Books: Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Mary W. Shelley >> Notes to The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
NOTE ON THE CENCI, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The sort of mistake that Shelley made as to the extent of his own genius
and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct
track that enabled him fully to develop them, is a curious instance of
his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human mind uses at
once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to make its way
out of error into the path which Nature has marked out as its right one.
He often incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy: he conceived that
I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always most earnest and
energetic in his exhortations that I should cultivate any talent I
possessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate of my powers;
and above all (though at that time not exactly aware of the fact) I was
far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even moderately, in a
species of composition that requires a greater scope of experience in,
and sympathy with, human passion than could then have fallen to my
lot,--or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever possessed, even at the
age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.
On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be
destitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites
was the capacity of forming and following-up a story or plot. He fancied
himself to he defective in this portion of imagination: it was that
which gave him least pleasure in the writings of others, though he laid
great store by it as the proper framework to support the sublimest
efforts of poetry. He asserted that he was too metaphysical and
abstract, too fond of the theoretical and the ideal, to succeed as a
tragedian. It perhaps is not strange that I shared this opinion with
himself; for he had hitherto shown no inclination for, nor given any
specimen of his powers in framing and supporting the interest of a
story, either in prose or verse. Once or twice, when he attempted such,
he had speedily thrown it aside, as being even disagreeable to him as an
occupation.
The subject he had suggested for a tragedy was Charles I: and he had
written to me: 'Remember, remember Charles I. I have been already
imagining how you would conduct some scenes. The second volume of "St.
Leon" begins with this proud and true sentiment: "There is nothing which
the human mind can conceive which it may not execute." Shakespeare was
only a human being.' These words were written in 1818, while we were in
Lombardy, when he little thought how soon a work of his own would prove
a proud comment on the passage he quoted. When in Rome, in 1819, a
friend put into our hands the old manuscript account of the story of the
Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces, where the portraits of
Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast the reflection of its own
grace over her appalling story. Shelley's imagination became strongly
excited, and he urged the subject to me as one fitted for a tragedy.
More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I entreated him to write it
instead; and he began, and proceeded swiftly, urged on by intense
sympathy with the sufferings of the human beings whose passions, so long
cold in the tomb, he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This
tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during
its progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together. I
speedily saw the great mistake we had made, and triumphed in the
discovery of the new talent brought to light from that mine of wealth
(never, alas, through his untimely death, worked to its depths)--his
richly gifted mind.
We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child,
who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the
idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world, anxious for a time
to escape a spot associated too intimately with his presence and loss.
(Such feelings haunted him when, in "The Cenci", he makes Beatrice speak
to Cardinal Camillo of
'that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and say--
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief.')
Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn, and
we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town
and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was
situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked
beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and in the
evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on,
and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges: Nature was
bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic
terror, such as we had never before witnessed.
At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such
in Italy, generally roofed: this one was very small, yet not only roofed
but glazed. This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide
prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The
storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most
picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark
lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts that
churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered
by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it
almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his
health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he
wrote the principal part of "The Cenci". He was making a study of
Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished
lady living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed
during the following year. He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and
his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgement and originality that,
though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet,
none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of "The Cenci"; and
there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he
himself alludes as suggested by one in "El Purgatorio de San Patricio".
Shelley wished "The Cenci" to be acted. He was not a playgoer, being of
such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling-up
of the inferior parts. While preparing for our departure from England,
however, he saw Miss O'Neil several times. She was then in the zenith of
her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several
parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, the sublime
vehemence of passion she displayed. She was often in his thoughts as he
wrote: and, when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy
should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished
actress to fill the part of the heroine. With this view he wrote the
following letter to a friend in London:
'The object of the present letter us to ask a favour of you. I have
written a tragedy on a story well known in Italy, and, in my conception,
eminently dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my play fit for
representation, and those who have already seen it judge favourably. It
is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which
characterize my other compositions; I have attended simply to the
impartial development of such characters as it is probable the persons
represented really were, together with the greatest degree of popular
effect to be produced by such a development. I send you a translation of
the Italian manuscript on which my play is founded; the chief
circumstance of which I have touched very delicately; for my principal
doubt as to whether it would succeed as an acting play hangs entirely on
the question as to whether any such a thing as incest in this shape,
however treated, would be admitted on the stage. I think, however, it
will form no objection; considering, first, that the facts are matter of
history, and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated
it. (In speaking of his mode of treating this main incident, Shelley
said that it might be remarked that, in the course of the play, he had
never mentioned expressly Cenci's worst crime. Every one knew what it
must be, but it was never imaged in words--the nearest allusion to it
being that portion of Cenci's curse beginning--"That, if she have a
child," etc.)
'I am exceedingly interested in the question of whether this attempt of
mine will succeed or not. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at
present; founding my hopes on this--that, as a composition, it is
certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted,
with the exception of "Remorse"; that the interest of the plot is
incredibly greater and more real; and that there is nothing beyond what
the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand, either
in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete
incognito, and can trust to you that, whatever else you do, you will at
least favour me on this point. Indeed, this is essential, deeply
essential, to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully
(could I hope for such a thing), I would own it if I pleased, and use
the celebrity it might acquire to my own purposes.
'What I want you to do is to procure for me its presentation at Covent
Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss
O'Neil, and it might even seem to have been written for her (God forbid
that I should see her play it--it would tear my nerves to pieces); and
in all respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief male
character I confess I should be very unwilling that any one but Kean
should play. That is impossible, and I must be contented with an
inferior actor.'
The play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. He pronounced the subject
to be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to Miss
O'Neil for perusal, but expressed his desire that the author would write
a tragedy on some other subject, which he would gladly accept. Shelley
printed a small edition at Leghorn, to ensure its correctness; as he was
much annoyed by the many mistakes that crept into his text when distance
prevented him from correcting the press.
Universal approbation soon stamped "The Cenci" as the best tragedy of
modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said: 'I have been cautious
to avoid the introducing faults of youthful composition; diffuseness, a
profusion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness, generality, and, as Hamlet
says, "words, words".' There is nothing that is not purely dramatic
throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding, from vehement
struggle, to horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly to the elevated
dignity of calm suffering, joined to passionate tenderness and pathos,
is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful that the poet seems to
have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely
countenance of the unfortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It
is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not
only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet. The varying feelings of
Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching eloquence. Every
character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to
one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which
the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes,
and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would
otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His
success was a double triumph; and often after he was earnestly entreated
to write again in a style that commanded popular favour, while it was
not less instinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went
the other way; and, even when employed on subjects whose interest
depended on character and incident, he would start off in another
direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could
depict in so able a manner, for fantastic creations of his fancy, or the
expression of those opinions and sentiments, with regard to human nature
and its destiny, a desire to diffuse which was the master passion of his
soul.
NOTE ON THE MASK OF ANARCHY, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Though Shelley's first eager desire to excite his countrymen to resist
openly the oppressions existent during 'the good old times' had faded
with early youth, still his warmest sympathies were for the people. He
was a republican, and loved a democracy. He looked on all human beings
as inheriting an equal right to possess the dearest privileges of our
nature; the necessaries of life when fairly earned by labour, and
intellectual instruction. His hatred of any despotism that looked upon
the people as not to be consulted, or protected from want and ignorance,
was intense. He was residing near Leghorn, at Villa Valsovano, writing
"The Cenci", when the news of the Manchester Massacre reached us; it
roused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion. The great
truth that the many, if accordant and resolute, could control the few,
as was shown some years after, made him long to teach his injured
countrymen how to resist. Inspired by these feelings, he wrote the "Mask
of Anarchy", which he sent to his friend Leigh Hunt, to be inserted in
the Examiner, of which he was then the Editor.
'I did not insert it,' Leigh Hunt writes in his valuable and interesting
preface to this poem, when he printed it in 1832, 'because I thought
that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do
justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked
in this flaming robe of verse.' Days of outrage have passed away, and
with them the exasperation that would cause such an appeal to the many
to be injurious. Without being aware of them, they at one time acted on
his suggestions, and gained the day. But they rose when human life was
respected by the Minister in power; such was not the case during the
Administration which excited Shelley's abhorrence.
The poem was written for the people, and is therefore in a more popular
tone than usual: portions strike as abrupt and unpolished, but many
stanzas are all his own. I heard him repeat, and admired, those
beginning
'My Father Time is old and gray,'
before I knew to what poem they were to belong. But the most touching
passage is that which describes the blessed effects of liberty; it might
make a patriot of any man whose heart was not wholly closed against his
humbler fellow-creatures.
NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
In this new edition I have added "Peter Bell the Third". A critique on
Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley
exceedingly, and suggested this poem.
I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of "Peter
Bell" is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry
more; --he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its
beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He
conceived the idealism of a poet--a man of lofty and creative
genius--quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the
beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and
pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for
truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of
the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious
opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best
allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a man gifted, even as
transcendently as the author of "Peter Bell", with the highest qualities
of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness.
This poem was written as a warning--not as a narration of the reality.
He was unacquainted personally with Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to
whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat,
his poem is purely ideal; --it contains something of criticism on the
compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men
themselves.
No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the
errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious
effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully
written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of "Swellfoot", it must
be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry--so much of
HIMSELF in it--that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by right
belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was written.
NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles
from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his
nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque
by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a
handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread
over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and
bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a
solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino--a
mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the
object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages. The
excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too
much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his
return. During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the
three days immediately succeeding to his return, the "Witch of Atlas".
This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes--wildly fanciful,
full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to
revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.
The surpassing excellence of "The Cenci" had made me greatly desire that
Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would
more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and
dreamy spirit of the "Witch of Atlas". It was not only that I wished him
to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he
would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater
happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The
few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my
representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the
right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public;
but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that ought to have
sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources, and on
the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because his mind overflowed,
without the hope of being appreciated. I had not the most distant wish
that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations for
the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many; but I felt
sure that, if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of
men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged,
and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice
to his character and virtues, which in those days it was the mode to
attack with the most flagitious calumnies and insulting abuse. That he
felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with
the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The
truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a
few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting; among such I
find the following: --
'Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others...And, when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass!'
I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of
sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions
were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination.
Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its
mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened
again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself
rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and
regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from
sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twilight, from the
aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods,--which celebrated
the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring
stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which Nature creates in her
solitudes. These are the materials which form the "Witch of Atlas": it
is a brilliant congregation of ideas such as his senses gathered, and
his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much
loved.
NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August,
1820, Shelley 'begins "Swellfoot the Tyrant", suggested by the pigs at
the fair of San Giuliano.' This was the period of Queen Caroline's
landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of
her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on
the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an
enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These
circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We
were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the
day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley
read to us his "Ode to Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied by the
grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared
it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and,
it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting
another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of
the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus--and "Swellfoot" was
begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and
published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by
the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it,
if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of
bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and
expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my
publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything
he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and
sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the
bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right
to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and
thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the
original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright
truth
'from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep
Where fathom-line would never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned'
truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that
he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in
his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly
prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however,
must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of
the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will
not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the
ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes
that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against
its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the
beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to
Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose to declare
the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot
of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821
the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their
coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long
enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the
yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the
people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the conge to their
sovereign, and set up a republic.