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Beatrice's “Pernicious Mistake” in The Cenci

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert F. Whitman
Robert F. Whitman*
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
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Extract

Ever since it was first published, Shelley's The Cenci has met with antagonism and misunderstanding. In the original instance this reaction was in part due to a prudish horror at the subject matter, which an enlightened modern reader finds hard to comprehend. However, continued resistance to the play, characterized by grudging admission that it has poetic merits but doesn't quite “come off,” suggests that something more than the theme of incest has dulled or blurred its tragic impact. One clue to The Cenci's failure to gain acceptance as “the best tragedy of modern times,” as Mary Shelley called it, might be found in its varied and often conflicting interpretations by critics and casual readers alike. That the play should be ambiguous to anyone would doubtless have puzzled Shelley. “It is,” he told Trelawny, “a work of art; it is not colored by my feelings nor obscured by my metaphysics.” It would seem, however, that his faith in his own lucidity was not justified.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , June 1959, pp. 249 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 Edward J. Trelawny, Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (London, 1878), i, 117.

2 Of the two alternatives, this view is by far the most common among reputable commentators. Ernest S. Bates, for instance, expresses his sympathy with Swinburne's opinion that Beatrice is essentially innocent, and in murdering her father is simply fulfilling her obligation as a human being— the annihilation of evil, the return to hell of a soul belonging to hell. “If this be true,” Mr. Bates says, “Beatrice is fundamentally a pathetic character; one who is driven to her deeds and death not by any inherent ‘tragic error’ but by the sin of circumstances” (A Study of Shelley's Drama ‘The Cenci,‘ New York, 1908, p. 76). Newman I. White, in his great biography of Shelley, says: “The essentially tragic nature of [The Cenci] as Shelley retold it may well be doubted…. In writing the drama Shelley is so sympathetic with his heroine that he can scarcely tolerate his own notion of revenge as a part of her character…. It is only by a narrow margin that she escapes the dramatic fault of being a flawless character. … The Cenci is not a good acting play and according to formal criteria is essentially melodrama rather than tragedy” (Shelley, New York, 1940, ii, 139). Carl Grabo treats Beatrice as the embodiment of “innocence and spiritual purity” at war with, and destroyed by, evil. See The Magic Plant (Chapel Hill, 1936), pp. 300–303. Benjamin Kurtz, in his study of Shelley's poetry, goes even further in justifying Beatrice's actions: “It would have been a crime no less than Cenci's, had her fierce desire for his death faded for one moment in her heart. This was her only rest on earth, and only hope in Heaven.” Beatrice “perceives a higher justice, and boldly asserts her duty to become its instrument.” In view of this, he says, we cannot pity her, but “must feel, instead an intense, almost unbearable compassion for sufferings attributable, not to any demerit in the victim, but to a stupendous misfortune” (The Pursuit of Death, New York, 1933, pp. 196–197).

3 As I suggest, this view is one I have found expressed by many students and colleagues, but it is not widely accepted among Shelley scholars. It is similar, however, to the reactions of the play's first reviewers, and is sufficiently important for several commentators to have raised the issue as a serious critical problem. See Bates, pp. 73–74; Kurtz, p. 198; and Carlos Baker, Shelley's Major Poetry (Princeton, 1948), p. 147.

4 Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. G. E. Woodberry (Cambridge, Mass., 1901). All quotations, hereafter cited in the text, are from this edition.

5 An Italian manuscript, which Shelley acquired in Rome and later translated. See “A Relation of the Death of the Family of the Cenci” appended to The Cenci, ed. Alfred For-man and H. Buxton Forman (London, 1886).