surely unwarranted) statement, linked Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci as follows: "In these the lifeblood of reality circulates more freely [than in the earlier works]" (Shettey, 1858, II, 166).

36 Introduction

as it shall be difficult for the reviser to leave such errors as assist the ob- scurity of the Trometheus' " (X, 273).

On May 4 of this year he had written to Byron, possibly with respect to the printer's errors (see above, p. 8) but, in view of the transposed quo- tation from Horace's Art of Poetry (lines 39-40), more likely in a moment of uncertainty: "The Trometheus' is ... a very imperfect poem. I begin to learn, 'quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent' ['what your shoulders refuse, and what they are able to bear']" (X, 266). And Trelawny re- ported that Shelley had told him: "My friends say my Trometheus' is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be so" (Records, 1878, 1, 118).

With the publication of the poem there began the growth of that forest of criticism which it is frequently difficult to see because of the trees of prejudice, special pleading, and sheer obtuseness with which it is planted. Perhaps, in surveying the lavish growth, it will be most helpful to blaze six trails that will lead to the major areas of consideration accorded to the poem. If it is kept in mind that there is abundant overlapping, it may be said that these areas have been concerned primarily with (1) the general response to the "poetry" — the lyrics, descriptions, originality; (2) the ob- scurity, wordiness, and intangibility of the poem; (3) the dramatic tech- niques; (4) the versecraft; (5) the relationships to earlier writers; and (6) the political, religious, moral, and scientific ideas.

ON THE GENERAL POETIC QUALITY OF THE POEM

Extreme — even violent — as have been the attacks on Shelley's opinions, they have, with rare exceptions, been balanced by praise for the lyrical and poetic beauty of the poem. "Unsettled, irregular, but magnificent," was the 1820 prepublication judgment of the London Magazine (see Appendix D, item I); and in the same year Horace Smith, although he preferred The Cenci, wrote Shelley on September 4 that Prometheus Un- bound was "a most original, grand, & occasionally sublime work, evincing, in my opinion, a higher order of talent than any of your previous produc- tions [But] tho' I have no doubt it will be more admired than anything

you have written, I question whether it will be so much read as the Cerici" (Abinger MSS, Reel 14). To this an early reviewer added "stupendous," "gigantic outlines," "innumerable sweetnesses," and "a vast wilderness of beauties" (London-Critical Magazine, 1820; see Appendix D, item IV); and Edmund Blunden (in Rogers, Keats, Shelley, p. 53) has noted that "At Oxford in 1822 [T. L] Beddoes wrote in a blank leaf of Prometheus Un< bound":

Write it in gold — A spirit of the sun,

An intellect ablaze with heavenly thoughts,

A soul with all the dews of pathos shining,

Introduction 37

Odorous with love, and sweet to silent woe With the dark glories of concentrate song, Was sphered in mortal earth. Angelic sounds, Alive with panting thoughts, sunned the dim world. The bright creations of an human heart Wrought magic in the bosoms of mankind. A flooding summer burst on poetry; Of which the crowning sun, the night of beauty, The dancing showers, the birds whose anthems wild Note after note unbind the enchanted leaves Of breaking buds, eve, and the flow of dawn, Were centred and condensed in his one name As in a providence — and that was SHELLEY.

Such expressions, often accompanying predominantly adverse criticism on the ideas expressed in the poem, were not uncommon in the decades that followed. Later, in a general defense of the poet, R. A. Holland asked:

But where else will you find such cosmic might of imagination condensing diffuses! nebulae of mind into a world of dream with landscapes clear as ever delighted eye of flesh yet so phantasmal, it seems, the jar of a sunbeam would dissolve them . . , such flights of speculation exploring height above height the remotest firmaments of mystery without a tiresome strain or dull droop of wing ["Soul of Shelley," 1876, pp. 155-56];

while George Barnett Smith ranked the poem "beneath the inspirations of Dante and those few spirits of the same sublime calibre, but only beneath these— to no inferior level can it be relegated" (Shelley, 1877, p. 204) ; and J. A. Syinonds believed that cca genuine liking for Prometheus Unbound may be reckoned the touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry," and found in it "melody more purged of mortal dross than any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's song, or to the rhythms of the world" (Shelley, 1878, p. 124).

Probably the most lavish praise of the century came from John Tod- hunter, who became almost breathless in wordy adoration of the poem and reached his climax by writing:

It is to all other lyrical poems what the Ninth Symphony is to all other sym- phonies; and more than this, for Shelley has here outsoared himself more un- questionably than Beethoven in his last great orchestral work. Prometheus Unbound is the supreme English poem of the nineteenth century, and must finally rank beside King Lear, being as unrivalled in its own sphere, which can scarcely be called a lower, though an immensely narrower one. Adequately to speak of this great work, criticism should become poetry (Study, 1880, p. 134) ;

and he added that, after reading the poem, "We return to the everyday world, from which we have been rapt away on the wings of passion, that "outlaw of Time and Space,' with a shock, to feel ourselves once more the prisoners of mortality" (p. 183). Edward Dowden was more temperate but found in the poem "radiant song," with music that "sounds like the voice of the quickening April winds" (Shelley, 1886, II, 264).

38 Introduction

Such descriptions set the pattern for later praise,44 with the recent judgment of George Cowling typical:

As a drama, even for the study, it is nothing. As a contribution to political science it is worthless. As a work of moral philosophy it is as vain as Shelley's own principles. Yet what magnificent blank verse! And what swift and beautiful songs! The imagery of the poem is a rainbow. In fact, the poem itself is a mirage; and a mirage is beyond condemnation. It may be unsubstantial, even illusion, but it is radiant, beautiful and iridescent [Shelley, 1936, p. 64] .

But the devil's advocate was not without his phrasemakers, even with respect to the poetry, which an early reviewer found "wild and rhapsodical declamation," with Shelley no poet because neither lines nor images were retained by the reader (Dublin Magazine, 1820; see Appendix D, item VI). William Hazlitt, too, denied him the rank of poet, dismissing him as "a sophist, a theorist, a controversial writer in verse," and commenting on his "rhapsodies of words" and his "gaudy, flimsy, allegorical pictures on gauze, on the cobwebs of his own brain," together with a "mixture of fanatic zeal and poetical licentiousness" ("Table Talk," 1821; see Appen- dix D, item IX). Hazlitt also wrote: "The author of Prometheus Un- bound . . . has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic" (Works, VI, 148). To this the 1821 Quarterly Review added that "the rhythm of the verse is often harsh and unmusical; and both the ear and the understanding are disgusted by new and uncouth words, and by the awkward, and intricate construction of the sentences" (see Appendix D, item X). Twenty years later Emerson, without speaking of Prometheus Unbound in particular, agreed: "Shelley is never a poet. His mind is uniformly imitative; all his poems composite. A fine English scholar he is, with taste, ear, and memory; but imagination, the original authentic fire of the bard, he has not" (Journals, 1839, V, 344). And in the following year an anonymous writer found it "singular" that the poet should have been "contented with choral songs so loose in their structure, inexpressive, and not seldom unmelodious" (British Review^ 1840, p. 113); while George Gilfillan, admitting beauties "of a rare order," felt the poem was written too fast, in a state of overexcitement, and twenty years too soon, and that "its lyrics have more flow of sound than beauty of image or depth of sentiment" ("Prometheus," 1855, pp. 431-32).

Rabbe, Francis Thompson, Salt, Wbodberry, J. M. Brown, Dawson, Payne, Brooke, More, 0. Elton, Glut ton -Brock, R. M. Smith, Lynd, Monroe, Ullman, and others. From these, two statements may be chosen: Stopford Brooke compared the poem to "a lyric written in a larger world than ours, on a mighty scale, for a universal music, by a great Archangel; by Raphael who in his glory still compassionates the earth" ("Lyrics of Shelley," 1907, p. 164); and Harriet Monroe wrote: "Shelley is at home in the heaven of heavens; the Prometheus soars like livid flame, and its choruses reach a celestial height of lyric exaltation. Whether spirits or echoes or furies speak, they speak with eternity behind and before them, reveal to us birthless and deathless minds" ("Shelley," 1922, p. 212)j

Introduction 39

During the latter half of the century there was less opposition to the poetic quality of the poem, but with increasing admiration in the late decades it was perhaps inevitable that it would be revived. William Trent closed the century by objecting to the c 'extravagant" praise accorded the drama, and argued that "there are more false notes struck in the Prome- theus than in the rest of Shelley's poems taken together .... [The poem is] little more than a series of wonderful phantasmagoria flashed forth upon the curtain of the reader's mind by a very unsteady hand" ("Apropos of Shelley," 1899, pp. 86-87). This view was not unrelated to that of George R. Elliott some twenty years later: "[Shelley] was deficient in the artistic instinct of following an emotion through, into its full specific nature: this means that he lacked poetic spontaneity. He was animated by a quick, vague affectionateness" ("How Poetic Is Shelley's Poetry?" 1922, p. 317). To these charges was added that of monotony when Frank R. Leavis wrote that "the elusive imagery, the high-pitched emotions, the tone and move- ment, the ardours, ecstasies and despairs are too much the same all through" ("Shelley's Imagery," 1934, p. 278). And Louis MacNeice, in his turn, held that as the Romantic poets "preached or prophesied from an anarchist position their message failed to fuse with their poetry and we are left with message on the one hand and (usually) fantasy on the other," as witness that "very unsatisfactory work, Prometheus Unbound'" (Modern Poetry, 1938, pp. 3-4). MacNeice added: "Shelley was an inferior poet because he did not qualify his dogmas with observation. . . . Enthusiasm such as Shelley's is a great asset to a poet, but is the better if tempered with Reason and observation of fact" (p. 202).

ON THE OBSCURITIES IN THE POEM

As might be expected, and as the poet anticipated, charges of obscurity and intangibility were frequently leveled against the poem, although, as N. I. White has pointed out, "among the numerous passages analysed as absurd" occur most of those illustrating "Shelley's attempts to refine and extend the meaning of poetic expression" (Shelley, 1940, II, 131). Maria Gisborne noted in her journal for August 22, 1820, that William Godwin did not think he would read the drama through, "for he hates to read books that are full of obscurities and puzzles" (Journal, p. 45). To the reviewer in the Literary Gazette of 1820 it was "little else but absolute raving," "stupid trash," and "utter nonsense," and his reference to the "dramatis impersonae" represented an early reaction to the abstractness of the characters. In this review, also, appeared for the first time the pun on the title: ecno one can ever think him worth binding."45 The Monthly

45See Appendix D, item II for this review, and item XI for the versified appearance of the pun in John Butt. Charles Lamb's penchant for punning led Benjamin Kurtz into an interesting error when he stated that Lamb "found Prometheus Unbound just

40 Introduction

Review for 1821 also found "pure unmixed nonsense" and "Manichean absurdities" (see Appendix D, item VII); Leigh Hunt on March 1, 1821, wrote Shelley that in his planned review he "did not expect to be able to make so abstract and odi-profanum a poem at all recommendable to readers in general" (Correspondence, I, 163) ; and the Quarterly Review in the same year was more detailed, holding that there might be differences of opinion and taste as to the poetry, but "the cpiestion of meaning, or no meaning, is a matter of fact on which common sense ... is adequate to decide"; that the poetry was "in general a mere jumble of words and heterogeneous ideas, connected by slight and accidental associations"; that the descrip- tions were in "language which is to be taken partly in a metaphorical meaning, and partly in no meaning at all"; that the poem had the same appeal to readers that the "incoherences of an itinerant Methodist preach- er" had for his congregation; and, finally, that the poetry was "drivelling prose run mad" (see Appendix D, item X) . Similar charges of obscurity occurred down to the end of the century, after which the critical efforts that had been made to clarify the more obscure parts of the poem began to bear fruit, and attention was given to other matters.

Objections were raised also to the wordiness and hidden meaning of the poem. George Gilfillan wrote: "It is crushed under a load of thick allegori- cal darkness" (Sketches, 1845, p. 115); and, "The thought is frequently drowned in a diarrhoea of words; its dialogue is heavy and prolix" ("Prome- theus," 1855, p. 432). James Russell Lowell thought the poem represented Shelley "at his worst period, before his unwieldy abundance of incoherent words and images . . . had been compressed in the stricter molds of thought and study" (Complete Writings, 1867, II, 109) ; John M. Robertson wrote

a capital story . . . and nothing else" (Pursuit of Death, 1933, p. 159). Lamb wrote lo Bernard Barton in August, 1824: "The Trometheus,' unbound, is a capital story. The literal rogue! What if you had ordered 'Elfrida' in sheets! she'd have been sent up I warrant you. ... I can no more understand Shelley than you can. His poetry is 'thin sown with profit or delight' " (Lamb, Works, p. 884). A friend of Barton had written a bookseller for a copy of Shelley's poem and was told that the work was not to be ob- tained "in sheets" (p. 1073). Apparently Barton passed the "capital story" (and the pun) on to Lamb.

Later, Medwin credited Campbell with originating the quip (Shelley, 1847, p, 358). He described him as "a literary man, who has without a tythe of [Shelley's] genius obtained a hundredfold more reputation, [and who] with a sneer said to me— -* Prome- theus Unbound, It is well named. Who would bind it?' " (p. 214). Forman questioned Campbell as the originator of the story and noted its appearance in John Butt and "in a little volume of miscellanies in verse and prose called Sweepings of Parnassus (1830)" under the pseudonym of "Steropes." Forman added that some lines to "Steropes" were written in his copy of Sweepings, the pertinent few being "Prometheus yet remains Unbound / Whene'er in virgin state 'tis found, / Because, in bibliopolic hoards, /'Tis worth its weight of gold in boards,—/ Since Shelley's lovers love to see / That tome of master-minstrelsy/just as the folk beheld it first /When on a thankless world it burst" (Medwin, Shelley, p. 215). Rossetti identified the John Butt author as Theodore Hooke (Edition, 1870, I, cxxiii).

Introduction 41

in such phrases as "luminous fog," "diffuse and fantastic digression," "falsetto declamation and rhyming verbiage," and "sound and fury, signifying nothing" ("Shelley and Poetry," 1884, pp. 224-26) ; and Andrew Lang rested in understatement: "I do not mean that everyone could pass an examination in the plot of 'Prometheus Unbound' " ("Letters," p. 8).

Associated with these objections to the poem was that to the intangibility of character or scene. Keats, after reading The Cenci and in anticipation of the copy of Prometheus Unbound that Shelley had asked be sent to him, wrote in August, 1820, that Shelley "might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore. ... I am in expectation of Prometheus every day. Could I have my own wish effected, you would have it still in manuscript, or be but now putting an end to the second act" (Letters, p. 507). Horace Smith, in a letter to Shelley on September 4, 1820, preferred The Cenci "because it contains a deep & sustained human interest, of which we feel a want in the other. Prometheus himself certainly touches us nearly, but we see very little of him after his liberation" (Abinger MSS, Reel 14). Shelley himself was aware of this difficulty and wrote to John Gisborne on October 22, 1821: "As to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles" (Julian, X, 333). J. A. Symonds felt that the main figures, sketched "on a scale of surpassing magnificence," had been reduced in their filling-in "too much to the level of earthly life," descending to the love story of Prometheus and Asia: "In other words, he does not sustain the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore something vague and hollow in both figures" (Shelley, 1878, pp. 123-24); and George Calvert noted: "The figures, beam- ing with poetry, are not pulse-thridded bodies, but shining incarnations of principles and essences in the semblance of bodies. . . . Prometheus deals in elemental forces, in ideal forms, in voices more than in speakers, in humanized beams of light" (Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe, 1880, pp. 216, 218).

John C. Shairp considered "the powers, and processes, and personified abstractions . . . ludicrously inadequate [to the reform idea], as irrational as it would be to try to build a solid house out of shadows and moon- beams"; and though he admitted that "the high ideal imparts to the poem something of its own elevation," he felt that the material of the lyrics was "fantastic, not substantial truth," and that they did not "deal with per- manent emotions which belong to all men and are for all time, but appeal rather to minds in a particular stage of culture, and that not a healthy stage" ("Lyric Poet," 1881, pp. 209-12). Francis Palgrave thought that "strokes of genuine natural description" were rare "amidst its vague unreal splendour, which too often sinks into what is hardly above prosaic verbiage/' although he admitted that at times Shelley "rises with a bird- like bound into his characteristic aerial beauty" (Landscape in Poetry \

42 Introduction

1897, p. 222) ; Irving Babbitt held that "what is found in this play is the exact opposite of imaginative concentration on the human law. The imagination wanders irresponsibly in a region quite outside of normal human experience" (Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919, p. 359); while to Levi Lind the Phantasms, Spirits, Echoes, "and other sprites who wheel about [Prometheus'] head are the wild creations of a romantic imagination akin to that which brought forth Puck himself," and the Phantasms "are parts of Shelley's nursery apocrypha" ("Shelley Reappraised," 1935, p. 420). Most recently, Donald Davie has commented: "Shelley goes as far as poetry can go, while it uses intelligible language, in cutting the hawsers which tie his fancies to the ground" ("Shelley's Urbanity," 1953, p. 133) .46

To these objections and charges, the answers of more friendly critics were varied. Some placed the responsibility on the reader. Typical of these were Allan Cunningham, who called the poem a story "which some resolve not to understand" (History, 1834, p. 101); the Massachusetts Quarterly, which accused the critics of being either "too indolent to give [the] great masters the study required for their appreciation, or so obstin- ately wedded to old models that they are incapable of understanding the new" (1849, p. 419) ; R. A. Holland, who suggested that

what appears its author's mysticism may be the student's mistiness of appre- hension. . . . Poetry has other offices than amusement. Her noblest work is to elevate, to make the goal of the past the starting point of the future, to remove the ideals of the race further and further onward and aloft. . . . And such a poem, though it springs with the steepness of a crag into the region of clouds, is Prome- theus Unbound ["Soul of Shelley," 1876, pp. 160-61] ;

and Rossetti, whose answer to those who found the poem unreadable was direct and blunt:

Though you cannot read Prometheus Unbound, I can. I have read it, and do read it, and this with ever -increasing admiration, wonder, and insight into its depth of beauty. Therefore it is a poem written, if not for you and yours, still for me and mine, and I am quite justified in regarding it as a masterpiece ["Prometheus as Poem," 1887, p. 173].

Edward W. Edmunds held that the poem was "a meaningless rhapsody" to those who tested it with the intellect, but not to those who "are com-

46Sirmlar views have been held by D. Moir: "unsubstantial and wiredrawn," "shadows of power, rather than power itself" (Sketches, 1887, p. 227); J. Slater; "dreamy, exag- gerated ideal stuff" ("Prometheus," 1884, p. 395); A. Symons: "a cloudy procession of phantoms, seen in a divine hallucination" ("Shelley," 1907, p. 350); W. J. Courthope; "images . . . appear for a moment with outlines as clear as Alpine peaks in sunlight, and then dissolve, or vanish in seas of rising vapour" (History, 1910, p. 315); H. Levine: "a compound of Plato and Godwin, Milton and Mist" (Broken Column, 1931, p. 58).

A writer in the Dublin University Magazine (1877, p. 776) rejoiced in the obscurity because "we know of no poet, if we except Swinburne, whose writings are calculated to injure the youthful mind so deeply as Shelley."

Introduction 43

petent to hear the spirit-voices which haunt the atmosphere of all true poetry" (Shelley, 1911, p. 92); and Arthur Glutton-Brock felt that Shelley had suffered because he had not been thought of as a religious poet, and readers, demanding realism, had failed to bring to his conceptions the asso- ciations normally brought to religious work (Introduction, p. xxi). More recently, Douglas Bush has written wisely: "He will, unlike our contemp- oraries, make his principal conception fairly clear, and then he feels at liberty to adorn or obscure it with a multitude of details which, we often feel sure, have significance for him but remain hazy to us" (Mythology, 1937, p. 139); while N. I. White commented: "An understanding that Shelley's imagery is not vague, but intelligible and profound, is necessary if we are to see him in his true proportions" (Shelley, 1940, II, 133).

Another defense of Shelley's obscurity and intangibility was based on an appeal to his youth. George Gilfillan, for example, felt that "had he, twenty years later, a healthier, happier, and better man, 'clothed, and in his right mind,' approached the sublime subject," only Milton or Keats might have equaled what he would have done ("Prometheus," 1855, p. 432) . Sidney Lanier felt that the wordiness resulted from immaturity but doubted that Shelley would have outgrown it ("English Novel," 1881, p. 90); Macmillan Brown held that Shelley "had not lived long enough to mellow his ideas by wisdom or experience, or mould them into consistency; and hence there is a youthful crudeness and half -intelligibility, and unwise violence and self -con tradictoriness in his play" (Study, 1905, p. 53); and to Arthur Glutton-Brock, also, many passages in the poem failed because "poets, like other writers, must fail when they try to tell us what they do not know themselves" (Man and Poet, 1909, p. 207) — but he added that, in Shelley's failure, "he produced beauties beyond the reach of artists who attempt the possible" (p. 218). Francis Thompson, however, saw no reason to apologize for the poet's age. He argued that his youth, or in any event his childlike nature, qualified him "to be the poet of Prometheus Unbound, for it made him ... a mythological poet," and "assimilated him to the childlike peoples among whom mythologies have their rise" (Shelley, 1889, pp. 46-47).

More significant, perhaps, than the foregoing statements have been those of critics who argued that the obscurity was more apparent than real, and that the materials which disturbed the reader were actually ap- propriate to the subject, Leigh Hunt answered the violent Quarterly Review attack by holding that the descriptions were true of the areas to which they applied and that to cite an obscure passage or two and conclude that all of Shelley's work was "obscurity and nonsense, is mere dishonesty" ("Letters," see Appendix D, item XII). Later in the century, R. A. Holland took a similar position but amplified it more specifically: "Fault has been found with the poem because of its lack of human incidents and passions, but unreasonably, for these would be incongruous to its design*

44 Introduction

. . . The intrusion of an earthly character would mar its speculative integrity"; and he held that for Shelley's world the "inhabitants must be spectral, often formless, sometimes only voices" ("Soul of Shelley," 1876, pp. 156-57). Stopford Brooke, too, believed that the unsubstantiality of form, methodical idealization, and dream world were a "mistake of de- liberate method on Shelley's part, rather than a weakness of capacity" ("Inaugural Address," 1886, p. 15). With these views most later writers have agreed, and Gertrude Slaughter has even insisted that the poem's "creatures are more than abstractions. They are suffering, thinking, exulting beings, sublimated and etherealized-— the elements rather than the forms of actual life" ("Shelley," 1922, p. 78); or, as P. H. Butter saw it, the personifications are "Shelley's means of making clear to the reader the progress of [the] internal drama" taking place in the mind of Prometheus (Shelley's Idols, 1954, p. 169).

The relationship between unintelligibility and subtlety of thought has also been a recurring theme in Prometheus Unbound criticism. It was first offered in 1822 by the reviewer in the Album, who noted that Shelley's "powers of thought . . . equally subtle and profound, occasionally lead him beyond the capability of expression, and in those passages he, of course, becomes unintelligible" (see Appendix D, item XIII). This sentiment was frequently echoed in later criticism, and most interestingly by Disraeli's comment on Marmion Herbert (Shelley) in Venetia (1837) :

These peculiar doctrines of Herbert, which, undisguised, must have incited so much odium . . . were necessarily so veiled by the highly spiritual and metaphorical language of the poet that it required some previous acquaintance with the system enforced to be able to discover and recognise the esoteric spirit of his Muse [quoted in Garnett, "Shelley and Beaconsfield," p. 127].

But these tentative overtures were strengthened and made the pattern by Mrs. Shelley's statement, in her note on the poem, that "it requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic mean- ings scattered throughout the poem" (see Appendix C). Lady Jane Shelley amplified this:

[Only] his own subtle, and almost instinctive, apprehension of metaphysical analogies could have enabled him to endow his ideal characters with a language proper ,to the abstract ideas which they typify. . . . The personifications of Shelley's mythological drama are not the vague idealisms of a young poet seeking for effect; they have a deep psychological meaning. The poetry which they utter is like the language of beings wakening, in the fresh dawn of the world, to the mystery of their own emotions and the miraculous loveliness of the universe. We seem to behold the elemental splendour of things disarrayed of that indifference which springs from our superficial familiarity, and from the deadening effect of our conventional existence [Memorials, 1859, p. 111].

Interesting variations have been given on this theme. J. A. Symonds stressed the Turneresque quality of the poet's perceptions (a comparison frequently made) :

Introduction 45

The scale of colour is light and aerial, and the darker shadows are omitted. An excess of luminousness seems to be continually radiated from the objects at which he looks; and in this radiation of many-coloured lights, the outline itself is apt to be a little misty. Shelley, moreover, pierced through things to their spiritual essence [Shelley, 1878, p. 1251.

Walter Raleigh felt that this "spectral world" held in Shelley's thought "the place of what is commonly called the real world," and as a result the "figures that he sets in motion are for the most part creatures of his own making, who have no tangible being outside the realm of his imagination"; but Raleigh added: " Prometheus Unbound is something more than a dance of prismatic lights and a concert of sweet sounds; it is a record of spiritual experience, subtle in its analysis, profound in its insight," and he held that "the details of the drama . . , have been wrongfully regarded as freaks of ornament and fantasy" ("Shelley," 1902, pp. 296-97). Other variations have been offered by Charles H. Herford, who admitted the remoteness of the setting but argued that "to suppose that Shelley's thought is equally unrelated and remote is surely to confuse image and purport. . . . Shelley does not 'refuse to face the facts of life' [as Babbitt had said] . . . and though very much escaped him, in some vital points he saw more clearly than any of his contemporaries" ("Romanticism," 1922, p. 131); and by Cecil M. Bowra, who carried the issue to a logical extreme by arguing that, normally, individual characters are made to represent "wide issues and show what these issues mean," but that Shelley "wished to show how wonderful [the ideas] were in their very vagueness and vastness," so he "evolved a system of coherent symbols which would appeal as poetry and yet take away nothing from the metaphysical character of his subject" (Romantic Imagination, 1949, pp. 104-5) ; to which Bennett Weaver added that these "mystic and lyrical embodiments of ideas . . . lead the drama toward song. Rather importantly, I think, it is they who suggest the grand transmutation of the character of Prometheus into something approaching the character of the Galilean" ("Prometheus," 1949, p. 132). But probably the most perceptive analysis in this category was that made by James H. Cousins, who stressed (as did Amiyakumar Sen [Studies, 1936, 243-70] and G. Wilson Knight [Starlit Dome, 1941, p. 211]) Shelley's interest in Indian lore and experience of things of the spirit (Work Promethean^ 1933, p. 43), and wrote:

[In] the realm of poetry, whose appeal is less to the emotions and more to the mind than the appeal of music, clarity of statement is an essential quality. Yet there is a stage beyond which the demand for clarity in poetry may be a demand for something other than poetry; a stage where external expression is incapable of carrying the whole offering of inner meaning, and words have to bear on one shoulder the image immediately evoked, and on the other the sometimes shadowy, sometimes shining, shapes of thoughts and feelings seeking incarnation in the always inadequate hodies of speech [pp. 8-9] .47

47Similar views have heen held by A. Yolland: "poetic language must always be a compromise between the things which can definitely be said and the things which the

46 Introduction

ON THE DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES

Another body of critical attention has been concerned with the dramatic and verse techniques of Prometheus Unbound. It will be well to approach this discussion through Cecil M. Bowra's analysis of the problems faced by Shelley in writing the poem. These were (1) the question of how faithful all details should be to the abstract ideas embodied in the work (Bowra felt that in mood and tone the poet succeeded here) ; (2) the problem of how to relate abstract ideas to human experience and human feelings (in this he was not always successful) ; and (3) the problem of how much should be included ("Shelley evidently believed that he was writing a great philosophical poem and poured into it all his most imaginative and daring speculations," but always in terms of his own system) . These problems led to certain difficulties which Bowra pointed out: (1) the poet did not always successfully translate his abstract ideas into images; (2) he did not always distinguish clearly between literal and symbolic expression; and (3) he failed to give dramatic force to most of the poem (Romantic Imagination, 1949, pp. 117-20) .48

Defenses of the dramatic effectiveness of the poem have not been under- taken by many writers, and usually the arguments have not been as direct or convincing as those from the other camp. In 1823 a writer in the Gentle- man* $ Magazine felt that Aeschylus might have written it had he lived in Shelley's day (see Appendix D, item XIV), and at the close of the century Vida Scudder countered those who felt a lack of unity in the poem by maintaining that only in Prometheus Unbound did Shelley's "architectonic faculty" evidence itself in any important way:

Each act of the Prometheus centres in a distinct phase of the one theme [Redemption]. The first act, expressing the calm of proud endurance, breaks towards the middle into an agony still passive and at the end sinks into the peace of exhaustion. The second act is one of hope and promise: if the first centres in endurance, this centres in action. The spirit of life palpitates through every line. Faint at first, as Asia waits in lovely passiveness, it grows more eager, stronger, till it culminates in the marvellous lyric which brings us close to Goethe's

poetfain would say" (Shelley's Poetry, 1907, p, 16) ; 0. Elton: Shelley and Plato "quarrel with reality because it is there and in the way" (Shelley, 1912, p. 35) ; H. J. Grierson and J. C. Smith: "it is as vague as are the prophecies of the genuine Hebrew prophets. It is always the fraudulent prophets who are definite" (History, 1944, p. 396). And R. D. Havens, in a study that appeared too late for detailed inclusion in the present work ("Shelley the Artist," 1957), has commented that as an artist Shelley "idealized and universalized his embodiments of human nature or mythological personages and, though he often observed external nature closely, he generalized his descriptions of it. ... It is partly for this reason that his greatest achievement is Prometheus Unbound [since it] deals with the cosmic, the timeless, the eternal" (p. 180).

^Earlier, Louis Cazamian had listed as faults of style the repetition of words nearby in different contexts, and ambiguity in use of words, characters (e.g. Earth and The Spirit of the Earth), and settings (e.g. the two caves and temples). However, he con- sidered these to be faults in small matters only (Edition, 1942, pp. 34-36).

Introduction 47

Werdelust— the creative rapture of the soul of the world. The third act is the calm of fulfillment, as the first was the calm of endurance. In the fourth act ... the full paean of triumph sweeps us along with tumultuous and unequalled harmony [Edition, p. xlv] .

Miss Scudder felt also that the architectonic power of Shelley was nobly shown by his use of light and color— passing first from night into dawn, then darkening in the storm of the Furies, then again clearing in the promise "of the peace of dawn," with the sunrise deepening into its full glory and intensifying into day in Act II, and this in turn darkening into shadows at the cave of Demogorgon, at last to be "lifted to the final Height of Vision, and to the consummation of the drama" (pp. xlvii-xlix).

Some years later, Olwen Campbell wrote that "many of [Shelley's] critics have tried the most elaborate allegorical, philosophical and moonstruck interpretations, seemingly oblivious of the fact that even here 'the play's the thing' " (Shelley and the Unromantics, 1924, p. 203). James H. Cousins offered a subtler argument:

The drama of the tangible stage has laid upon it the duty of being the critic, interpreter and reflector of human life. The drama of the human spirit, composed by the creative impulse of humanity, not merely by its generative fever, enacted in the light of the sun, not in the shadows cast by the moon or the limelight, demands that life shall reflect and ultimately emhody it.

Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" is a drama of this order. We do not go to it for facts concerning early Greece or the Europe of 1820, but for fundamental verities that are clamped to no age and are therefore current in and applicable to all ages and places; ideas and thoughts that "look before and after" towards a golden age of "what is not" but was and will be; an age which, because humanity has set out on a circumnavigation that will bring it back to its native harbour in the realm of the spirit, is at once in the romantic past and the still more romantic future [Work Promethean, 1933, pp. 22-23].

G. Wilson Knight went farthest, however, when, in comparing The Revolt of Islam with Prometheus Unbound, he found in the later poem "a more satisfying fusion of movement with stillness, of action with artistic design, and consequently no extreme symbolisms . . . take precedence over dram- atic realism"; and he felt that the poem was "truly dramatic rather than narrative" (Starlit Dome, 1941, p. 204).

B. Rajan, too, contended that "the causation is unorthodox but com- plete, and the principal obstacle to understanding is the statement." Rajan explained by pointing out that at first Prometheus defied Jupiter in the curse: "The equilibrium thus defined is perverted but stable, and can be altered by nothing except a fundamental change in the nature of one of its opponents." At last suffering taught Prometheus wisdom, and his com- prehension progressed and led to redemption. "His mind has become the mind of the universe and its message therefore must penetrate to all existence. To universalize the mental re-organization of Prometheus is ... the function of Asia. To transmit the revolution of mind to the revolution

48 Introduction

of matter is ... the business of Demogorgon." If, then, "evil should be once more an impulse of behaviour, the remedy is to love and to endure." This, Rajan held, "is the emotional faith which integrates Prometheus" and we "must give our intellectual, if not our total, assent to the coherence of an emotionally valid plan" ("Motivation of Prometheus," 1943, pp. 297-301). P. H. Butter saw form, if not drama, in the fact that

the movement of the whole poem is from the mind of Prometheus outwards. The effects of the change in him are seen spreading in ever -widening circles — over men, over the earth, the moon and out into "the void's loose field." . . . This provides a loose, but sufficient structure for the poem [Shelley's Idols, 1954, p, 171].

But probably Walter Jacobi was on the surest ground when he discussed the problem as it related to dramatic types. He distinguished between drama that could be staged and costumed and drama which, like Prome- theus Unbound., must be visualized by the reader with help from the poet. He pointed out the effectiveness of the stage directions in this poem, of the descriptive passages as substitutes for scenery and costume, and of the words and phrases that guide the reader in visualizing the setting, charac- ters, and action of the play. Jacobi admitted that, for a reading drama, it was better fully to incorporate the stage directions in the dialogue (which Shelley did not always do), but he nevertheless ranked Prometheus Un- bound as one of the most typical reading dramas of world literature ("Biihnen und Lesedrama," 1932, pp. 207-17).

With few exceptions, however, it has been agreed that the poem is not dramatic in the narrower meaning of the term, although definitions have not usually been brought into the discussions.49 The writer in Taifs Edinburgh Magazine ranked it with Aeschylus even though it was "dram- atic in form only; there is little or no human interest in it" (1833, p. 338) ; and Julian Schmidt, in 1852, also felt that the superhuman themes led to a resultant disintegration of form (Price, "Julian Schmidt," p. 34). William B. Scott cited as evidence of an "infirmity of construction" the fact that the hero disappeared "in an unexplained and trivial manner, so that the result of his grqat endurance and of the sympathy of nature receives no adequate development" (Edition, 1873, p. xxiii). This view Helene Druskowitz supported and amplified. To her the Prometheus of Act III showed nothing of the depth of the Prometheus of Act I. He was too naive and evidenced a spirit that had never known pain and suffering. Moreover, Asia was sometimes a goddess, sometimes a mortal; Jupiter

49That Shelley himself had no illusions on this score should be clear from his calling the work a "lyrical drama," from his discussion of drama in his Preface to The Cenci, and from his statement to Trelawny (which could not apply to Prometheus Unbound) with respect to Charles the First: "I am now writing a play for the stage. It is affectation to say we write a play for any other purpose" (Trelawny, Records, 1878, I, 117). Graham Hough's comment is pertinent: "Prometheus Unbound is the first of a long line of nineteenth-century poems cast in dramatic form, but with no conceivable relation to the theatre" (Romantic Poets, 1953, p. 139).

Introduction 49

lacked the force of personality he should have; Demogorgon was kept entirely nebulous; and the connection with the fatal child was unclear. But Miss Druskowitz felt also that the secondary figures exhibited a plasticity not frequently attained by the poet (Shelley, 1884, pp. 276-78). And, though J. Macmillan Brown saw Prometheus as "the only real dramatic character in the drama; for besides being the symbol of an ab- stract idea he is a personality," he agreed that "towards the close it fades off into that misty fringe of existence that is to the poet the most real" (Study, 1905, p. 54). This opinion was further developed by Arthur M. D. Hughes, who wrote:

The Prometheus must be judged as a sort of Mystery, for a drama in the proper sense it clearly is not. A drama is a picture of an action the links of which are causally connected. But Prometheus does not act, and both Jupiter and the deus ex machina by whom he is overthrown are obscure entities with no motives for what they do. There are great dramatic incidents, but these are single moments in a miraculous tale. . . . [Also] there is a break in the figure of Prometheus where it seems that sculpture from an infirmer hand has been joined on to the head and frame of a masterpiece.50 ... It is more especially in the third Act, when the lovers meet in a renovated world, with no more to suffer or to do, that they fall below their dignity and cloy the reader with girlish happiness [Edition, 1910, p. 180-81].

The lack of action cited by Hughes has been noted frequently. George Woodberry saw this defect as Aeschylean, "but on the larger scale of Shelley it is more noticeable. The scenes change, but there is no real action" (Studies, 1908, p. 278). At times this position has been qualified by admitting the absence of the physical action which would make for drama, but stressing the substitution of intellectual action, "to be explained, not by human motivation, but by the development of thought" (Barrell, Shelley and Thought, 1947, p. 150). To Harry Levin: "Milton and Aeschylus succeeded in creating superhuman figures by drawing men on a vast scale. Shelley lacked the power of characterization . . . and so he sought to con- vince by imagery and allegory" (Broken Column, 1931, pp. 59-60). To Carlos Baker: "The difficulty in the interpretation of Prometheus Unbound arises chiefly from the fact that the leading characters are both characters in a drama and symbolic universals" (Shelley's Major Poetry, 1948, p. 111). But Cecil M. Bowra felt that the characters were actually not so much symbols as "ideas presented in visual shape" (Romantic Imagination, 1949, p. 107). John Bailey thought that it was "much more" than a drama, but not a drama ("Prometheus in Poetry," 1923, p. 118), He noted especially the meager plot, the dramatic ineffectiveness of the events, and the character weaknesses, wherein "one person seems to fade into another" (p. 113) .61 Bailey then called attention to the applicability here

50 Cf. E. B. Hungerford: "Shelley chips his monumental idea into bric-a-brac," and "the plot lies full fathom five" (Shores of Darkness, 1941, pp. 97, 100).

51 J. W. Beach, however, insisted that the characters did not "drift about aimlessly." Demogorgon was the doom of Jupiter, and, while one could not motivate a doom, the poet could personify it, as he did ("Latter-Day Critics," 1922, p. 724).

50 Introduction

of Shelley's description of Hellas as "a sort of lyrical, dramatic nondescript piece of business" (to Horace Smith, April 11, 1822; Julian, X, 377), and added: "Drama is an affair of men and women: and Shelley's imagination preferred creating angels and fiends. He could not even project himself into his drama" (p. 118). Shelley, Bailey thought, was a much more human person than his Prometheus, who was too good, while Jupiter was too black, for successful drama (pp. 124-27) .

Another group has sought to justify Shelley's use of the form chosen. Henry Salt, for example, stated that the lack of dramatic action was in- tentional (Shelley Primer., 1896, p. 63). To Stopford Brooke the poem represented "the marriage of Shelley's double nature, the fusion for crea- tive work of the lover of man and the poet" (Edition, 1882, p. xvi) ; while to Rossetti it would have been alien to present the theme in a "directly realistic or plainly delineated kind," for greater severity would have meant a loss of spontaneity ("Prometheus as Poem," 1887, p. 173) ; and to William F. Revell it seemed that "what to a watcher by the cross, or at the foot of the mountain, may appear nothing more than simple endurance, is in reality a struggle of the most active and severe kind, a struggle for mastery over the weakness of the flesh" ("Prometheus," 1907, p. 427). Similarly, William J. Alexander, Louis Cazamian, and Stephen Spender have de- fended Shelley against the argument that he intended a drama. Spender's statement is typical: ** [Prometheus Unbound] is not at all dramatic, perhaps because Shelley did not see so much a drama in the situation of the struggle between gods, as an occasion for the victory of the symbol of the oppressed" (SheBey, 1952, p. 28).

With the nondramatic category for the poem generally supported, it has not been easy to agree on what the poem is if not stage drama. Little consideration was given to finding a substitute term until John Robertson suggested that "if we read on it is because we care more for fantasy than for human significance in song" ("Shelley and Poetry," 1884, p. 195) ; and "the poet wanders off into every kind of diffuse and fantastic digression, creating for us an endless range of 'rich windows that exclude the light, and passages that lead to nothing' " (p. 224). To fantasy as a possible subtype for dramatic literature were added such descriptions of the poem as a compound of many forms, and, if drama at all, closest to the rhapsodic dramas of the Hebrew poets in the Old Testament (W. R. Rutland, Swinburne, pp. 66, 88) ; reading drama rather than stage drama (Walter Jacobi, "Biihnen und Lesedrama," p. 217); material better suited to the cinema than to the stage (St. John Ervine, "Shelley as Dramatist," p. 95) ; a masque (Elizabeth Meldrum, "Classical Background," p. 161) ; a Mystery (A. M. D. Hughes, Edition, p. 180) ; and, frequently, if drama at all then symbolic drama (Oliver Elton, Shelley, p. 34; Carl Gfabo, Newton among Poets, p. xi; Louis Cazamian, Edition, p. 38; Carlos Baker, Shelley's Major Poetry, p. Ill; Cecil M. Bowra, Romantic Imagination, p. 105; and Stephen

Introduction 51

Spender, Shelley, p. 28 — with many writers acknowledging the symbolism). Others found the poem basically a myth (Vida Scudder, Edition, p. xi; A. M. D. Hughes, Edition, p. 171; Gertrude Slaughter, "Shelley," p. 77; Joseph Barrell, Shelley and Thought, p. 150; and C. S. Lewis, "Shelley, Dry den, Eliot," p. 29, with the most penetrating comment that of Lewis: "Like all great myths its primary appeal is to the imagination: its indirect and further appeal to the will and understanding can therefore be diversely interpreted according as the reader is a Christian, a politician, a psycho- analyst, or what not") ; an epic (Stopford Brooke, "Poetry of Shelley," p. 214; and Herbert Read, Defence of Shelley, p. 69) ; a dramatic ode, or a sequence of odes linked by dramatic poetry, thus making it much like an opera (Charles Gamier, "Metrical Study," p. 155; George H. Clarke, Edition, p. 238; and George Cowling, Shelley, p. 63, with the latter noting that "its form owes something to Italian opera, to which Peacock introduced Shelley in 1817, and in which he afterwards found great pleasure"); a noble oratorio (Parke Godwin, "Shelley," p. 127); nearer to symphony than to drama in form (Arthur Glutton-Brock, Man and Poet, p. 209) ;52 or suggestive of fresco painting, and a panorama of ideal scenes (George Woodberry, Studies, p. 278).

^Prometheus Unbound has frequently been the subject of musical settings. Koszul found no fewer than five for Asia's song at ILv.72-110 (Cceuroy, "Musical Inspiration of Shelley," 1923, p. 82). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954) lists the following items: Sir Granville Bantock's Prometheus Unbound, for chorus and orchestra (1936); Havergal Brian's Prometheus Unbound, for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra (1937-44) ; Norman Demuth's incidental music (1948) ; Katharine Emily Eggar's setting of Asia's song, for mezzo-soprano, string quartet, and piano (n.d.); Maurice Emanuel's Prometh&e enchalne, three -act opera (1916-18); Lars -Erik Larsson's incidental music (n.d.); Hubert Parry's "Scenes from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound" for contralto, tenor, bass, chorus, and orchestra (1880); Sir Stanford Charles's setting of Asia's song (1911) and of the song of the Spirit of the Hour (1913) ; William Wallace's setting of Asia's song (1896); and Maude Valerie White's setting of the same song (n.d.).

The poem has also frequently suggested comparisons with music or musicians. John Todhunter noted that, like Mozart's Don Giovanni, the poem "was written for his own delight, not for the world. It is to all other lyrical poems what the Ninth Symphony is to all other symphonies" (Study, 1880, p. 134). Armin Kroder regretted that musicians had passed by Shelley's poem as the basis for a symphony ("Shelley ana," 1906, p. 139) ; Helen Clarke held there was as great a difference between Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and Shelley's poem as between "the naked scales of Pythagoras and the poignant soul- touching diminished seventh harmonies of a modern symphony" ("Prometheus Myth," 1910, p. 110) ; and J. de Gruyter declared that the poem "comes nearer to music than perhaps any other drama that has been written" ("Shelley and Dostoievsky," 1922, p. 134). John Bailey felt that "in that escape of the spirit which is the special preroga- tive of music Shelley stands alone" (Poets and Poetry, 1911, p. 168); and G. H. Clarke thought the poem a fit subject for "the musical genius of a Wagner" (Edition, 1907, p. 238).

Andre Coeuroy, noting the many uses of music in the imagery, stated: "There are hearts to which music reveals the fraternal bond between souls. For Shelley, the poet of poets, she goes far beyond this, inasmuch as she seeks to express, through metaphor,

52 Introduction

By far the larger number of those who have refused to acknowledge the poem as a drama, however, have chosen to classify it as a lyric with dram- atic overtones, rather than the opposite (for the lyrical vein has been recognized even by those who have criticized the poem as a drama). This was, in effect, to reverse Shelley's description of the work as a 'lyrical drama" and to view it as a dramatic lyric (or, occasionally, as a non- dramatic lyric). Roden Noel, for example, found "unity of mood, and lyrical feeling" in the absence of dramatic unity ("Shelley," 1885, p. 120) ; and Henry Salt pointed out that "the lyrics in fact are as prominent as the blank verse" (Shelley Primer, 1896, p. 63). Stopford Brooke saw it as "more of a Titanic lyric than a drama" ("Lyrics of Shelley," 1907, p. 144) ; and Arthur Glutton-Brock noted that "both the epic and the dramatic forms were dead" in Shelley's day, and the poem was a lyrical drama

that which overpasses reality — the very essence of poetry" ("Musical Inspiration of Shelley," 1923, p. 95). Charles Gamier was especially sensitive to the feeling of music in the poem and offered a comprehensive comparison, pointing out that, if Shelley's dramatic imagination was lacking, his musical imagination was faultless, "his lyrical gift peerless. . . . Shelley's subtle charm and mighty harmonies invincibly recall to one's mind now Meyerbeer's weird power . . . now Mozart's chaste elegance and terse dal- liance . . . now Mendelssohn's crystalline facility; now Schubert's wealth of tender imagination; now Beethoven's deep sense of joy and sorrow, metaphysical yearnings, strong-rooted optimism, constructive science and thrilling appeal to our profoundcst sympathies. All these musical associations may illustrate independent passages, but if one name only was allowed to us to characterize the whole of Shelley's lyrical drama, his intense intellectual as well as emotional Sehnsucht, the essence of his mysticism . . . the one name would be ... Chopin" ("Metrical Study," 1937, pp. 156-57).

R. V. Dawson amplified the Beethoven comparison in noting the composer's use of the Prometheus story in the ballet music Die Geschopfe des Prometheus (1801), from which a theme in the finale was used as a chief subject in the finale of the Eroica Sym- phony (1804), a symphony that took Napoleon as well as Prometheus as its inspiration. The attitudes of the two artists differed, however: "To the one [Beethoven], the joy of creative heroism predominates; to the other the pain. To Beethoven, Prometheus is a type; to Shelley, a personification. To the one, victory is as much an attainment as a hope; to the other, more an ultimate goal than an immediate reward." In the Eroica, also, Dawson found Beethoven more realistic than Shelley (because he had Napoleon before him), with the choral movement of the Ninth Symphony — in its use of Schiller's An die Freude ("For all men are brothers truly," etc.)— closer to the poet, especially to Act IV of Prometheus Unbound: "In each case it is the joy of the perfect freedom of mankind . . . but whereas Shelley's feeling is so much that of hope frantically sought as a refuge from disillusionment, Beethoven's is a more fully matured and seemingly tangible joy," a position which Shelley might easily have reached ("Beethoven and Shelley," 1929, pp. 4142).

Such parallels possibly led Edmund Blunden to point out: "Lovers of coincidence may care to know that while Shelley's work was being published, Beethoven's 'Overture to Prometheus' was being performed on the Apollonican of Messrs. Flight and Robson, which Shelley had paid his shilling to hear before leaving England. Louis Cazamian points out something more striking. At almost the same date as that of the composition of Shelley's lyrical drama/ Beethoven was composing his 'Choral Symphony' " (Shelky, 1947, p. 261).

Introduction 53

because "all other forms were clearly impossible." Glutton-Brock added that the myth used in this lyrical drama was "of a new kind, and made to express the new ideas of an age of revolution," but that, whereas the great myths reflected "the experience of multitudes and generations," Shelley's expressed "only his own rather limited experience and his own peculiar ideas, which were not so much the result as the cause of that experience" (Man and Poet, 1909, pp. 194, 196-97). More recently, also, Douglas Bush has supported this view by describing the poem as "not a drama but a sustained emotional lyric" (Mythology, 1937, p. 151); as did Chauncey Tinker, who wrote that "it began as a play and turned into a paean" ("Shelley Once More," 1941, p. 92).

ON THE VERSECRAFT

When we turn from dramatic aspects of the poem to consideration of its poetry and versecraft, more general agreement is found. Shelley has been recognized as possessed of "the mythopoeic faculty of the world's primaeval poets" (Roden Noel, "Shelley," 1885, p. 121). To Henry Sweet, indeed, he stood "alone among modern poets" in this respect, as evidenced by his use of the star, the cave, the dawn, the sun, clouds,63 the wind, volcano and earthquake, desire, and dreams; and especially by the "Turneresque" quality of light and color ("Shelley's Nature Poetry," 1888, pp. 298-324). George Calvert was of the same belief when he wrote: "Shelley's brain is an exhaustless spring of likenesses which his poetic faculty illuminates into beauty and significance. . . . The choral pages . . . are as Shakespearean as the Puck-p ass ages in Midsummer- Nighfs Dream, only created with a high, holy purpose" (Coleridge, Shelley, Goethe, 1880, pp. 217-18).

Inasmuch as the mythopoeic quality is most fully evidenced in the poet's use of imagery and figures of speech, it is natural to find that nearly all critics of the poem as poem have touched on these matters. N. I. White, indeed, pointed out that "the reason why Prometheus Unbound has from the first been so commonly misunderstood lies in the boldness and original- ity of the imagery. Had the contemporary critics been entirely without other prejudices they would still have misunderstood and underestimated the poem on this ground" (Shelley, 1940, II, 127). It was not until 1899, however, that an exhaustive catalogue of the similes and metaphors in Shelley's poetry was made, by Pelham Edgar, with many examples taken from Prometheus Unbound. Edgar included similes of color, light, sound, odor, swiftness, change, evanescence, love, thought, and number; as well as double similes, Homeric similes, similes of human to natural, human to human, human to animal, etc. (Study, passim). In 1904 Hans Zettner expanded Sweet's approach by tracing the mythical creations of Shelley,

530scar W. Firkins commented: "Shelley is as devoted to clouds as if he had set himself to the task of atoning in his single person for the apathy and neglect of all other poets" (Power and Elmiveness, 1937, pp. 100-1).

54 Introduction

with many illustrations from Prometheus Unbound, under the headings of Earth, Nymphs, Echoes, Fauns, Flowers, Spirits, Water, etc., showing how Shelley infused life into these and gave them a mythical reality (Shelley s Mythendichtung, passim). B. I. Evans, more selectively, established that "certain figures — the sphere, the star, the boat, the lake, and the autumn leaves — remain persistent images threading themselves through his poems"; and in Prometheus Unbound he felt that "the power of the permanent image" could be established with great strength, especially in Act IV, where "the images of boat and stream and star and sphere return, as if Shelley, faithful to these symbols of his earlier vision, determined to en- shrine them here" ("Persistent Image," 1922, pp. 792, 796). Arthur Keith went so far as to argue that the merit of the poem "rests not on any well- ordered philosophy, unless we qualify by saying that beauty is philosophy, but upon imagery that fires the dullest mind" ("Imagery," 1924, p. 67). He then surveyed, with some of his illustrations from Prometheus Unbound, the areas of personification and imagery from animal life, plant life, stream, sea, shadows, clouds, vapor, music, childhood, thoughts, dreams, and emo- tions. A slightly different approach was made by Oscar Firkins, who was concerned primarily with tabulating, from the entire range of Shelley's poetry, illustrations of the variety of the poet's abstract imagery in which were united "the qualities of power and elusiveness, of momentousness and intangibility" (Power and Elusiveness, 1937, p. 185) ; and Firkins concluded that the poet was "very nearly, if not quite, unique among the better and better-known representatives of letters" in his habitual practice of present- ing matter in terms of mind (p, 48). In the following year Ants Or as, extending the scope of Firkins' approach, concerned himself primarily with determining how the images "illustrate [Shelley's] manner of perceiving form and movement" ("Shelley's Poetic Imagery," 1938, p. 6). Richard H. Fogle's comparative study of the imagery of Keats and Shelley (1949) permitted a much fuller and more subtle treatment than that of Firkins, although it was not so minute in its distinctions (and was marred by many incorrect line references) . In a subsequent article Fogle dealt more directly with Prometheus Unbound, which he considered "a gigantic effort to syn- thesize the abstract with the concrete, the ideal with the actual" ("Image and Imagelessness," 1952, p. 24). Fogle treated the imagery under three heads: (1) images which develop the theme; (2) images classified by repre- sentation (visual) ; and (3) images of mental process* Through this study of imagery he concluded that, instead of a "helpless surrender to his own emotions," as anti-Shelley criticism would have it,

Shelley is expressing not a surrender, not a passive emotion, but the result of in- tellectual effort pushed to its furthest reaches, with all the difficulties and dangers which are involved in it. ... What seems superficially to be formlessness and the shattering of order is really the synthesis of form and formlessness, of expansion and determination, of image and imagelessness [pp. 35-36],

Introduction 55

And more recently P. H. Butter directed his attention to "the intellectual content of [Shelley's] images . . . because this is the aspect of them which is most distinctive of him and that which the hasty reader is most likely to miss" (Shelley's Idols^ 1954, p. 4). The contributions of these writers to an understanding of Prometheus Unbound will be found in the Critical Notes. Finally, the prosody has not been overlooked, although it has usually been included in studies of larger scope. As early as 1823, Shelley's blank verse was compared with that of Milton, but it was pointed out that "it is as totally different in rhythm as it is in ideas. . , . One cannot say it is like any other metre of English blank verse; it is, as I say, individual — Shelleyic one may say, I suppose, as well as Miltonic" (Gentleman's Maga- zine^ 1848 [1823]; see Appendix D5 item XIV). George Gilfillan was especially impressed by the lyrics, with their "rush of poetic numbers, the tremendous gallop of an infuriated imagination" (Sketches, 1845, p. 116) ; while Stopford Brooke noted that Shelley "used blank verse as if it were his natural tongue. It is easy, weighty, flowing, well paused, close knit, or let free, exactly as the mind within him drove, or the subject claimed" ("Inaugural Address," 1886, p. 11). A fuller statement with respect to the versification was given by Vida Scudder, who wrote:

Blank verse rises into the long, passionate swing of the anapaest, or is broken by the flute-like notes of short trochaic lines, or relieved by the half -lyrical effect of rhymed endings. . , . The variety of metres is marvelous.54 Thirty -six distinct verse-forms are to he found, besides the blank verse. These forms are usually simple; but at times the versification-scheme is as complex as that of the most elaborate odes of Dryden or Collins.

Miss Scudder admitted to a frequent Miltonic echo in the lines, but re- marked on "a cadence of which Shelley alone is master, unique in haunt- ing, clinging melody," and concluded that "Shelley has drawn a new music from English words" in many passages. She was also aware of a "subtle lyrical cry" even in the blank verse, but stressed the "sweep and variety of direct lyrical modulation," and she noted that the major characters, speaking in distinctively appropriate verse, "use as a rule the plain recita- tive, while lone, Panthea, and the other chorus-characters generally sing rather than speak," with blank verse marking passages of transition or of repressed feeling, while climaxes of passion rush into lyrical form (Edition, 1892, pp. Uiv). Arthur Symons varied the theme slightly by finding in the blank verse

54George Saintsbury (History, 1910, pp. 108-9) was equally impressed and broke from his usual restraint with the following "outbreak": "I can only say that in all the long procession and pageant of English poetry which it has been my good fortune to survey as I have been preparing and writing this History, nothing has ever presented itself, and nothing, I think, will present itself, in such a combination of prosodic beauty and variety as this. . . . This was the heritage of which seven centuries of poetic labour and experiment from Godric to Coleridge had put English poetry in possession; and Shelley's was the golden key that threw it open to enjoyment,"

56 Introduction

none of the sweetly broken music of Shakespeare or of the organ harmonies of Milton. It is a music of aerial eloquence. . . . There is in it a thrilling music, rarer in liquid sound than that of any other poet, and chastened by all the severity that can clothe a spirit of fire and air. ... It has [also] an illumined gravity, a shining crystal clearness, a luminous motion" ["Shelley," 1907, pp. 354-55] ;

and Arthur Glutton-Brock was equally enthusiastic:

[Shelley's] purest music has an intellectual quality that sets it far above all mere versifying. It is not a tinkling tune, but a harmony made by all the faculties of his mind acting together. The peculiar swiftness and keenness of his music ex- presses the eagerness of his thought as it soars from one idea to another, always pressing nearer to the ultimate truth. . . . His very blank verse is all lyrical. . . . Other poets employ it because it is near to prose and their difficulty is to distinguish it from prose. . . . But Shelley's blank verse is as simple in language and in the structure of its sentences as his rhymed lyrics; yet it never becomes prosaic, and is full of music even when not very full of sense; above all it never lags or stumbles, but moves swiftly as if there were a great momentum in it. ... He needed rather to lower his mind than to lift it into blank verse. It was to him what recitative is to a musician with a boundless command of melody [Introduction, 1911, pp. xiv-xvi] .

A slightly negative note was struck, however, in the suggestion by Salvador de Madariaga that he found in the poem an impression of stiff- ness, "an almost mechanical rigidity, which is at first the more disconcert- ing as it lies hidden under an admirably fluid external rhythm," a quality that he felt the poet held in common with Calderon (Shelley and Colder on, 1920, p. 14). But almost universally the poet has been credited with mastery in his art of verse and song. The general tendency to praise the lyrics at the expense of the poem as a whole has, of course, been unfortun- ate. To N. I. White such praise "merely falsifies Shelley's intention," for White considered the poem to be "one of the most highly integrated unions of noble thought and subtle expression by which English literature has ever been enlarged" (Shelley, 1940, II, 127). White added that "the sudden burst of lyrical genius in Prometheus Unbound is genuinely aston- ishing. . . . Most of the [perfectly handled verse forms] Shelley had ap- parently never employed before. Several of them are either unique or extremely rare in English poetry before Shelley"; and he suggested as possible lyric sources the Greek dramas, Byron's Manfred, general reading, music, or opera, but admitted that "these are all vague guesses. There seems to be no adequate explanation of the lyrical richness of Prometheus Unbound other than a sudden flowering of pure lyric genius" (II, 133-35). Louis Cazamian noted that in Jupiter, Mercury, Hercules, etc., Shelley chose the Latin nomenclature, while with Demogorgon, lone, and Panthea he used the Greek; and Cazamian ascribed the eclecticism either to the poet's preferences, or to the problem of metrics (Edition, 1942, p. 12). And, finally, Carlos Baker, like White, emphasized the importance of considering the whole poem:

Introduction 57

The interspersed lyrics contain a quality of lightness without sacrifice of dignity, which serves admirably to relieve the austerity of the rolling iambs, of which they frequently seem a distant echo, like wind in trees after thunder. Nor are these lyrics . . . mere musical interludes without significant relation to the progress of the play. Their function is roughly that of a dramatic chorus: to mourn or rejoice as occasions require, to mark transitions, to introduce or close the scenes, or to provide commentary on the course of the action. They are, moreover, carefully related to the deep and detailed complexities of the myth Shelley has evolved [Shelley's Major Poetry, 1948, p. 117].

In addition to the incidental references to Shelley's versecraft, there have been a few special studies of importance. In the first of these, by J. B. Mayor in 1888, Prometheus Unbound was treated only incidentally, but a few of the verse structures were described, and some consideration was given to the technique of variation, to alliteration and rime, and to line-endings ("Shelley's Metre," passim). It was not until 1902, however, that a significant technical approach to the metrics was made, by Hermann Till, who drew for illustrations on Prometheus Unbound, among other poems, and whose purpose was to show the general skill with which the poet used his artistic tools to gain his effects (Metrische, passim). In the following year Armin Kroder published his painstaking study of Shelley's art of versification, with findings subject to the usual weaknesses and differences of opinion on such matters, but generally sound in its con- clusions. Kroder's principal attention to Prometheus Unbound was given in his chapter on **strophenformen" where he analyzed with technical facility the stanza structures typical of the poem, dealing with rime schemes, phrasing, and appropriateness of form to content, and comparing them with similar uses in other poems (Shelleys Verskunst, pp. 178-88) ,55 More recently, Charles Gamier has catalogued and related to context the different stanza patterns, ranging from two to thirty verses in length and with some of the longer being in themselves short poems; and he acknowl- edged, as might all who attempt such studies, that there are subtleties of sound and movement impossible to show in such an analysis, for "Shelley's lyrical drama stands a vast musical whole, a noble dramatic ode" ("Metrical Study," 1937, p. 150).

ON THE RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER WRITERS

The fourth area of critical attention with respect to Prometheus Unbound has been concerned with the study of parallels and influences found in

55Because the general development of Kroder's discussion is important to his study, and because it is necessary to acquaint oneself with his specialized terminology, no attempt has been made to give his separate illustrations in the present edition. His findings are in general agreement with those included in the Critical Notes. The other- wise important An Analytical Study of Shelley's Versification, by Louise Propst (1933), like others of its kind, is limited to selected lyrics only, with no examples taken from Prometheus Unbound.

58 Introduction

earlier authors. Of the many specific instances cited, most will be found recorded in the Critical Notes of the present edition, but relationships of a more general nature that justify inclusion here have been drawn between Shelley and Aeschylus, Goethe, Milton, Dante and Spenser, Godwin, Plato, Byron, and Calderon, in that order of emphasis. As might be expected from Shelley's choice of subject and from his discussion in his Preface to the poem, Aeschylus has received the widest and most varied treatment.

Comparisons with Aeschylus

Douglas Bush has pointed out that Prometheus Bound was too 'Vast and explosive" for the neoclassic period, but that with the changing taste brought in by the Romantic point of view Prometheus came to represent heroic individualism and revolt against tyranny. There were two main lines of development, according to Bush: (1) the "partly esthetic concep- tion" which culminated in Goethe (1773); and (2) the "rebellious or humanitarian or both" as in Byron and Shelley (Mythology, 1937, pp. 78-79). That Shelley was early attracted to the Aeschylean drama has already been demonstrated, and Mrs. Shelley's note to Prometheus Un~ bound related that "the sublime majesty of /Eschylus filled him with wonder and delight," as well as that "the mighty passions and throes of gods and demigods . . . fascinated [his] abstract imagination" (see Ap- pendix C). The Southern Literary Messenger (an exception in holding Shelley's poem to be an intended imitation of and sequel to Aeschylus) compared the two as men— Aeschylus "accused of impiety, and tried before the Areopagus," Shelley "arraigned and condemned, without being heard in his defence, at the bar of public opinion" (1842, p. 197). F. H. Gile avoided the personal but felt that Shelley and Aeschylus shared common ideals, in that the latter "meant to show the trials and hardships of all discoverers and reformers in the face of the ignorance, bigotry, conserva- tism and superstitition of society" ("Prometheus," 1908, p. 435). John Bailey, in attempting a more particularized explanation of the Aeschylean attraction, suggested that the Aeschylus of Prometheus Bound would have appealed on the basis of (1) his lyrical, prophetic, and theological genius;

(2) his use of the Chorus which still dominated a simple plot and action;

(3) a dramatis personae without human beings (lo being semidivine);

(4) the airy remoteness of the scene; (5) his use of the winged car, the winged beast, and lo as "hardly a walker on the common road of earth"; (6) his full use of nature; and (7) his political, theological, and occasionally almost religious bent. Bailey concluded: "The Prometheus Vinctus is, in fact, like nearly all the poems of Shelley, neither particular, nor local, nor national, nor even earthly, as all the other dramas of Aeschylus are: it is rather, what Shelley loved to be, cosmic and universal" ("Prometheus in Poetry," 1923, pp. 120-22). Bennett Weaver found a more personal reason

Introduction 59

for the choice, feeling that Shelley was attracted to the play ("not the greatest of those which /Eschylus composed") because

in the lonely Titan Shelley could contemplate suffering similar to that which he thought was his own. He could brood upon the tragedy of sacriiice. He could exult in the glory of the hard will set against tyranny, set against it and over- throwing it. He could rejoice at intelligence gaining its victory over power. He could see in Prometheus [an ally] ['Tre-Promethean Poems," 1950, pp. 356-57] .

Opinion has been sharply divided as to how adequately the poet used his model, but three general views may be suggested as typical: (1) Shelley, while not imitating, caught the general spirit of the ancients and was not unlike Aeschylus in his style; (2) Shelley was unsuccessful and actually perverted the Aeschylean materials; and (3) Shelley was not attempting an imitation of Aeschylus but was, rather, extending the earlier writer's work.

The first of these views was taken early, with comment on the Aeschylean quality in the Titan's monologues (Gentleman's Magazine, 1848 [1823]; see Appendix D, Item XIV). Later, Vida Scudder held that Shelley was "steeped in the spirit of Aeschylus" without being plagiaristic (Edition, 1892, p. 121). Taifs Edinburgh Magazine thought the poem dramatically "worthy, from the might and magnitude of its conceptions, to rank beside ,/Eschylus" (1833, p. 338); and Thomas Medwin called it a "truly classical drama" (Shelley, 1847, p. 212), while R. Pickett Scott thought it was "in fact a Greek drama in the English language" but with Hebrew overtones (Place of Shelley, 1878, p. 21). With this Aubrey De Vere and Swinburne disagreed, the former holding that "in his Trometheus Unbound' his clas- sical vein is too often checked by political or metaphysical disquisitions most inappropriately introduced," although he admitted an "Aeschylean energy" in it ("Poetic Versatility," 1849, p. 420) ; while the latter found the poem "magnificent and un-Hellenic" (Letters, 1865, XVIII, p. 28). More recently, however, Gilbert Highet has declared that "in Prometheus Unbound [Shelley] wrote for Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound a sequel which actually surpassed the Greek poet in nobility, if not in depth of thought" (Classical Tradition, 1949, p. 419).

As to the influence of general Greek thought and culture on Shelley's poem, this too was an early theme, with a writer in the Literary Magnet noting that when the poet turned "all the energy of his wonderful mind to the study of the ancients . . . [the] improvement was manifest: his style became full to overflowing of classical associations, and rich with allegorical fancies, and as celebrated for its grasp and depth of thought, as for the luxuriance of its ornament" (1825, p. 163) . More recently Arthur Keith has pointed out that Shelley's absorption in the wonderful and beautiful led him to see nature instinct with life and beauty, and in this he was close to the primitive Greek mind, even pre-Aeschylean in his development, since Aeschylus sought a rationalistic interpretation of the universe, from

60 Introduction

which Shelley shrank ("Imagery," 1924, p. 176). And J. A. K. Thomson has written:

The most massive evidence of the inspiration drunk by Shelley from Greek poetry is Prometheus Unbound. It is of course only too easy to show how unlike Shelley's poem — for it is hardly a play — is to a typical Attic tragedy. To begin with, it is completely devoid of dramatic excitement or even interest, there is no plot, the spoken parts are too lyrical, the lyrical parts are given an excessive importance, the characters are altogether too shadowy. Yet when all this is said it may still be held that Prometheus Unbound . . . strikes one not indeed as like a drama of the Periclean age, but as like what the Periclean drama might have become in the hands of a great lyrical poet, who was not writing for the stage. A Greek would have been less shocked or even puzzled by it than most of Shelley's contemporaries [Classical Background, 1948, pp. 231-32].

These are typical of many expressions that have recognized Shelley's deep perception of the culture reflected in his Prometheus Unbound, but it has also been stressed that the poet was influenced by the art as well as by the writings of the past. Medwin recorded that "the Praxitelean shapes of the Vatican and the Capitol, were alike sources whence he drew his in- spiration in this truly classical drama" (Shelley, 1847, p. 212) ; and, com- menting on the figures created through the poet's mythopoeic faculty, Roden Noel wrote: "One might almost be looking, as I have done, at those sacred pictures in the temple-tombs of Thebes, painted so many thousands of years ago" ("Shelley," 1885, p. 121).

But there have been a number of writers who have not shared the feeling that Shelley caught the Aeschylean note. An early reviewer commented on the "audacity" of the poet in attempting "the very flight of [the] father of tragedy," and felt that Shelley, despite "very extraordinary powers of language and imagination" had "tried to pervert [the myth's] purpose and meaning" (Blachvoods Magazine, 1820; see Appendix D, item III); and another, while admiring the Aeschylean monologues of Prometheus, felt that in many other respects Shelley had marred and destroyed what he might have made worthy (Gentleman's Magazine, 1848 [1823] ; see Ap- pendix D, item XIV). Later, it was objected that

Shelley's substitute for the lost sequel [to Prometheus Bound] is unsuccessful. . . . ^Eschylus lived with the real up to the ideal, Shelley scarcely knew anything of the world as it is, and the little he knew he wished to alter. The consequence is, that in all his beautiful poetry the mind scarcely recognizes a familiar association. This is fatal to dramatic poetry [American Quarterly, 1837, pp. 196-97] .

Still another anonymous writer held that only in Act I of the poem did Shelley suggest Aeschylus. This writer supported his criticism with one of the first uses of the poet's correspondence. He quoted from the letter to Godwin, December 7, 1817 (before Shelley left England), Shelley's report on his nervous state: "I find the very blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present themselves to me with microscopical distinctness" (Julian, IX, 258). The writer commented: "No description of Shelley's

Introduction 61

poetic style . . . would serve so well as this sentence to show how unlike his dramatic poem is to the Chained Prometheus of ^Eschylus. Shelley has produced a chaos of poetic material without symmetry and without even formal unity" (British Review, 1840, p. 111). George Gilfillan, however, while admiring the poem, found a blemish in the fact that the drama was, on the contrary, like that of the Greek dramatist. He held that "it fails from attempting too much. It is too like Eschylus to be equal to Eschylus. It reads, in part, like a translation from the Greek, and this is fatal to its success" (Sketches, 1845, p. 116). And Swinburne's admiration for Aeschy- lus led him to much the same position, which he supported more fully:

At Este . . . Shelley began his great and daring venture of attempting to write a new Trometheus Unbound.' It is unnecessary to say that the result, regarded as a poem or complete work of creative and plastic power, can bear no comparison whatever with the transcendent and unapproachable work of the greatest poet that ever lived — comparable only with Shakespeare on the one hand, and with the greatest of Hebrew or Arabian prophets on the other. From the dramatic or from the prophetic point of view it is so insufficient as to be almost liable to the charge of absolute futility. But poetry has hardly ever risen higher into clearer air, on wings of more perfect music, than in the sublimer passages of the first and fourth acts ["Shelley," 1870, p. 336].

A more unusual argument was advanced by the Reverend William A. 0' Conor, who did not believe that Aeschylus had written a sequel to the Prometheus Bound,™ and who assumed that Shelley, therefore, had mis- conceived the Greek poet, as he had misconceived Christianity ("Prome- theus," 1882, pp. 29-45). The objection of William J. Courthope was more orthodox, but no less severe:

As a whole, in spite of its splendid passages, it is a tiresome poem. The imagery blazes without relief ; the action flags amid the cloying sweetness of the melodies; the characters are mere empty abstractions employed on a monotonous repetition of a tale of pain, misery, and oppression which cloaks the dialect of the French Revolution. How different is the method of the genuine dramatist, as shown in the "Prometheus Vinctus"; how simple— indeed, how matter-of-fact — is the treatment of the myth; how straight-forward the plot; how well distinguished and how justly balanced the characters — the cheery manliness of Prometheus, the feminine sympathy of the Oceanides, the humorous fussiness of Oceanus, and the gentlemanly good breeding of Hermes! . . . Shelley's conception has its foundation in French sentimentalism; ^Eschylus built on Attic commonsense [Liberal Movement, 1885, pp. 148-49].

G. Lowes Dickinson believed that Shelley had lost the quality of Aeschy- lus by too great departure from the ancient legend. As a result, solidity

66 James S. Thomson noted that E. G. Harman (The Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus: Represented in English and Explained, London, 1920) also denied that Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire Bringer ever existed, or that Prometheus Bound was philosophical: "Rather, [Harman] avers, it is completely contemporary. Prometheus is Aeschylus himself, and Zeus is the upstart Athenian government" ("Unbinding of Prometheus," 1945, pp. 4-5).

62 Introduction

and verisimilitude were lost. To Aeschylus the myth was an architecture which he adorned but never obscured by his symbols, while with Shelley the myth was "a mere framework for the luxuriant growth of his meta- physical imagination," with, as a result, a weak and wavering plot (Edition, 1898, pp. vi-viii). And Elizabeth Meldrum wrote: "Shelley had a sense of principle, none of character. He cannot quite sustain the characters of the Greek gods who were, in Greek plays, written of according to their own proper characteristics. They become like his own Spirits of Air" ("Clas- sical Background," 1948, p. 161).

The soundest interpretation of Shelley's relationship to Aeschylus, how- ever, was that of the critics who felt that the poet was not attempting to imitate the Greek dramatist or rewrite the lost member of the trilogy but was, rather, advancing certain of the ideas in the Prometheus Bound to their modern implications. This was, in effect, Shelley's own position, as we have seen from his letters, and as a careful reading of his Preface will show. Thus, one of the early reviewers noted that Shelley added a symbolic meaning to the treatment in Aeschylus (London-Critical Magazine^ 1820; see Appendix D, item IV) ; and the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine may well have sensed this when he wrote: "It is not properly though an imita- tion . . . but it is what, had ^Eschylus lived in the nineteenth century, and been an Englishman, he might have written" (1848 [1823] ; see Appendix D, item XIV). Medwin, too, found the poem "a bold and successful at- tempt, not so much to revive a lost play of ^Eschylus, as to make the allegory a medium for developing his abstruse and imaginative theories — an object he never lost sight of in any of his poems" (Shelley, 1847, p. 212) . William B. Scott was more specific:

To the Hellenic mind [Prometheus] was a Titan gifted with unconquerable will and the gift of seeing into futurity and prophesying. He was no more the repre- sentative of humanity and of its development intellectually through the ages, than Zeus was of the all -wise creator and sustainer we moderns call God. . . . [Shelley's poem] possesses to us moderns the grandest and most portentous significance, making all thrones tremble as well as that of Zeus [Edition, 1873, pp. xxii-xxiii].

Giovanni Boglietti felt that, although Shelley kept the principal lines of development of the Greek fable, he had brought it into happy accord with the development it had undergone, and with the development of the moral conscience of the world ("Prometeo," 1880, p. 52). Sidney Lamer, con- cerned with the growth of human personality from Aeschylus to modern times, used Prometheus Unbound to illustrate the modern elements, although he felt that as a result of the different audience, which would not look at the thunders and earthquakes as did the Greek, Shelley's drama had a "tang of insincerity, of dilettantism" in it; but he also felt that

if the audience of Aeschylus had acquired that direct way of looking all phenomena in the face which is one of the incidents of our modern personality they would have perceived such an inadequacy between the thunders and earthquakes of Jove, on

Introduction

63

the one hand, and the immortal spirit of a Titan and a god like Prometheus, on the other, that the play, instead of being a religious and impressive spectacle to them, as it doubtless was, would have been simply a matter of ridicule.

Further, Lamer held that Shelley "was penetrated with modern ideas, but penetrated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical: so that I call him the modern boy" ("English Novel," 1884, pp. 85-90).

In 1893 a writer in the Nation held that Prometheus Unbound touched ccon the new problem of humanity," and satisfied "its altering needs and creeds. It is likely that [Shelley] had some part in bringing about the reformation of social ideals which we see going on about us; it is likely that in this regard he struck the keynote of the coming century rather than our own" (p. 87). George Woodberry wrote:

The ethical motive of Shelley, his allegorical meanings, his metaphysical sug- gestions, the development of the old and introduction of new characters, the conduct of the action, the interludes of pastoral, music and landscape, the use of new imaginary beings neither human nor divine, and the conception of universal nature, totally transform the primitive ^Eschylean myth [Cambridge Edition, 1901, p. 621].

George H. Clarke thought that the poem combined "the Greek sense of Fate, the Renaissance sense of hope, the Revolution sense of freedom, the Romantic sense of love, the modern sense of science. It completes ^Eschy- lus as England completes Greece" (Edition, 1907, p. 239); and F. H. Gile indicated that Aeschylus dealt with the desire and hope of freedom, Shelley with the how of it, while others must deal with the when in later centuries ("Prometheus," 1908, pp. 430-31).

Such comments are typical of many that might be cited, but, since the attitudes toward the philosophy of the poem will be outlined fully below, further illustrations will be reserved for that discussion. Here it will be in order to offer a composite tabulation of the more general comparisons that have been made with the Prometheus Bound.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

I. General Structure

1. A unity described variously as grand, magnificent, sculpturesque, bleak, and compactly restrained (Delrieu, Gilfillan, Palgrave, H. Clarke, J. M. Brown, Prescott, Mel- drum), together with an architecture adorned but never obscured (Dickin- son) and an austere majesty (Guttel- ing).

2. The full story used (Weaver).

1,