Introductory Note
¶PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was born near Horsham, Sussex, England, on August 4 , 1 7 9 2 , of a wealthy but undistinguished family. He was educated at Eton, where he was unpopular and persecuted, and at University College, Oxford, where he was interested in science, and from which he was expelled for the publication of a pamphlet on " The Necessity of Atheism." Going up to London, he met at the school attended by his sisters a girl of sixteen called Harriet Westbrook, whose accounts of the persecution she suffered won Shelley's sympathy and led him into a foolish marriage, he being nineteen and she sixteen. Within three years they had become estranged; she left him to return with her child to her father's house; and a month later he set out for the Continent with Mary, daughter of William Godwin , the political philosopher, under whose influence Shelley had been for a time. In 1 8 1 6 Harriet was found drowned; Shelley formally married Mary Godwin ; and the courts refused him the custody of his children. Meantime he was taking active part in political agitation on the side of liberty, and was producing a good deal of poetry. "Alastor" had been written in 1815, and " The Revolt of Islam" appeared in 1818. In that year he returned to Italy, where he remained till his death by drowning on July 8, 1 8 2 2 . His ashes were buried in Rome.
¶These last years were crowded with poetical production, "Prometheus Unbound," " The Cenci," the " Ode to the West Wind , " " The Sensitive Plant," "Epipsychidion," "Adonais," and many of his finest lyrics belonging to this period. Of his dramatic work, the "Prometheus Unbound," a mythological drama on the redemption of mankind, in gorgeous lyrical verse, and " The C c n c i " are the most important. In the latter he handled a terrible story of old Roman life with great delicacy and tremendous impressiveness. Partly under the influence of Shakespeare, partly from the nature of the subject, this play is more concrete and palpable than Shelley's work in general, and displays sides of his genius which might not otherwise have been suspected. Though impossible on the public stage, " The Cenci " has claims to be regarded, by virtue of its strength of characterization, its poetry, and its emotional intensity, as the greatest drama of the century.
DedicationToLeigh Hunt, Esq.
¶M Y DEAR FRIEND—I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts.
¶Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.
¶Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and how to confer a benefit though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list.
¶In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die.
¶All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend,