[Composed at Este, September, October, 1818 (Act 1); at Rome,]
March-April 6, 1819 (Acts 2, 3); at Florence, close of 1819 (Act 4).
Published by C. and J. Ollier, London, summer of 1820. Sources of the
text are (1) edition of 1820; (2) text in "Poetical Works", 1839,
prepared with the aid of a list of errata in (1) written out by
Shelley; (3) a fair draft in Shelley's autograph, now in the Bodleian.
This has been carefully collated by Mr. C.D. Locock, who prints the
result in his "Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library", Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1903. Our text is that of 1820,
modified by edition 1839, and by the Bodleian fair copy. In the
following notes B = the Bodleian manuscript; 1820 = the editio
princeps, printed by Marchant for C. and J. Ollier, London; and 1839 =
the text as edited by Mrs. Shelley in the "Poetical Works", 1st and
2nd editions, 1839. The reader should consult the notes on the Play at
the end of the volume.
The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of
their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it
a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves
bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as
in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have
amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their
competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was
exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.
I have presumed to employ a similar license. The "Prometheus Unbound"
of Aeschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as
the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by
the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to
this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and
Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity
by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done
no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Aeschylus; an
ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject
had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison
such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was
averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the
Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the
fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and
endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of
him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful
and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any
degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a
more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage,
and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he
is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of
ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement,
which, in the Hero of "Paradise Lost", interfere with the interest.
The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry
which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the
former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those
who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it
engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of
the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by
the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.
This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths
of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous
blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon
its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The
bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening
spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it
drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of
this drama.
The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to
have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those
external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in
modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of
the same kind: Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater
success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of
awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in
the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works
(since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am
willing that my readers should impute this singularity.
One word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of
contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has
been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and
indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any
one who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in
the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that
his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the
study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is
true, that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it
has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own
minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition
of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of
writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom,
it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of
the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated
lightning of their own mind.
The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which
distinguishes the modern literature of England has not been, as a
general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer.
The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same;
the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If
England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population
and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under
institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce
philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare)
have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age
of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which
shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian
religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same
spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a
republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great
writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions
and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or
the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its
collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and
opinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.
As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates
by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful
and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no
previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the
whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and
beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with
the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of
nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might
as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be
the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude
from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a
great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in
any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained,
unnatural and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such
internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external
influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but
both. Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the
objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he
ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon
which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form.
Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors and
musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the
creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not
escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between
Aeschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and
Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope;
each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions
are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am
willing to confess that I have imitated.
Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have,
what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, 'a passion for
reforming the world:' what passion incited him to write and publish
his book, he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with
Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it
is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions
solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in
any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human
life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well
expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My
purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarise the highly refined
imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with
beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can
love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles
of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the
unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the
harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose,
that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the
genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice
and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Aeschylus
rather than Plato as my model.
The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little
apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they
injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation.
Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be
they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his
attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished
purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the
dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his
grave which might otherwise have been unknown.
