s of
literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also
because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had
written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final
reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the
champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know,
because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting
any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of
compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan "unsaying his high
language, and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary."
He therefore, approached the theme of liberation from a wholly different
point of view. Prometheus in his drama is the human vindicator of love,
justice, and liberty, as opposed to Jove, the tyrannical oppressor, and
creator of all evil by his selfish rule. Prometheus is the mind of man
idealized, the spirit of our race, as Shelley thought it made to be.
Jove is the incarnation of all that thwarts its free development. Thus
counterposed, the two chief actors represent the fundamental antitheses
of good and evil, liberty and despotism, love and hate. They give the
form of personality to Shelley's Ormuzd-Ahriman dualism already
expressed in the first canto of "Laon and Cythna"; but, instead of being
represented on the theatre of human life, the strife is now removed into
the reign of abstractions, vivified by mythopoetry. Prometheus resists
Jove to the uttermost, endures all torments, physical and moral, that
the tyrant plagues him with, secure in his own strength, and calmly
expectant of an hour which shall hurl Jove from heaven, and leave the
spirit of good triumphant. That hour arrives; Jove disappears; the
burdens of the world and men are suddenly removed; a new age of peace
and freedom and illimitable energy begins; the whole universe partakes
in the emancipation; the spirit of the earth no longer groans in pain,
but sings alternate love-songs with his sister orb, the moon; Prometheus
is re-united in indissoluble bonds to his old love, Asia. Asia,
withdrawn from sight during the first act, but spoken of as waiting in
her exile for the fated hour, is the true mate of the human spirit. She
is the fairest daughter of Earth and Ocean. Like Aphrodite, she rises in
the Aegean near the land called by her name; and in the time of
tribulation she dwells in a far Indian vale. She is the Idea of Beauty
incarnate, the s