SOURCE: Harrington-Lueker, D. “Imagination versus Introspection: The Cenci and Macbeth.” Keats-Shelley Journal 32 (1983): 172-89.

In the following essay, Harrington-Lueker compares The Cenci and Macbeth and contends that Shelley borrowed Shakespearean themes to heighten audience understanding of his play.

As the Preface to The Cenci (1819) indicates, the story of the Cenci family immediately impressed Shelley with its dramatic and, more precisely, its tragic possibilities. Yet, as his letters show, the playwright conceived of a popular drama—a tragedy written with the English theater-going public in mind. So, despite the inherent power and passion of his source, Shelley realized that he would have to make certain significant adaptations if his conception were to be realized. Minimizing the horror of the act of incest was only one of the poet's concerns. His foremost task was to make the infamous Italian tale, so foreign to the English tradition, familiar to the sympathies of...