1–4 In a letter of 23–4 January 1819, PBS wrote to T. L. Peacock of the view from Pompeii, just south of Naples, which he and MWS had visited on 22 December: ‘Above & between the multitudinous shafts of the [?sunshiny] columns, was seen the blue sea reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, & supporting as it were on its line the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, & tinged towards their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow’ (Letters II, p. 73).
10–11 In a letter of 17 or 18 December 1818, PBS described for Peacock an excursion by boat from Naples: ‘there was not a cloud in the sky nor a wave upon the sea which was so translucent that you could see the hollow caverns clothed with the glaucous sea-moss, & the leaves & branches of those delicate weeds that pave the unequal bottom of the water’ (Letters II, p. 61).
10 untrampled: Never having been trod upon, and so intact, undamaged.
21–3 Various candidates for this ‘sage’ have been proposed, including Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, but PBS may not have had a specific individual in mind.
23 inward glory crowned: The phrase recalls the characterization of regenerated man in Prometheus Unbound III.iv.196–7, who is ‘King / Over himself’, and ‘Sonnet: Political Greatness’, ll. 10–13: ‘Man, who man would be, / Must rule the empire of himself; in it / Must be supreme, establishing his throne / On vanquished will’.
The Two Spirits—An Allegory
First published in 1824. Our copy-text is PBS’s draft in the Bodleian Library (MS Shelley adds. e. 12: see BSM XVIII), the only authoritative source. It appears to date from late 1818, although in 1839 MWS grouped the poem with those written in 1820. The draft, which never reached finished form, is rough and not always resolved, so that more editorial intervention than usual has been necessary, including conjectural readings in some lines. At the head of the draft PBS has written ‘The good die first’, the first words of a reflection from Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814), I.500–502, which he had quoted in the Preface to Alastor (here). Beneath it are the cancelled lines ‘Two genii [i.e. spirits] stood before me in a dream / Seest thou not the shades of even’. The poem’s title invites interpretation – without pre-empting it – of the spirits’ dialogue on freedom and constraint, boldness and caution, and the transforming power of love.
15 meteors: The term could signify any luminous atmospheric body or appearance.
37 leagued: BSM XVIII reads PBS’s difficult draft as ‘languid’, as do 1824, Chernaik and most modern editors. The sense of ‘leagued’ would be, as Poems II suggests, that the ‘storm’ is composed of various destructive powers conjoined, as in ll. 17–24.
42 death dews: Noxious vapour (miasma) rising from swampy ground (‘the morass’) was regarded as carrying disease.
Sonnet (‘Lift not the painted veil’)
In 1839 MWS dated this sonnet 1818, but later editors have proposed a date of composition between the middle of that year and spring 1820. There is a draft in PBS’s hand in the Bodleian Library (BSM XVIII) and an autograph fair copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library (MS MA 406: see MYR (Shelley) V). We follow Poems II in taking as copy-text the printing in 1839, as this seems likely to embody PBS’s latest revisions. Substantive verbal differences between 1839 and PBS’s fair copy and 1824 (where the poem was first published) are recorded in the notes below. Prometheus Unbound III.iv.190–92 employs the imagery and language of lines 1–4 of this poem for a contrary purpose, to imagine the mind’s liberation from deceptive illusion. The traditional order of the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet into octave followed by sestet is here reversed, and an unorthodox rhyme scheme adopted.
6 1824 reads: ‘The shadows, which the world calls substance, there.’
sightless: ‘Impenetrable by vision’ (OED).
7–14 Cp. the fate of the ‘one frail Form’ in Adonais, ll. 271–306.
13 PBS’s fair copy reads: ‘Cast on this gloomy world—a thing which strove’.
14 the Preacher: The preacher of Ecclesiastes, who declares that ‘all is vanity’ but who ‘sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth’ (12:8–10).
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
PBS would have been familiar from his school days with Aeschylus’ drama Prometheus Bound and the outline of its lost sequel, the seminal retelling of the myth of the Titan Prometheus whom Zeus (PBS uses the Roman name, Jupiter) punished for bringing to earth fire stolen from heaven (out of pity for the lot of humanity) by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus where each day an eagle devoured his liver which was continually renewed. On his release, Prometheus revealed to Jupiter that an oracle had foretold that, were he to marry the nymph Thetis, a son born of their union would be greater than his father and dethrone him. See also note to first stage direction and PBS’s Note [17] to Queen Mab VIII.211–12 In a letter of 1823, MWS suggested that PBS had ‘the idea’ of writing his own version of the myth after passing through Les Échelles, in the French Alps, on their journey to Italy in March 1818 (MWS Letters II, p. 357); for an account by PBS of these mountains, see his entry in MWS’s journal for 26 March 1818 (MWS Journal I, p. 200).
PBS probably began Prometheus Unbound (PU) in late summer or early autumn 1818 and composition continued, with varying intensity, until December 1819. PU was published in 1820, in August of that year. After PBS received a copy, he wrote to Charles Ollier on 10 November that it was ‘certainly most beautifully printed’ but also ‘regretted that the errors of the press are so numerous’ (Letters II, p. 246). Our text is based on 1839, which MWS edited using ‘a list of errata prepared by Shelley himself’ (II). We have taken some readings and presentational features from 1820 and from PBS’s fair copy in the Bodleian Library (see BSM XI) when these seemed preferable. For a detailed account of the compositional and textual history of PU, see Poems II, pp. 456–65, and the commentary in BSM XI, pp. lxii–lxxv.
PU is a work of extraordinary scope and ambition which embodies many of the fundamental concerns of PBS’s thought (for assessments of its complexity by PBS himself and by MWS, see Letters II, p. 246, and 1839 II, p. 135). It is at once a narrative of political change, of geophysical transformation, and of the liberation of the human mind from various forms of intellectual and ideological enslavement, which PBS identifies as both cause and consequence of any successful reformation of the structures of power. Two characters whom PBS introduces to the story of Prometheus are central to these transitions. The first is Asia, Prometheus’ beloved, one of the Oceanides, daughters of the Titan Oceanus/Ocean (the presiding divinity of the ocean and rivers) and his sister Tethys; her role in PU suggests that love is the central principle of the moral world and the only true agent of lasting personal and political reform. The second is Demogorgon, a shadowy figure whom MWS in her note on PU in 1839 describes as ‘the Primal Power of the world’ (II, p. 134). Often understood by commentators as a personification of the natural laws governing the universe, Demogorgon’s presence in PU suggests that it is only through recognizing and abiding by those laws that humanity can find genuine and lasting freedom. As Poems II, p. 468, observes, Demogorgon is also ‘the one figure in whom most levels of [PU] coincide’: in the terms of the Classical myth, he represents the mysterious child destined to overthrow Jupiter; but he also stands for the physical energies of the earth, and the irresistible historical impetus towards political liberty. For further commentary, see note to II.iv.1–7.
PU also represents an impressive and innovative advance in PBS’s poetic technique. Subtitled ‘A Lyrical Drama’ and described by PBS as having ‘characters & mechanism of a kind yet unattempted’ (Letters II, p. 94), PU blends blank-verse narrative with lyric and choral elements into a hybrid form which draws upon Classical Greek drama, established English and European genres, and other more contemporary, experimental forms, such as Byron’s ‘dramatic poem’ Manfred (1817). For considerations of the ways in which PBS’s stylistic innovations in PU relate to its thematic concerns, see, for exam
ple: Susan Hawk Brisman, ‘“Unsaying His High Language”: The Problem of Voice in Prometheus Unbound’, SiR 16 (1977), pp. 51–86; Kelvin Everest, ‘“Mechanism of a Kind Yet Unattempted”: The Dramatic Action of Prometheus Unbound’, in P. J. Kitson (ed.), Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley (London: Palgrave, 1996), pp. 186–201; Jennifer Wallace, Shelley and Greece (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 147–8; and Timothy Webb, ‘The Unascended Heaven: Shelley’s Use of Negatives in Prometheus Unbound’, in Kelvin Everest (ed.), Shelley Revalued (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), pp. 37–62.
Critical discussion of PU has been extensive, and most monographs on PBS offer an extended analysis. Dedicated studies of note include: Stuart Curran, ‘The Political Prometheus’, SiR 25/3 (1986), pp. 429–55; Carl Grabo, A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1968); Richard Isomaki, ‘Love as Cause in Prometheus Unbound’, Studies in English Literature 29/4 (1989), pp. 655–73; Geoffrey Matthews, ‘A Volcano’s Voice in Shelley’, ELH 24/3 (1957), pp. 191–228; Tilottama Rajan, ‘Deconstruction or Reconstruction: Reading Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound’, SiR 23/3 (1984), pp. 317–38; Stuart Sperry, ‘Necessity and the Role of the Hero in Prometheus Unbound’, PMLA 96/2 (1981), pp. 242–54; and Earl Wasserman, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound: A Critical Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966).
Epigraph ‘Do you hear this, Amphiaraus, in your home beneath the earth?’ Amphiaraus became an oracular god after Zeus saved his life by having the earth swallow him and hide him from his enemies. The quotation is from Epigoni, a lost play by Aeschylus, quoted in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, where it is used to challenge the Stoic doctrine that suffering is of no consequence. In a notebook PBS addresses it to Aeschylus’ ghost (BSM XV).
PREFACE
p. 184 Agamemnonian story: The subject of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, which was produced in 458 BC and which dramatizes the myth in which King Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra and their son Orestes are trapped in a cycle of murder and vengeance until the intervention of Athena, who settles the matter by submitting it to the decision of public justice.
catastrophe: Denouement, resolution of the plot.
p. 185 casuistry: ‘The part of Ethics which resolves cases of conscience … in which there appears to be a conflict of duties’ (OED).
Baths of Caracalla: The extensive ruins of public baths, which were opened in AD 217 in the reign of the emperor Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), located south-east of the ancient centre of Rome.
pp. 185–7 One word … unknown: PBS added the last five paragraphs to the Preface after he read the Quarterly Review for April 1819 which attacked his character and poetry in a review of Laon and Cythna/The Revolt of Islam (1817–18); among its many criticisms, the periodical questioned the originality of PBS’s work, claiming it was a debased imitation of Wordsworth.
p. 187 Fletcher: Shakespeare’s younger contemporary John Fletcher (1579–1625) is best known for his dramatic collaborations with Sir Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) but wrote plays with several other authors as well as on his own account.
‘a passion for reforming the world’: In chapter 2 of T. L. Peacock’s satire Nightmare Abbey (1818), Scythrop Glowry, a character based on PBS, suffers from ‘the passion for reforming the world’ (Peacock Works, p. 22). The ‘Scotch philosopher’ is Robert Forsyth, to whose Principles of Moral Science (1805) Peacock attributes the phrase.
For my part … Malthus: For Lord Bacon, see note 11 to the extract from the Preface to Laon and Cythna. William Paley (1743–1805) was a conservative theologian and author of Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) and Natural Theology (1802), whose ideas PBS considers and rejects in his A Refutation of Deism (1814). Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) was the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798); see note 30 to ‘From A Philosophical View of Reform’.
seeds … life: Alluding to the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:3–9.
ACT I
Stage direction Indian Caucasus: The Hindu Kush, a mountain range in central Asia (largely in modern Pakistan and Afghanistan) considered by some in PBS’s day to be the birthplace of humanity and of civilization. PBS sets the action of the drama there rather than its traditional location in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia.
1 Daemons: Plato’s Symposium, which PBS translated, describes daemons as beings intermediate between gods and mortals.
2 But One: Prometheus, or perhaps Demogorgon.
7 hecatombs: Sacrifices of numerous victims; in ancient Greece, the sacrifice of a hundred oxen.
9–11 The phrase ‘eyeless in hate’ may refer either to ‘me’ or ‘thou’ – appropriately, as Prometheus and Jupiter have become reflections one of the other.
42 genii: Beings representing aspects and activities of the natural world.
53–9 Prometheus’ mental shift from hatred to pity is the moral condition of the subsequent dramatic action.
59 recall: Here meaning both ‘remember’ and ‘revoke’.
61 spell: Here and elsewhere in PU (e.g. IV.555) meaning ‘words with transformative and/or binding effect’.
64–5 Thou serenest … without beams: In the note to Queen Mab I.242–3, PBS explains that beyond the earth’s atmosphere sunlight has no rays.
82–3 Colour is produced by the interaction of sunlight with the earth’s atmosphere (air); it is not a property of things in themselves.
95–8 Cp. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), ll. 554–63 (1805 version).
99–102 Echoing biblical accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, e.g. Luke 23:44–6.
121 frore: Frozen.
135 inorganic: Inanimate; the Spirit of the Earth has no body. Cp. OED 2, citing this line: ‘Not furnished with or acting by bodily or material organs’.
137 And love: And that you love (me).
141–2 some wheel … roll: In Greek myth, Zeus tortures Ixion, one of the Titans, by binding him to a burning and ever-spinning wheel. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading, pp. 262 ff., suggests that PBS is alluding here to the ecliptic (the apparent annual path of the sun around the earth), which determines the seasons.
150–51 this tongue … die: See ll. 243–5.
153 stony veins: Cp. PBS’s letter of July 1816 to Peacock from Chamonix: ‘One would think that Mont Blanc was a living being & that the frozen blood forever circulated slowly thro’ his stony veins’ (Letters I, p. 500).
170 Blue thistles: PBS and his contemporaries often associate the colour blue with disease and illness.
178 contagion: Here indicating transmission of disease, but cp. II.iii.10.
192 Zoroaster: Also known as Zarathustra. A Persian sage (Magus) and mystic known to PBS and his contemporaries as the author of a system of belief which viewed existence as a perpetual struggle between the opposed principles of good (Ormuzd) and evil (Ahriman). No source for Zoroaster’s encounter with his double has been identified but the Zoroastrian belief in fravashis, or guardian spirits, is relevant. See Stuart Curran, Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1975), pp. 68–74.
195–209 The notion of two parallel worlds, material and immaterial, is found in various ancient traditions, Platonic, Neoplatonic and others.
212 Hades or Typhon: In Classical myth, Hades was the lord of the underworld; Typhon, a dragon-like monster and one of Prometheus’ fellow Titans, was imprisoned by Zeus beneath Mount Etna.
229 our sweet sister: Asia: the third Oceanid and Prometheus’ beloved.
236 To stay steps: To steady [its] steps.
278 imprecate: To invoke, or call down upon.
289 In Classical myth, both Hercules and Creusa, the daughter of Creon, were killed by poisoned robes.
292–3 Echoing Milton, Paradise Lost I.215–18.
296 awful: Inspiring terror and awe.
324–5 serpent-cinctured wand … Mercury: The messenger of the gods in Cla
ssical myth, Mercury is often depicted carrying a caduceus, a short staff with two serpents wrapped around it.
326 hydra tresses: The Hydra was a monstrous many-headed serpent.
331 Jove’s tempest-walking hounds: The Furies (Erinyes): female spirits whom the Greek gods send to punish those guilty of serious crimes. PBS’s Furies threaten Prometheus with physical pain (ll. 475–91) and, when this fails, move on to mental torments, showing Prometheus visions of the perversion of the philanthropic teachings of Jesus by institutional Christianity (ll. 546–60), of the failure of the French Revolution (ll. 564–77), and of the corruption and injustice of the world (ll. 618–31).
342 Son of Maia: Maia was one of the Pleiades and mother of Hermes/Mercury by Zeus.
345 the streams of fire and wail: In Greek myth, Phlegethon (river of fire) and Cocytus (river of lamentation) were two of the traditional five rivers of the underworld. See Paradise Lost II.575–86.
346–9 Geryon … hate: Monsters from Classical myth. Geryon was a three-headed giant slain by Hercules; Medusa was a Gorgon slain by Perseus; the Chimaera, a mythical beast composed of goat, lion and snake, was slain by Bellerophon. Sophocles’ Theban plays tell how Oedipus solves the riddle of the monstrous Sphinx before proceeding, unwittingly, to murder his father and marry his mother; his sons subsequently murder each other. So his story exemplifies both ‘Unnatural love’ and ‘unnatural hate’.