At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace.  There is often such in Italy, generally roofed:  this one was very small, yet not only roofed but glazed.  This Shelley made his study; it looked out on a wide prospect of fertile country, and commanded a view of the near sea.  The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water-spouts that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward and scattered by the tempest.  At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence.  In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of “The Cenci”.  He was making a study of Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished lady living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed during the following year.  He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgement and originality that, though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet, none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of “The Cenci”; and there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he himself alludes as suggested by one in “El Purgatorio de San Patricio”.

Shelley wished “The Cenci” to be acted.  He was not a playgoer, being of such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling-up of the inferior parts.  While preparing for our departure from England, however, he saw Miss O’Neil several times.  She was then in the zenith of her glory; and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, the sublime vehemence of passion she displayed.  She was often in his thoughts as he wrote:  and, when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished actress to fill the part of the heroine.  With this view he wrote the following letter to a friend in London: 

’The object of the present letter us to ask a favour of you.  I have written a tragedy on a story well known in Italy, and, in my conception, eminently dramatic.  I have taken some pains to make my play fit for representation, and those who have already seen it judge favourably.  It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which characterize my other compositions; I have attended simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable the persons represented really were, together with the greatest degree of popular effect to be produced by such a development.  I send you a translation of the Italian manuscript on which my play is founded; the chief circumstance of which I have touched very delicately; for my principal doubt as to whether it would succeed as an acting play hangs