CENCI, The. Shelley's poetic tragedy; 'The Cenci' was his one attempt to write "for the multitude* and for the stage. Though fol lowing the model of Elizabethan tragedy, and containing echoes from Shakespeare, mainly from 'Lear,' 'Macbeth> and 'Othello,' it is yet a work of individual genius. While It mat be uncritical to assert that 'The is °the greatest English tragedy since Shakespeare,* it is safe to say that no tragic poet since Web ster has equalled this play in sombre power. The plot is founded on an old manuscript ac count of the crime, trial and execution of Beatrice, a daughter of the great Roman fam ily of the Cenci, at the close of the 16th cen tury. This particular account, one of many such that appeared within the century following the event, is utterly misleading in its picture of Cenci as an unnatural monster and of his daughter as an angel of light; but Shelley ac cepted it as authentic, and followed it closely, except that he adds the banquet scene in the first act. His interest was increased by the supposed portrait of Beatrice, once attributed to Guido, then in the Colonna, now in the Bar-; berini, Palace. The play was published in Lon don in 1821, with a second edition in 1822. Though received with comparative favor by the public, it was rejected by the London thea tre manager on account of the nature of its subject, and was unsuccessful when acted for the first and only time under the auspices of the Shelley Society in 1886. Shelley, who was i an almost infallible critic of his own poetry, said, "It is a work of art; not colored by my feelings nor obscured by my metaphysics?* And, indeed, 'The Cenci,' intrinsically great, is no less than astonishing as the production of the poet of 'Prometheus Unbound.' Except for this evidence, no one could have credited Shelley with such knowledge of human char acter and such power to represent it.
Owing to the difficulty of presenting the in cidents of the story on the stage, the action of 'The Cenci' is weak. The fifth act, however, is not only perhaps the finest thing that Shelley ever wrote, but certainly compares favorably in all essentials of tragedy with anything outside of Shakespeare. The diaracterization is on the whole firm and convincing; though Orsino, whose crafty wickedness is contrasted with the utter insolence of Cenci, seems hardly con sistent. The vacillating Giacomo and the ir resolute Lucrezia throw into high relief the unwavering will of Beatrice, who grows in nobility until at the close she fills the action with the splendor of her purity and strength, a tragic heroine claiming kinship with the great est of her kind— with Antigone, Electra, Ju liet, Constance, and Webster's Duchess. The diction is simple and concrete; the style, highly dramatic and appropriate. Except the descrip tion of the chasm in the third act, not a pas sage, scarcely even a line, but contributes di rectly to the action or characterization. The effect of the play is that of unrelieved gloom. °In it culminates that fascination of horror in Shelley which was as characteristic as his wor ship of beauty and love, though it is less omni present in his poetry" (Woodberry). The has been edited for the 'Belles Lettres Series' by Professor •Woodberry. Mrs. Shel ley's notes and Shelley's preface to the play are given in the Centenary edition also. Con sult pages 126-29 of Symonds' lish Men of Crawford, F. Marion, 'The True Story of a Misunderstood Tragedy: with New (Century Magazine, Vol. LXXV, No. 3, pp. 449-66).