With humble curate can I now retire, (While good Sir Peter boozes with the squire,)

And at backgammon mortify my soul,

That pants for loo, or flutters at a vole? 57 Seven's the main! Dear sound that must expire,

Lost at hot cockles round a Christmas fire; The transient hour of fashion too soon spent,

Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content!

Farewell the plumèd head, the cushioned tête,

That takes the cushion from its proper seat!

That spirit-stirring drum!-card drums I

The welcome visitors' approach den Farewell all quality of high renow Pride, pomp, and circumstance of g town!

Farewell! your revels I partake no And Lady Teazle's occupation's o'e All this I told our bard; he smiled said 't was clear,

I ought to play deep tragedy next y Meanwhile he drew wise morals frez play,

And in these solemn periods s away:

"Blessed were the fair like you; her who stopped,

And closed her follies when the er dropped!

No more in vice or error to engage, Or play the fool at large on life's stage."

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), though e son of a conservative country gentleman, is at odds with English society most of his e; dividing his allegiance between poetry id the cause of liberty as he conceived it. is publication in 1811 of a pamphlet, The ecessity of Atheism (for which he was exlled from the University of Oxford), his regular views and conduct as to marriage, s attempt in 1812 to rouse the Irish, his mpathy later for the Greek revolutionists, nd much of his poetry, all show his liberal.m. In 1813-4 he was intimate with such nglish radicals as Leigh Hunt and William odwin, and after the suicide of his first ife he married Godwin's daughter. He was somewhat unpractical enthusiast, who held rdent views, and acted on them, concerning any practical subjects. The latter part of is life especially he devoted to poetry, living n Italy from 1818 to 1822, when he was rowned.

In 1818, at the age of twenty-six, Shelley -ame upon a professedly historical manuscript account of the crimes and calamities of the Roman count Cenci and his family in he year 1598. Persecuted innocence, paience under affliction, like that of Beatrice in this story, always more than anything else moved his sympathy. Struck by the suitability of the story for drama, and more trusting his wife's abilities in that direction than his own, he urged her to write a play on it; but ended in writing it himself the following year. The fact that he turned from the vastness and abstractness of Prometheus Unbound, only semi-dramatic, to this intense, concrete and actable play is an example of versatility unusual in Shelley. While in general he took but little interest in the theater, he was most desirous and made every effort that The Cenci should be performed at Covent Garden in 1820, but the strange painfulness of the subject prevented, and the play has been performed but once, so far as is known, in London, 1886, under the auspices of the Shelley Society, before a huge and distinguished audience. With certain effective scenes, what gave the play its force on the stage was mainly the personalities of Count Cenci and especially Beatrice.

The Relation of the Death of the Family of the Cenci, the manuscript account mentioned

above, is closely followed by the play and suggested all its essentials, and even such points as the abortive first plan for the murder, the hesitation of the murderers and Beatrice's firmness at the second attempt, and the goldtrimmed mantle given by her to one of them. Most of the characters are in both, Beatrice is the same in outline, and also Count Cenci. The Relation is naturally much more prosaically circumstantial, particularly as to what followed the murder, the successful concealment of it for a time, and the culprits' condemnation and execution. The narrative has a curiously popular and even naïf effect, with its particulars as to dress, personal appearance, pious last words, and the like; and though it shows sympathy chiefly toward Beatrice and her associates, it professes great horror at the parricide. The story is so hideous, and the guilt in it so one-sided, that we are not surprised to learn that legend has mingled with history; in real life heavenly innocents and devilish brutes rarely exist in the same family. There are even those who state that the harshness of the historic Cenci to his daughter was not without excuse, and that there was much more moral justification for her execution than for his murder. The family was one of criminals, the Count was better and less monstrous, and his family worse, than legend says. Thus another traditional story fades into the light of common day through historical criticism. Authenticity is also denied to the wellknown supposed portrait of Beatrice Cenci attributed to Guido Reni.

But as with any creation of vital imagination, this matters little for the play; art deals rather with general than particular truth, and general truth is untouched by historical criticism. Unspeakable as the story is, it cannot be called impossible. Count Cenci may pass for one of the monsters of egotism, the combinations of uncontrolled crime and guile, of which we hear during the Italian Renascence; or, in more modern parlance, for a type of paranoia, of inversion and corruption of feeling and impulse. As we read we cannot but give the picture a horrified acceptance. He is so powerfully drawn that we accord him that willing suspension of disbelief which (as Coleridge says) constitutes poetic faith. His long course of crime is

made the easier by contemporary conditions the paternal authority which gave a father almost absolute power in his family and which would incline society to take his part, and (according to the play and the Relation) the corruption of the papal court, which preferred inflicting lucrative fines to more effective punishments. The poet draws more vividly Cenci's monstrous hate than his other sins; indeed hate is his motive throughout the play; but we are spared none of his hideous wickedness (some of it only hinted at), since only this could win our sympathy for such a crime as parricide. No play therefore could contain more violent conflicting emotions. Beatrice has her father's tendency to madness, a little of his shrewdness, and his powerful will, which overrides her associates and imposes on others her view of things. But the groundwork of her nature is not only normal and good; she is almost unique in the English drama for her combination of gentleness and energetic fortitude. As we read we can readily believe the Relation, that to her beauties she added “a spirit and a majestic vivacity that captivated every one." By her simple final words she leaves us with an impression of matchless self-command. To active evil in her father she at first opposes merely the passive resistance of goodness; to the active evil in society, at the end, which punishes those who are really victims, she opposes purely passive resistance; when she is goaded to active revenge, this constitutes in Shelley's view not a crime but only a "tragic error" (for the murder is at once seen to have been needless), which ends in the ruin of the family. Society in the person of the pope has refused to save her from irremediable degradation, and she takes the only way out. That this embodiment of Christian patience should first be left defenceless and then martyred by the church is one of the ironies of the play. To her, others of her family serve as foils - the weak Giacomo, who has not sufficient hold over his wife and children to neutralize his father's calumnies, and especially Lucretia, a lovable domestic soul, cruelly thrown into a situation too harsh for her, an Ophelia of fifty, we might say. Nothing could be more touching than the strong bond made between her and her step-children by their common misfortunes. According to the author of the Relation, who was sensible of the contrast, each on the way to her death carried a handkerchief, "with which Lucretia wiped her eyes, and Beatrice the perspiration from her forehead." With Shelley's dislike of ecclesiastics we should hardly expect from him a sympathetic portrait of pontit or prelate; yet to offset the hard and mercenary pope (with the ironical name Clement) and the crafty, somewhat unreal Orsino, there is the humane cardinal Camillo. Indeed, it is with a realism and detachment unusual with

Shelley, but more merciless than inve that he is able to suggest the religious a phere in which his characters live, a which the connection between religion morality is a purely ceremonial one.

The structure of the play is symmet and simple, but somewhat wanting in in and action, the interest being mainly p logical. Some of the most dramatic are the poet's own invention, such as banquet-scene, and the discovery (IV that the slayers were on the point of b relieved of their tyrant through the a of law. This touch, filled with possibi:of pathos and dramatic irony, is treated haps with excessive restraint, and st chiefly to contrast Lucretia's repining Beatrice's firmness. The simplicity of: plot and structure may reflect Shelley's miration for Greek tragedy, for there none of the comic elements which vary tragedies of Shakespeare. His induc however, on any English poetic drama almost inevitable, and many reminiscence his plays have been pointed out here; the Macbeth in the murder and discovery sect and of Lear in Cenci's curse, are obvi

In style the play is singularly unlike of Shelley's poetry. Here is no "beaut and ineffectual angel, beating in the void luminous wings in vain," none of the meit: imagery, full of beauty and transcender feeling but intellectually baffling, which p vades his other work, and has had no v wholesome influence on later nineteenth-c tury poetry. Shelley realized that in acting drama he must be

Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole.

66

He avoided deliberately, he says in his Pr ace, what is commonly called mere poet and I imagine there will scarcely be foun: | detached simile or a single isolated deser? tion." His style in the play is more auste than Shakespeare's; Keats was even mindto reproach him that he did not "load every rift of his subject with ore." His conscive || endeavor was to let his characters express themselves, not him. The beautiful is subor dinated to the significant.

When we look from this play back over th comedy and tragedy of the preceding centur and more, the contrast is great and st nificant. The critical and satirical spir which pervaded the greater literature of th earlier age had in the drama best e pressed itself in comedy, the only form c drama in which the eighteenth century ha excelled. Sentimental drama and traged had been hemmed in by rules, convention ality, and artificiality. Rarely had great emotion freely expressed itself. Shelley w filled with the grandeur and pathos of huma character and fate as embodied in this story: he followed traditional forms of expression

far as suited him, but there is no longer bondage to the three unities or to a defie moral lesson. The moral effect of the y stands in its exhibition of the human rit rising superior to external torment d defilement; we are exalted by being shown → worth and dignity of man, and are more ateful for this than we should be for moral itements the truth of which we knew bere. In literary style drama was freed from somewhat artificial diction, and felt no her obligation than to express the thought d feeling of the moment as beautifully and tingly as possible. In these various ways e freedom which was the moving spirit of e early nineteenth century, in literature as life, was able occasionally to express itself poetic tragedy. That it did not do so itener and as worthily as in Shelley's play

was due partly to the poets' desire for a more intimate self-expression than is possible in impersonal drama, and partly to the allurements of a newer literary form, the novel. As the century advanced, the spirit of realism more and more prevailed, which is hard to combine with poetic drama. The drama of the nineteenth century was even less notable than that of the eighteenth. That which is best as literature has not been by professional dramatists, but by writers like Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson, more distinguished in other fields; has been of the nature of closet-drama, better to read than to act. The plays that year after year have filled the theaters are mostly too poor as literature to be much read. But a single not unfavorable specimen of this kind will be given

next.

Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.

The deed he saw could not have rated higher

Than his most worthless life: 1-it angers me!

Respited me from Hell!-So may the Devil

Respite their souls from Heaven. No doubt Pope Clement,

And his most charitable nephews, pray That the Apostle Peter and the saints Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy

Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days

Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards

Of their revenue.-But much yet remains To which they show no title. Cam.

Oh, Count Cenci! So much that thou mightst honorably live

And reconcile thyself with thine own heart

And with thy God, and with the offended world.

How hideously look deeds of lust and blood

Thro' those snow white and venerable hairs!

Your children should be sitting round

Nay, this is idle: we should know eac other.

As to my character for what men call crime,

Seeing I please my senses as I list,
And vindicate that right with force or
guile,

It is a public matter, and I care not
If I discuss it with you. I may speak
Alike to you and my own conscious
heart;

For you give out that you have half reformed me,

Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent

If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.

All men delight in sensual luxury,
All men enjoy revenge; and most exult
Over the tortures they can never feel;
Flattering their secret peace with others'
pain.

But I delight in nothing else. I love The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,

When this shall be another's and that mine.

And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other

men.

This mood has grown upon me, until

now

Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish, and it forms

none