SOURCE: Strand, Ginger, and Sara Zimmerman. “Finding an Audience: Beatrice Cenci, Percy Shelley, and the Stage.” European Romantic Review 6, no. 2 (winter 1996): 246-68.

In the following essay, Strand and Zimmerman concentrate on the moral problem associated with Beatrice's role as a heroine.

“… in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, Beatrice Cenci is really none other than Percy Bysshe Shelley himself in petticoats …”¹

The action of The Cenci revolves around two violent events, both of which take place off stage. Count Cenci's rape of his daughter Beatrice leads to the second brutal incident, his murder at the hands of assassins she has hired. Critics of The Cenci have typically read the play as the story of a heroine who, unable to suffer in silence, takes matters too firmly into her own hands and thus falls from the elevated position of virtuous daughter persecuted by tyrannical father...