SOURCE: Harrison, Margot. “No Way for a Victim to Act?: Beatrice Cenci and the Dilemma of Romantic Performance.” Studies in Romanticism 39, no. 2 (summer 2000): 187-211.

In the following essay, Harrison contrasts Shelley's opinions on romantic drama espoused in his Preface to The Cenci with those implicit in the play itself.

Two problems have historically preoccupied readers of The Cenci. First of all: what does this verse-play have to do with the theatre? If only by default, Shelley's drama occupies the liminal space between closet and stage. Shelley indisputably “wished The Cenci to be acted,” picked out his lead actors, and even asked a friend to “procure … its presentation at Covent Garden.”¹ The play's subject made such a performance impossible. Yet, while the moral strictures against a play about incest had expired by 1886, the aesthetic judgment of The Cenci as “undramatic” (first voiced by Byron) has lasted considerably longer. Until...