duced during his lifetime
at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal
parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully
the aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is
disinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merely
mouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terror
and for pity. 'I have endeavoured,' he says, 'as nearly as possible to
represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid
the error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong,
false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the
sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. . . .

'I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonly
called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached
simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description of
the chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be of
that nature.'

He recognized that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom of
expression than what is conceded to a poet. 'In a dramatic composition,'
to use his own words, 'the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate
one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development
and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which
should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus
that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for
dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling,
which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is
lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other
respects I have written more carelessly, that is, without an
over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely
agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to
true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men.'

He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example,
not by precept.

'The highest moral purpose,' he remarks, 'aimed at in the highest species
of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and
antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of
which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and
kind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is n