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prophecy that one of Io's descendants shall in fact be his deliverer. The two assertions are not really reconciled: the first is quite definite and is contradicted by the second. Moreover, after another characteristically Greek chorus praying for equal marriage and deliverance from such high loves as had proved the ruin of Io, Prometheus repeats his threat of the fall of Zeus in a speech of splendid passion and directness, the kind of speech which every one can understand and which Shelley could not write. His defiant mood, in which he definitely asserts that the rule of Zeus will not last long, even leads him into taunting the gentle Chorus as if they were flatterers of the tyrant. Prometheus has in fact reached a stage of angry bitterness which stops at nothing: a stage which of course the much more spiritual creation of Shelley never reaches.

The final scene follows. Hermes, the lackey of Zeus, as Prometheus contemptuously calls him, comes to demand the secret of his master's prophesied fall. The passage at arms between the insolence of the royal servant and the utter scorn and defiance which Prometheus angrily hurls at both servant and master makes one of those scenes in which tragedy exhibits a cleverness of scolding which brings it dangerously near the verge of comedy. Yet even in the presence of Hermes the tortured hero lets fall a word of selfpity a word which Hermes at once catches up as unknown to Zeus. But it shall be known,' replies Prometheus.

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Once more, to Hermes, he pronounces that strange prophecy of the fall of Zeus. As Uranus and Kronus fell, so he, the third ruler of heaven, shall also fall, with a ruin swift and ignominious (aïoxισтa Kaì тáɣioтα). Then, utterly refusing any sort of concession, and heaping insult upon insult, he bids Zeus do his worst, undeterred by all that Hermes tells him of the awful penalties with which his disobedience will at once be visited. Hermes departs, after inviting the Nymphs to leave Prometheus lest they should

be involved in his ruin, an invitation which they indignantly refuse. Then Prometheus utters the last words of the drama, as the earthquake, thunder and lightning begin the fulfilment of the threats of Hermes. The whole world of earth and air and sea is in wild commotion as he appeals, like Lear, to the heavens against the injustice of his fate.

Has any tragedy in the world a catastrophe so stupendous? And this sublime conclusion is in one way curiously modern. Almost invariably in Greek plays the tension is relaxed before the end and the last words are words of acceptance and quiet. So, in Milton's Greek drama, the 'universal groan As if the whole inhabitation perished', which marks the catastrophe of Samson and his enemies, is almost forgotten in the final choric song which begins

All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about

And ever best found in the close ;—

and ends with the dismissal of the surviving personages of the drama (and, we may add, of the spectators or readers), with peace and consolation', and, last word of all,

With calm of mind all passion spent.

How utterly unlike the end of the Prometheus! We must, however, remember again that the play was part of a Trilogy and that its defiant last word was not the last word of the dramatist. That came after the reconciliation, the idea of which was so intolerable to Shelley.

Of Shelley's much longer drama a shorter analysis will suffice. The plot of the Prometheus Vinctus is unimportant compared, for instance, with that of the Oedipus of Sophocles but it is all-important compared with that of Shelley's play. Incomparably rich as is the Prometheus Unbound in spiritual and intellectual content, it has in fact scarcely any plot. It is true that it would appear at first sight to have

more than the Prometheus Vinctus. For its scene changes from mountain to valley, from Hell to Heaven and it shows Demogorgon rising, Jupiter falling, Prometheus delivered. But none of these events is made dramatically effective and in truth the drama has little or no dramatic action. For while dramatic action is that of beings accepted as real and as moving in a real world, in Shelley's drama one person seems to fade into another, neither person nor place nor plot has any clear form or figure, and everything seems to have the shadowy inconsequence of a beautiful dream.

The opening scene shows Prometheus chained on the rock, with the Ocean Nymphs, Panthea and Ione, sitting at his feet. After the magnificent declamation to which I have already alluded, Prometheus asks the spirits of the mountains and the air to repeat the curse in which he had denounced Jupiter. They dare not and Earth his mother, who describes the misery of all her lands and peoples since the ruin of Prometheus, dare not either. It can only be told by the inhabitants of the underworld, who are the shadows of all that live in Earth or Heaven. Prometheus then calls on the Phantasm of Jupiter himself to repeat the curse. The Phantasm does so, strangely denouncing himself in the words of Prometheus: the curse is a curse of remorse

Till thine Infinity shall be

A robe of envenomed agony;

And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.

On hearing it, Prometheus—at once showing his utter unlikeness to the Prometheus of Aeschylus-repents his curse

Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

The Earth breaks out into grief at this, regarding it as proof that Prometheus has surrendered and Jupiter has been victorious. At this moment Mercury enters, as in Aeschylus, to demand the secret on Jupiter's behalf and advise

submission. But, unlike the Hermes of Aeschylus, he is full of pity and hates himself for his message and his threats. The answer of Prometheus is, as in Aeschylus, a defiance. When told that perhaps the mind may not be able even to number the years which he will have to spend in torture, he makes the sublime answer :

Perchance no thought can count them-yet they pass. The Furies then come to do their work in the course of which they often betray the voice of Shelley breaking in, very undramatically, with a sympathetic note, on what ought to be their joy in the sufferings of the world, which they relate to him as being, if I understand Shelley rightly, a crueller pain to Prometheus than any personal tortures inflicted on himself could be. They especially enlarge on the miseries wrought in the world in the name of one whom they show as 'a youth With patient looks nailed to a crucifix'. The Furies depart, and the Nymphs call up the spirits' whose homes are the dim caves of human thought' to comfort Prometheus, which they do in visions of the work among men of wisdom, poetry and love. Prometheus declares that he feels 'most vain all hope but love': and wishes either to be The saviour and the strength of suffering man, Or sink into the original gulf of things;

and Panthea leaves him in order to visit his beloved Asia who has been 'in exile' in India ever since the fall of Prometheus.

The second Act opens in the Indian Caucasus where Panthea comes to Asia. She recounts to Asia a dream of Prometheus delivered and appearing in glorious beauty: and then another vision appears which calls 'follow, follow'. This vision or dream has also been dreamed by Asia. Echoes are then heard singing 'follow': Asia is told by them that In the world unknown

Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone

Can its rest be broken;

and the two sisters follow the voices.

The second Scene shows the sisters passing into a Forest and Spirits singing lyrics of its beauty and mystery in which Shelley's purely poetic genius is shown almost at its highest. Fauns listen, and, almost in the language of Milton's Comus, ask

Canst thou imagine where those spirits live

Which make such delicate music in the woods?

The third Scene shows Asia and Panthea on a Pinnacle of Rock, the portal or chasm of the realm of Demogorgon, to which they have been led by the voice which called them. They speak of the beauty of the scene on which they look down spirits call them down, down' in another lovely song by Asia alone can' the snake-like Doom' coiled under the throne of the Immortal be unloosed.

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Scene IV shows them descended to the Cave of Demogorgon who is a mighty darkness' from which 'rays of gloom issue' like light from the sun. He offers to answer their questions: and tells them that 'God, merciful God' made the living world and all its good of thought and imagination and love: but of pain and hell he does not name the creator, only answering' He reigns'. This negative answer he three times repeats on which Asia gives a history of the world, as it were; the reign of Heaven and Earth, and then of Saturn, on whose refusal of knowledge and self-empire to man Prometheus gave wisdom to Jupiter' with this law alone, "Let man be free". Jove was faithless but Prometheus gave man hope and fire and all the arts, and love: and for this he hangs withering in pain. Man is now outcast and abandoned Prometheus shall again deliver him; but when? To that question the answer of Demogorgon is 'Behold', and immediately Asia sees the Hours appear as 'wild-eyed charioteers', in cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds '; one of these carries away Demogorgon and another Asia and Panthea. Scene V. shows them in the car within a cloud, Asia transformed into such beauty that Panthea can

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