He recognised 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 no fit place for the enforcement of them.’  He fully realises that it is by a conflict between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest dramatic effects are produced.  ’It is in the restless and anatomising casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists.’

In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.

And yet I hardly think that the production of The Cenci, its absolute presentation on the stage, can be said to have added anything to its beauty, its pathos, or even its realism.  Not that the principal actors were at all unworthy of the work of art they interpreted; Mr. Hermann Vezin’s Cenci was a noble and magnificent performance; Miss Alma Murray stands now in the very first rank of our English actresses as a mistress of power and pathos; and Mr. Leonard Outram’s Orsino was most subtle and artistic; but that The Cenci needs for the production of its perfect effect no interpretation at all.  It is, as we read it, a complete work of art—­capable, indeed, of being acted, but not dependent on theatric presentation; and the impression produced by its exhibition on the stage seemed to me to be merely one of pleasure at the gratification of an intellectual curiosity of seeing how far Melpomene could survive the wagon of Thespis.