Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816) followed. It is a kind of spiritual autobiography. The chief character is a wild youth who retires into the wilderness and stays there under highly romantic circumstances. The poem is too long and formless, and in places the expression becomes so wild as to be only a foamy gabble of words. It is written in blank verse that shows Shelley’s growing skill as a poet. After this came Laon and Cynthia (1817), afterward called The Revolt of Islam. It has the fault of its immediate predecessor—lack of grip and coherence; but it is richer in descriptive passages, and has many outbursts of rapturous energy.
Then Shelley left for Italy. The first fruits of his new life were apparent in Prometheus Unbound (1819). This wonderful production is a combination of the lyric and the drama. The story is that of Prometheus, who defied the gods and suffered for his presumption. There is a small proportion of narrative in blank verse, but the chief feature of the poem is the series of lyrics that both sustain and embellish the action. As a whole the poem has a sweep, a soar, and an unearthly vitality that sometimes staggers the imagination. It is peopled with spirits and demigods, and its scenes are cast in the inaccessible spaces of sky, mountain, and sea.
In The Cenci (1819) Shelley started to write formal drama. In this play he seems deliberately to have set upon himself the restraints that he defied in Prometheus Unbound. The plot is not of the sky and the sea; it is a grim and sordid family affair; in style it is neither fervent nor ornate, but bleak and austere. Yet behind this reticence of manner there is a deep and smoldering intensity of passion and enormous adequacy of tragic purpose. Many of the poet’s admirers look upon it as his masterpiece; and there can be little doubt that, with the exception possibly of the Venice Preserved of Otway, it is the most powerful tragedy since the days of Shakespeare. The last words of the play, when the heroine goes to her doom, are almost heart-breaking in their simplicity:
Beatrice. Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another! Now
We shall not do it any more. My lord,