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Percy Bysshe Shelley: Main Page | ...an Impressive Shelley Poetry Sampler | Thought Provoking Quotes by Shelley | Shelley's Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama | Percy Bysshe Shelley -- Books and Reviews | Percy Bysshe Shelley : A Tempestuous Life | Mr. Shelley's Human Mind Aspiring Toward Perfection | A Closer Look at Shelley's Poetry | Katharena's Essential Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ground Zero!

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama, which Percy Bysshe Shelley completed at Florence in the autumn of 1819, near the birth of Percy Florence Shelley, Mary Shelley's only surviving child.

In Prometheus Shelley inverts the plot of a lost play by Aeschylus in a poetic masterpiece that combines supple blank verse with a variety of complex lyric measures. In Act I, Prometheus, tortured on Jupiter's orders for having given mankind the gift of moral freedom, recalls his earlier curse of Jupiter and forgives him (“I wish no living thing to suffer pain”). By eschewing revenge, Prometheus, who embodies the moral will, can be reunited with his beloved Asia, a spiritual ideal transcending humanity; her love prevents him from becoming another tyrant when Jupiter is overthrown by the mysterious power known as Demogorgon. Act II traces Asia's awakening and journey toward Prometheus, beginning with her descent into the depths of nature to confront and question Demogorgon. Act III depicts the overthrow of Jupiter and the union of Asia and Prometheus, who—leaving Jupiter's throne vacant—retreat to a cave from which they influence the world through ideals embodied in the creative arts. The end of the act describes the renovation of both human society and the natural world. Act IV opens with joyful lyrics by spirits who describe the benevolent transformation of the human consciousness that has occurred. Next, other spirits hymn the beatitude of humanity and nature in this new millennial age; and finally, Demogorgon returns to tell all creatures that, should the fragile state of grace be lost, they can restore their moral freedom through these “spells”:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power which seems Omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. . .

Prometheus Unbound, which was the keystone of Shelley's poetic achievement, was written after he had been chastened by “sad reality” but before he began to fear that he had failed to reach an audience. Published with it were some of the poet's finest and most hopeful shorter poems, including “Ode to Liberty,” “Ode To the West Wind,” “The Cloud,” and “To a Sky-Lark.” --Donald H. Reiman