No More Learning

When in
Rome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript account
of the story of the Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces,
where the portraits of Beatrice were to be found; and her beauty cast
the reflection of its own grace over her appalling story. Shelley's
imagination became strongly excited, and he urged the subject to me as
one fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incompetence; but I
entreated him to write it instead; and he began, and proceeded
swiftly, urged on by intense sympathy with the sufferings of the human
beings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, he revived, and
gifted with poetic language. This tragedy is the only one of his works
that he communicated to me during its progress. We talked over the
arrangement of the scenes together. I speedily saw the great mistake
we had made, and triumphed in the discovery of the new talent brought
to light from that mine of wealth (never, alas, through his untimely
death, worked to its depths)--his richly gifted mind.

We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest
child, who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly
to be the idol of our hearts. We left the capital of the world,
anxious for a time to escape a spot associated too intimately with his
presence and loss. (Such feelings haunted him when, in "The Cenci", he
makes Beatrice speak to Cardinal Camillo of

'that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and say--
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
And all the things hoped for or done therein
Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief. ')

Some friends of ours were residing in the neighbourhood of Leghorn,
and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the
town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa
was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they
worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot season, and
in the evening the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation
went on, and the fireflies flashed from among the myrtle hedges:
Nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of
a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed.

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 entirely on the question as to whether
any such a thing as incest in this shape, however treated, would be
admitted on the stage. I think, however, it will form no objection;
considering, first, that the facts are matter of history, and,
secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it.