These considerations quite cover the remaining three acts of his Prometheus Unbound and render it unnecessary for me to quote from them in support of the passages already cited.
The first act contains, indeed, nearly the substance of the whole drama. Act II contains no important motive except the visit of Asia and Panthea to Demogorgon under the earth. In the third act we have a view of Jove surrounded by his ministers; but in the midst of a short speech to them he is suddenly swept into hell for everlasting punishment. Here, of course, Shelley makes a complete departure from the old story of the compromise between Jove and Prometheus; Shelley makes Prometheus scornfully reject such a compromise and allow Jove to go down to his doom. Hercules then unbinds Prometheus who repairs to a certain exquisite interlunar cave and there dwells in tranquillity with his beloved Asia.
The rest of Act III. is filled with long descriptions of the change which comes upon the world with the dethronement of Jove. Act IV. is the most amazing piece of surplusage in literature; the catastrophe has been reached long ago in the third act. Jove is in eternal duress, Prometheus has been liberated and has gone with Asia and Panthea to his eternal paradise above the earth, and a final radiant picture of the reawakening of man and nature under the new régime has closed up the whole with the effect of a transformation-scene. Yet, upon all this, Shelley drags in Act IV. which is simply leaden in action and color alongside of Act III. and in which the voices of unseen spirits, the chorus of Hours, Jove, Panthea, Demogorgon, the Earth and the Moon pelt each other with endless sweetish speeches that rain like ineffectual comfits in a carnival of silliness. For example, a Voice of Unseen Spirits cries:
"Bright clouds float in heaven,
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean:
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion,
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?
The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness;
The billows and fountains
Fresh music are flinging
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye?"
The people thus inquired for, being the chorus of Hours, sleepily reply:
"The voice of the spirits of air and of earth
Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep."
A Voice.
In the deep?
semi-chorus.