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By the time he came to add act IV to the original
three acts of Prometheus Unbound in late 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley had
amassed a diverse set of musical experiences, ranging from the first London performance
of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in March of 1818 to the grand festivities
or funzioni in Rome during Easter week in 1819.[1]
From manuscript evidence, it is not clear what induced Shelley to add a highly
lyrical fourth act as well as several lyric insertions to act II of Prometheus
Unbound. Nevertheless, it seems probable that studying the dramas of Calderón
with Maria Gisborne combined with the highly musical atmosphere of Livorno encouraged
Shelley to include further lyrical elements in his drama. In a letter to his friend,
Thomas Jefferson Hogg on 25 July 1819, Shelley writes: Let me
recommend you who know Spanish to read some plays of their great dramatic genius
Calderón. . . . We have a house very near the Gisbornes, and it is from Mrs. Gisborne
that I learnt Spanish enough to read these plays. . . . We see her every evening.
. . . I have a little room here like Scythrop’s tower, at the top of the house,
commanding a view of the sea and the Apennines, and the plains between them. The
vine-dressers are singing all day mi rivedrai, ti revedrò, but by no means
in an operatic style. . . (PSL, II, 105). Shelley’s reference
to peasants singing the refrain of "Di tanti palpiti," arguably the most famous
aria from Rossini’s Tancredi, reveals both the extent of the poet’s acquaintance
with music at this time as well as the widespread popularity of opera and Rossini
in Italy. As the sister-in-law of the composer and pianist Muzio Clementi, Mrs.
Gisborne’s own musical talents and connections were also considerable. In this
regard, it seems unlikely that Shelley could have read Calderón with her without
being made aware of the musical nature of many of the Spanish poet’s works, several
of which are classified as semi-operas, including his version of the Prometheus
myth, La estatua de Prometeo.[2]
While critics and reviewers of the past two hundred years have
struggled to find a suitable analogy for Prometheus Unbound in literature,
it seems possible that Shelley had non-literary models in mind when he was writing
what he described to Thomas Love Peacock as "a lyric & classical drama" (PSL,
II, 43). Indeed, the world of music provides a clear parallel to Shelley’s lyrical
drama in the form of the Italian opera buffa that so delighted the poet
and his friends during the London seasons in 1817 and 1818. Ronald Tetreault remarks
that Prometheus Unbound is a "lyrical drama whose form derives ultimately
from the union of poetry and music in Greek tragedy, but whose closest contemporary
equivalent was the opera, especially the musical comedy of Mozart" (145).
Taking Tetreault’s observation one step further, I would like to argue that the
organization of discourse and the specific dramatic arrangement of Shelley’s Prometheus
Unbound have strong affinities with the Italian operas of his day, particularly
the works of Mozart and Rossini. II. In
contrast to the more through-composed structure of the later nineteenth-century
Romantic operas of Verdi and Wagner, yet more continuous in nature than Baroque
opera seria, the opera buffa of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth
century are composed of numbers (arias, duets, ensembles, etc.), which are linked
together by sections of sung dialogue. Loosely based on the configuration of dialogue
and chorus in Greek tragedy, the main components of the Italian opera are "Recitative,
by which the business of action of the Opera, the principal thing in all dramatic
performances, is carried on, and . . . Airs or Songs, by which the
sentiments and passions of the Dramatis Personae are expressed" (Brown,
Preface). Although in his Letters on the Italian Opera (1789) John Brown
lists seven types of aria,[3]
most arias of this period possess the same three-part da capo format: first
section, second section, first section repeated. While this format is generally
non-strophic, the ternary structure of aria makes two or three stanza poems highly
suitable for musical adaptation. In Shelley’s day, arias provided the main method
through which singers demonstrated their talent, and indeed, were often the only
parts of an opera to which most of the audience paid attention. During this time,
recitative arguably was of far less performative import than aria; but, as the
principle method through which action occurred or was related in the Italian opera,
recitative nonetheless formed an essential element. Indeed, Leigh Hunt, like Joseph
Addison,[4] finds
recitative "more natural, in an Opera, than common speech" because, in accordance
with the supposed common origin of speech and song, "it is more natural that [beings
in an Opera] should sing always, that that they should burst out into a song occasionally"
(Fenner, Leigh Hunt and Opera Criticism, 135). In his Course of Lectures
on Dramatic Art and Literature, A.W. Schlegel writes that the "learned and
artificial modulation" of recitative is less "measured" than the declamation of
Greek tragedy, to which it is often compared (Schlegel, I, 69-70). Recitative
comes in two main forms, semplice or secco, which comprises most
of the dialogue, and accompagnato or obbligato, which is reserved
for passages requiring particular dramatic emphasis, though fully spoken parts
(parlante), were not uncommon, particularly in Mozart. Similar
to the interaction between recitative and aria in Italian opera, the first two
acts of Prometheus Unbound alternate between straight, unrhymed blank verse
passages and rhymed, or at least rhythmical, lyric insertions that are typographically
and metrically set apart from the surrounding blank verse. Although many other
plays, including Byron’s Manfred and Goethe’s Faust, similarly separate
sung portions from the surrounding dialogue, few dramas outside of opera so fully—and
successfully, one might add—integrate lyrical and discursive language together
into a comprehensive formula to the effect that Shelley does in his lyrical drama.
The editors of the recent Longman edition of Shelley’s poetry note: "[t]his alternation
of blank verse with complex lyric passages shadows the dramatic device of an alternation
between the relatively static dramatic exchanges, and choric elements, which Shelley
adapts from Greek tragic drama" (TPS, II, 470).Yet, as Havergal Brian no
doubt realized in his now lost setting of acts I and II,[5]
the alternating pattern of discursive and lyrical elements in the first half of
Shelley’s drama adapts well into operatic form, and indeed corresponds to it in
many ways. Acts III and IV, however, prove more difficult, the latter for the
profusion of its lyrical forms, the former for the complete absence of them. Nevertheless,
taken as a whole, the four acts of Prometheus Unbound are structurally
coherent: acts I and II consist of a fairly regular alternation between discursive
and lyrical language; act III, which is almost fully discursive, balances out
act IV, which is almost entirely lyrical. Also, the middle two acts are
subdivided into five and four scenes, respectively; whereas, no scene divisions
interrupt the dramatic flow of acts I and IV. In this four act organization, Asia’s
meeting with Demogorgon in the fourth scene of act II stands directly at the structural
and ideological center of the work. From the very beginning of
Prometheus Unbound, Shelley emphasizes the dramatic force—yet radical limitations—of
language, particularly discursive language, and its representational powers. Realizing
the conceptual inadequacy of language to relate emotions and, to some extent,
to present the story he is attempting to tell, Shelley utilizes music to deepen
characterization, and to control dramatic time through "contrast, repetition,
balance, control of pace, and multiple relations among aural elements" (Corse
15). In this way, music in Prometheus Unbound has three structural functions:
as a stage device, as an internal dramatic catalyst, and as simple emotional expression
in the form of song itself. The action of act I revolves around
a figuratively de-voiced and thus disempowered Prometheus pitted against his own
inability to recall and thereby revoke his curse. Prometheus’s opening speech
sets the tone for a series of lyric episodes and dramatic exchanges which reverse
the traditional dramatic functions of song and dialogue. Dramatically speaking,
very little changes in the course of act I, with Prometheus remaining bound to
the precipice at the act’s end. However, instead of being placed on a stage of
physical action, everything occurs on the figurative stage of the mind, specifically
that of Prometheus. Appropriate to a scene full of dissonance, for the majority
of act I, Shelley’s poetic form inverts the operatic functions of recitative and
aria: much of the blank verse is static and emotive, whereas most of the lyrical
passages narratively and structurally drive the "business of action," which is
Prometheus’s mental transformation to a fully free and liberated mind, foretelling
the end of Jupiter’s reign of tyranny. Ronald Tetreault compares the structure
of Prometheus’s opening speech to "the large-scale ternary design of the traditional
aria," observing "sustained monologues are common on the operatic stage, where
music encourages and supports the total expression of the inner being" (149).
Although critics often cite the sustained monologues of Romantic drama as evidence
of its untheatricality, Stuart Curran comments: "the great age of the London theater,
from Garrick to Kean, treated such speeches as we do arias in opera" ("Shelleyan
Drama" 72). While Prometheus’ opening lines demonstrate a strong declamatory impulse,
the emotional outpourings of the Titan’s blank verse nevertheless functions less
like its operatic equivalent, recitative, and more like aria. The focus of Prometheus’s
discourse is primarily mentalistic and emotional, whereas the dialogue of Ione
and Panthea, who speak almost exclusively throughout act I in the lyrical language
of rhyme, seems to fulfill the function of recitative. The climax
of this inversion between the discursive and the lyrical occurs during the episode
with Mercury and the antiphonal chorus of Furies. Shelley deliberately seems to
place this part immediately after the lyrical passage that includes the Phantasm
of Jupiter’s repetition of the curse, a speech that, as I will discuss, in a staging
would almost necessitate the dramatic emphasis of recitativo obbligato.
It is important to note that Prometheus’s renunciation of the curse occurs in
lyrical form, not blank verse. Indeed, his response maintains the stanzaic form
of the curse itself, as does the Earth’s corresponding lament that his "defence
lies fallen and vanquishèd"(I, 311).[6]
Without a break in the lyrical passage, though no longer following the ten-line
format of the curse, after two Echoes repeat the last phrase of the Earth’s lament,
Ione and Panthea speak their last sets of lyrical verse for over three hundred
lines when they narrate the arrival of Mercury and the Furies. Panthea’s final
rhymed[7] statement
that Prometheus "looks as ever, firm, not proud" in the face of these new torments
immediately makes way for a jarring switch to blank verse at the voice of the
First Fury who proclaims: "Ha! I scent life!"(I, 337). Throughout the subsequent
dialogue between Mercury, Prometheus and the Furies, while Ione and Panthea ostensibly
maintain their narrative function, the chaotic Furies preempt the Oceanides of
their linguistic vehicle: song. Although the Furies’ torments are ultimately futile,
for a short while discord and dissonance rule the scene. The Furies, in their
raucousness, subvert the dynamics of normal choric oration through taunting Prometheus
with a revisionist history of perverted and horrifying images from the past, present
and future (I, 539-77). Whereas the Furies’ verse maintains a regular rhyme scheme
and forms a coherent antiphonal structure of response and chorus, the mocking
tone of their words moves their chorus away from the emotiveness of aria into
the narrative realm of fiction that in the opera buffa is largely the domain
of recitative. In contrast to the chorus of the Furies, the remaining
lyrical passages of act I, which comprise the sextet of "subtle and fair" Spirits
who come to comfort Prometheus, seem to restore the normal dynamics of narrative
and song to the drama. After the Furies disappear, Prometheus speaks of the mental
anguish of the Furies’ tortures, and warns the Oceanides of the potential misleadingness
of language and the visual imagination, observing, "[t]here are two woes:/ To
speak, and to behold"(I, 656-7). With the representational powers of language
under question, it seems logical that the Earth should choose music as the vehicle
to comfort Prometheus. Structurally and symbolically, the combination of the Furies’
songs immediately followed by the sweet but sad sextet of Spirits provides balance
and resolution to the end of act I. That is, to take Shelley’s comments on John
Taylor Coleridge’s review of The Revolt of Islam out of context, the congregation
of voices at the end of act I, as a precursor to the universal symphony of act
IV, functions like a smaller version of a concerted finale in an opera buffa
"when that tremendous concordant discord sets up from the orchestra, and everybody
talks and sings at once" (Letter to Charles Ollier, PSL, II, 128). Although this
device was a dying tradition by the early nineteenth century, Shelley was exposed
to the concerted finale through Mozart, who made extensive use of it, especially
at the end of acts II and IV of Le nozze di Figaro and the end of act I
of Don Giovanni.[8]
Although in Mozart’s operas, this type of mechanism involves a rapid succession
of voices interspersed with choric elements, the segmental structure of the concerted
finale makes the distinction between individual voices readily apparent to the
audience (Robinson 10-11). Shelley’s structuring of the Furies’ lyrical interlude
and the songs of the Spirits seems to reflect this type of organization through
the mixture of individually sung verses and alternating chorus. Returning the
function of describing emotions to the aria, the combination of harmonious voices
in the Spirits’ chorus and their individual verses neatly sum up the main themes
of act I while prefiguring the music of act II that draws Asia and Panthea towards
the cave of Demogorgon. Reminiscent of the supernatural beings under the control
of Manfred in Byron’s play of that name, Shelley’s "sweet but sad" Spirits sing—in
turn and then in chorus—of the same evil in the world that the Furies celebrate,
yet the Spirits mourn it.[9]
Through this acknowledgment, the Spirits move the drama forward with their hopeful
visions of the future. All of act I, then, concerns the cyclicality of time through
the acts of recalling, revoicing, and retelling. Thus, while act I superficially
seems the most like Greek tragedy with its alternating choruses and dialogue,
its emphasis on mental action and its unique lyrical structure more closely resemble
the means and composition of late eighteenth century opera buffa. In
act II, Shelley continues—and indeed amplifies—this operatic alternation between
dialogue and lyric that dominates act I. Although subdivided into scenes like
act III, act II parallels the dramatic format of act I, beginning with Asia’s
opening speech through her dialogue with Demogorgon to end with her highly operatic
lyrical exchange with Prometheus in the guise of a "Voice (in the air, singing)."
Yet, while the process of Asia’s mental transformation mirrors that of Prometheus,
there is a relatively significant amount of dramatic action during the course
of the second act, a fact which reveals that the process of Prometheus’ liberation
has been set into motion, even though his unbinding does not occur until act III.
As a result, Shelley turns to actual music in act II in order to not only set
the scene, but also to explain the meaning of the text and thus to establish dramatic
action. Here, the unique relationship between words and music in opera provides
useful dramatic comparison because "[p]erhaps the single most powerful resource
of opera as a dramatic form is its capacity to use musical means not only to advance
the action in time, but to deepen it" (Williams). For example, in the fifth scene
of act II, Shelley utilizes the expressiveness of music to counterbalance and
emphasize the narrative weight of Asia’s pivotal encounter with Demogorgon in
scene four. Although Asia, like Prometheus, speaks mainly in blank verse, Shelley’s
consistent connection of Asia with images of music, and in turn, with love, prepares
the reader for her aria-like lyrical discourse with the spirit of Prometheus at
the end of the fifth scene. Suspending the action at its highest point of dramatic
tension, Asia’s love song becomes a form of music itself as it depicts the sensual
immediacy of her love and spiritual blending with Prometheus. In their duet, the
songs of Asia and Prometheus in combination symbolize their status as a spiritual
whole, a lyrical microcosm of the universal symphony of act IV. Stuart Curran
observes: "The entire act is epitomized by Asia’s song about singing, a lyrical
contemplation of the nature of lyricism, endlessly creative, spontaneous, timeless,
the type of paradise. . ." ("Poetic Form" 201). Through this, Shelley seems to
borrow from opera buffa the function of aria to convey emotions, utilizing
music as pure emotional effusion but also as a more effective means through which
to express his metaphysical ideas of time and the universe. Perceiving the
representational limits of language, Shelley makes use of music as a structural
tool to expand the expressive capacity of language in poetry. Joseph Kerman writes:
"in spite of all the flexibility and clarity of poetry, even the most passionate
of speeches exists on a level of emotional reserve that music automatically passes.
Music can be immediate and simple in the presentation of emotional status or shades.
In an opera, people can give themselves over to sensibility; in a play nobody
ever quite stops thinking. . ." (Kerman 6). Throughout acts I
and II, Shelley’s use of lyrical and discursive elements thus exposes the tenuous
balance between dialogue and song within Prometheus Unbound, revealing
a fundamental tension between words and music that his drama shares with the Italian
opera of his time (Conrad 4). Lyrical parts provide Shelley with a unique, almost
modernist, method through which to play with narrative perspective and control
dramatic timing. Shelley’s careful organization of lyrical insertions in these
first two acts among elements of blank verse emphasizes music’s intimate relation
to language and poetry, and, in the realm of his play, music’s potential power
to affect and indeed direct the soul towards its destiny. III.
More explicit operatic elements come into play in the later acts
of Prometheus Unbound. By act III of Shelley’s mental drama, music moves
out of the realm of the drama, and indeed of the theater itself, into the larger
external world. In act III, music shifts from being a mere dramatic catalyst or
atmospheric ornament to be the literal mode through which change and action occurs.
To call attention to the universal transformation at work, Shelley keeps the language
of this act entirely discursive. In keeping with this alteration in the depiction
of music, I will move my analysis up a level to consider thematic and stylistic
correspondences between the opera buffa and elements of act III and of
Shelley’s lyrical drama as a whole. Despite the contention of an entry in a recent
edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics that the utilization
of music in Romantic poetry has little or nothing in common with the "logical,
witty" music being written by the composers of their day, such as Mozart, Haydn
and Rossini, I argue that the aesthetics and structure of Romantic drama are more
closely related to the works of their musical contemporaries than critics generally
allow (Winn 805). Although choice of subject matter and mode of dramatization
greatly differs from work to work, dramas like Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound,
Byron’s Don Juan and the opera buffa of Mozart, particularly Le
nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, share a similar aesthetic through
their methods of characterization, their ironic presentation of the oppressiveness
of tyrannical social systems, and their use of multiple genres to add narrative
complexity. At the height of its popularity in England in 1817
to 1818, the Italian opera buffa offered audiences a different kind of
dramatic experience than anything else found in the London theaters, adding stress
to crisis for both legitimate and non-legitimate playhouses. The lack of successful
native-born British playwrights, especially after the death of Sheridan in July
of 1817, had already forced managers to reintroduce old favorites instead of new
plays. These often included Shakespeare, a straightforward Sheridanian comedy
of manners like School for Scandal (1777), which Shelley disliked (Peacock
45), or one of the gothic German tragedies, like Schiller’s Die Räuber
(1781), which Coleridge reviled and Wordsworth called "sickly and stupid" (249).
In the rare case of a new hit, a theater would stage repeat performances of the
same play for many nights running. It was the age of the great actors, like Kean,
Garrick and Siddons, and for the operatic stage, of Catalani, Ambrogetti, Naldi
and Fodor. Of the few British writers whose plays made it to the stage, the works
of Byron, Coleridge and Maturin enjoyed some degree of success, though reviews
were mixed concerning their dramatic merits. Calling Coleridge and Maturin "the
most ambitious writers of the modern romantic drama," William Hazlitt comments
that in Remorse, "Coleridge’s metaphysics are lost in moonshine," while
in Maturin’s Bertram and Don Manuel, "the genius of poetry crowned
with faded flowers, and seated on the top of some high Gothic battlement, in vain
breathes its votive accents amidst the sighing of the forest gale and the vespers
of midnight monks" ("The Conquest of Taranto," CWWH). Although he deplores
the atmosphere of the opera as fake and elitist and considers it linguistically
and musically inaccessible to the average listener, Hazlitt celebrates the beauties
of Mozart’s operas, remarking, "[his] music should seem to come from the air,
and return to it" ("The Italian Opera," CWWH). However, for Hunt, Peacock
and Shelley, like Augustus Schlegel before them, it is the very refinement and
artificiality of the Italian opera that makes it such an attractive spectacle.
Schlegel writes: The fantastic magic of the opera consists altogether
in the luxurious competition of the different means, and in the perplexity of
an overpowering superfluity. . . . This fairy world is not peopled by real men,
but by a singular kind of singing creatures. Neither is it any disadvantage to
us that the opera is conveyed in a language which is not generally understood;
the text is altogether lost in the music, and the language the most harmonious
and musical. . . (I, 69-79). The fact that only a select part
of the audience held this view of the opera did nothing to destroy its popularity,
and indeed, served to bolster its reputation amongst the aristocracy. Theodore
Fenner notes that between 1816 and 1818, performances of Mozart made up well over
fifty-percent of all performances at the King’s Theatre ("Opera in London," 140).
In the early nineteenth century, to watch an Italian opera thus "was to be immersed
in a world of artifice, a town pleasure as opposed to a country pursuit. On the
operatic stage, painting, music, and poetry came together with architecture, sculpture,
and the dance in a sublime interfusion of the abstract and plastic arts" (Tetreault
146). In this world of artifice, the comic operas of Mozart and
Rossini play upon the simple human divisions of class and gender, presenting a
highly stylized atmosphere wherein wit and intelligence rule and the good always
win. Less straightforward than the comedy of manners in which characters generally
can be classified as either good or evil, the opera buffa or dramma
giocoso contains three types of characters of varying moral tendencies: parti
serie or "serious" characters, usually of the upper class, who display "qualities
like earnestness, courage, steadfastness, sensitive and passionate feelings concerning
love and honour[;]" parti buffe or "comic" characters, often from the lower
class, who demonstrate "inconstancy, cowardice, coarse feelings, deviousness and/or
servility[;]" and one or two mezzi caratteri, or "middle" characters, who
possess "either no facets of personality that identified them as serious or comic
or else facets of both" (Robinson 9). While these divisions of character can be
found in literature, in opera the music adds dimension and depth to language,
establishing a method of characterization that is more stylistically complex than
spoken drama. In opera buffa, perhaps not surprisingly, it is the mezzi
caratteri whom audiences and critics find intriguing, the most famous example
being il dissoluto, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. A character whom critics have
likened to figures ranging from Milton’s Satan to Hamlet, the aristocratic, dissipated
Don Giovanni is morally ambiguous and chameleon-like, able to mingle equally with
upper and lower classes, altering his attitude depending upon the company he is
with. As Leporello tells Elvira in his aria "Madamina, il catalogo e questo,"
Giovanni is a true democrat, wooing and seducing women of all classes, shapes
and sizes. While Byron’s poem Don Juan presents a youthful, merry Juan
at the height of his profligacy, Da Ponte’s story to Mozart’s music details the
events leading up to Giovanni’s death, as he willingly goes to hell, refusing
to repent for his crimes, including his seductions and the murder of the Commendatore.
Despite his licentiousness, Don Giovanni is a well-educated man of the Enlightenment,
an egotistical hedonist yet a skeptic, who fervently believes things are as he
can perceive within the reach of his senses, a trait that fuels his lack of remorse
towards any of his evil deeds. Many critics have compared the
character of Don Giovanni to Prometheus, who also suffers because he refuses to
give into a higher power. As Stuart Curran has argued, the Titan Prometheus, depicted
in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Vinctus, is a particularly pervasive political
icon for the Romantic period, representing the ultimate triumph of liberty through
steadfastness and courage against the evils of a tyrannical regime (Curran, "The
Political Prometheus," 260-284). Goethe, Byron, Shelley, and other artists such
as Salvatore Víganò and Beethoven all wrote or composed significant works on the
subject. In a letter to Murray in 1816, Byron notes the significant impact of
the Titan upon Manfred and his other works: "The Prometheus if not exactly
in my plan has always been so much in my head, that I can easily conceive its
influence over all or anything that I have written" (Letter to John Murray, BLJ,
IV, 174, n.1). While seemingly a large conceptual jump, Coleridge points out in
chapter 23 of Biographia Literaria that the figure of Prometheus in chains
and the unrueful Don Giovanni are similarly unyielding and noble in the face of
torment. Commenting on the final scene of Shadwell’s Jacobean drama The Libertine
(1676), Coleridge writes: "[w]ho also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous
consistency with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second Prometheus?"
(II, 219) Although Coleridge is speaking of Aeschylus’s drama, it is nearly impossible
to read excerpts from Shadwell’s play of Don John (Giovanni), which is based upon
the same sources in Tirso and Molière as Da Ponte’s libretto, and not think of
Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Like other dramas of the seventeenth century,
Shadwell’s drama bears much resemblance to the masques of Ben Jonson, and in this
capacity contains many musical elements, including a dancing chorus of devils
who sing in a verse structure similar to that of Shelley’s Furies: "Let 'em come,
let 'em come,/ To an eternal dreadful doom,/ Let 'em come, let 'em come." Yet,
it is Mozart’s operatic treatment of the character of Don Giovanni which more
closely registers with Shelley’s Prometheus and, also, his mirror opposite, Jupiter,
especially in the latter’s descent into Hell at the beginning of act III. Like
Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound includes characters
of differing depth and moral inclination that fit well into the comic formula
of the opera buffa. Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the unearthly Spirits and
Hours strewn throughout the drama clearly are "serious" characters representing
the affirmative forces of love and hope, whereas the Furies, as the representatives
of evil and tyranny, are "comic" figures. However, the characters of Prometheus,
Jupiter, and Demogorgon are more dramatically complex and ambiguous: in their
doubling of each other, they qualify more definitively as mezzi caratteri
like Don Giovanni than any of the more serious or comic characters that surround
them. For instance, Jupiter’s final speech in act III, scene i, which relates
his descent into the abyss with Demogorgon, mimics the progression of Prometheus’
dialogue throughout act I. With his cries "Ai! Ai!/ . . . I sink . . . /Dizzily
down—ever, forever, down," a disempowered Jupiter is cast down from his throne,
the subject rather than the tyrant of fate embodied in the figure of Demogorgon
or "Eternity" (III, i, 79-83;52). Throughout Jupiter’s dialogue, Shelley continues
to make use of the volcanic imagery associated throughout act II with Demogorgon
and revolutionary change. Although the scene is serious, Shelley’s presentation
of Jupiter’s descent is ironic, further revealing Prometheus and Jupiter as essentially
opposite versions of the same character. Stuart Curran calls Jupiter’s dialogue
"the stuff of grand heroic drama, full of pomp and posture, whose false style
betrays the true nature of the despot. . . . It is the fall of tragedy itself"
(Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism, 201). Indeed, in the face
of his punishment, Jupiter, the tyrant, suddenly becomes a slave, appealing for
mercy from Prometheus, who, at this point, still remains enchained in the Caucasus.
Once he realizes that mercy is impossible, Jupiter, like Prometheus, is ultimately
noble, resolving himself to his fate, even as he is slowly swallowed up by flame
and smoke. Both the tone and the imagery of Shelley’s depiction
of Jupiter’s fall from power are reminiscent of Don Giovanni’s descent into Hell
in the penultimate scene of Mozart’s opera. In this scene, Don Giovanni, refusing
to repent for his crimes, willingly accompanies the Ghost-Statue of the Commendatore
to Hell:
| (Scene 17. Don Giovanni,
Leporello and the statue of the Commendatore; then off-stage chorus. Don Giovanni
returns followed by the Commendatore.)
| |
Commendatore | |
. . . So answer me—will you dine
With me, in your turn? |
. . . Rispondimi: verrai.
Tu a cenar meco? |
| Leporello |
| (from a distance, trembling,
to the Commendatore) | |
Oh no! | Oibó! |
| Too busy – please excuse him. |
Tempo no ha. . . scusate. | |
Don Giovanni | |
And why should I refuse him?
For fear I do not know. |
A torto di viltate
Tacciato mai saró! |
| . . . |
| No man shall call me coward,
I have
resolved: I’ll go! | Ho
fermo il core in petto,
No[n] ho timor: verró! | |
. . . | | ...I
despise repentance.
Off with you! Leave my sight! |
No, no, ch'io non mi pento:
Vanne lontan da me! |
| . . . |
| Commendatore |
| Now dawns your endless night! |
Ah, tempo più non v'è! | |
(Fire and earthquake all around. The Commendatore disappears.) |
| . . . |
| Don Giovanni |
| Who rends my soul with suffering?
Who turns my blood to bitterness?
Must madness, pain, and terror
Possess
me evermore? | Chi l'anima
mi lacera! . . .
Chi m'agita le viscere! . . .
Che strazio! ohimé! che
smania!
Che inferno! . . . che terror! . . . | |
. . . | | Invisible
Chorus | | Take the
reward of evil.
Worse yet remains in store! |
Tutto a tue colpe è poco.
Vieni: c'è un mal peggior!
| | (The
flames increase. Don Giovanni sinks into them.)(102-4). |
When staged, the effect of Don Giovanni being engulfed by the
flames of Hell is dramatically formidable, as the D-minor chords of the orchestra
reinforce the happenings on the stage with a powerful crescendo of blaring brass.
It is worth noting that in the scene of Mozart’s opera previous to Don Giovanni’s
fall, a similar ominous clamor of D-minor chords accompanies the voice of the
Ghost-Statue of the Commendatore, whose entrance and dramatic recitative are analogous
to the arrival and speech of the Phantasm of Jupiter in act I of Shelley’s lyrical
drama. Although Peacock lists Figaro as Shelley’s favorite opera, Shelley
saw Don Giovanni at least six times between 1817 and 1818. Seated in a
box at the King’s Theatre in 1817, it would have been difficult for Shelley to
ignore this impressive ending. The parallels between Giovanni’s descent and Jupiter’s
fall are striking. While no scene directions accompany Jupiter’s descent in act
III, Shelley’s imagery suggests the eruption of earthquake and fire. Also, while
Prometheus Unbound contains few, if any, sexual overtones, the dissolute
Don Giovanni, like Jupiter, represents a kind of tyranny—in his case, an excess
of the appetites of the senses over reason. Through the moral of Mozart’s opera—
"Questo è il fin di chi fa mal" ("Sinners end as they begin") (106) found
in the final chorus of act II, "[t]he enlightenment is making its point that seduction
leads inevitably to more violently anti-social consequences. . ." (Brophy 84).
Although Prometheus is the hero of suffering and strength for the Romantics, Shelley’s
addition of the anti-hero Jupiter to the equation of the drama makes a sharply
skeptical warning of its own. As many critics have noted, through the doubling
of the human qualities of Prometheus and Jupiter, Shelley subtly emphasizes the
lack of distance between the tyrant and the slave, and also the cyclical nature
of time through periods of liberty and tyranny. When he first
saw Don Giovanni at the King’s Theatre with Peacock in 1817, Shelley, like
many opera-goers of the past two centuries, found the opera’s designation as a
"dramma giocoso" slightly misleading, though Peacock informed him that
the opera "was composite, more comedy than tragedy" (Peacock 45-6). Reporting
on what was probably Shelley’s first attendance at one of Mozart’s operas, Peacock
writes: "[a]fter the killing of the Commendatore, [Shelley] said, ‘Do you call
this comedy?’ By degrees, he became absorbed in the music and action. . ." (45-6).
Although critics, like Peacock, tend to discuss Don Giovanni as a "tragi-comic"
opera, Michael Robinson observes that the opera possesses all the elements of
a comic opera, "according to the 18th-century understanding of the term, and Mozart
and da Ponte might have been puzzled had they had any premonition of the future
debates that were to take place over whether they thought their opera was comic
or tragic" (Robinson 9). Nevertheless, as Robinson points out, Mozart’s Don
Giovanni, like Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, relies on a blending of
genres, making use of tragedy, comedy, pastoral and romance to tell a story through
words, music and drama. In the hands of Mozart, this blending of genres creates
a powerful aesthetic effect through the means of music that makes an often ironic
commentary on the tyrannies and inequalities of human society. For instance, the
mocking tone of Figaro’s rebellious aria "Se vuol ballare, signor Contino" ("If
you want to dance, sir Count") in act I of Le nozze di Figaro immediately
sets the barber Figaro apart as a sympathetic character against the adulterous,
authoritarian Count Almaviva even before the latter enters the stage:
[Figaro’s aria] is a direct expression of the will to revolt. Even so, it is not
the substance of what he says but the form in which he says it that is of prime
importance. In the course of the opera, it is not the revolt of servants against
master that brings about the comic resolution, but the very convention of comedy
itself that love conquers all. . . . Mozart’s aesthetic form has this advantage
over that of Beaumarchais: Mozart makes social change appear not only desirable
but harmonious by disarming his audience with music that penetrates their very
being. (Tetreault 157) In this way, music, contributing "pacing,
control, point of view, and ironic commentary," allows Mozart to create new dimension
and "mold new meanings for the opera" from the original play by Beaumarchais (Corse
18). Similarly, Shelley’s manipulation of genres throughout Prometheus
Unbound creates a controlled sense of expectation and contrast that permits
him to expand the area of his drama progressively towards his vision of universal
harmony in act IV. Shelley’s lyrical drama "begins on the stage of high tragedy"
in act I, then moves on, in and out of the pastoral and the epic in acts II and
III, before erupting into the lyrical profusion of act IV. Yet, like Mozart’s
Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro, Prometheus Unbound poises
between the tragic and the comic, making use of tragic elements at different moments
for serious or ironic effect. With the fall of Jupiter and Prometheus’ official
reunification with Asia, by the end of act III Shelley’s lyric drama moves towards
the comic as it embraces the resolution of a happy ending. After the music of
the "curvèd shell" generates the reformation of the human world, Shelley turns
to the tropes of pastoral drama to illustrate the idyllic bower-like cave to which
Prometheus, Asia, Ione and Panthea retire. Proclaiming the end of the masque that
marked Jupiter’s reign and the beginning of a new pastoral age of liberty for
humanity, the Spirit of the Hour declares: "The loathsome mask has fallen, the
man remains/ Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless. . . "(III, iv, 193-5).
Yet, like his ultimate vision of harmony in act IV, a register of skepticism marks
the otherwise positive ending of act III. Despite identifying humanity’s potential
to "oversoar/ The loftiest star of unascended Heaven" if it were not for "chance,
and death, and mutability," the Spirit of the Hour also warns that human beings,
though "yet free from guilt or pain," are not "[p]assionless[,]" suggesting that
they still can succumb to the will for power and deceit that leads to tyranny
(III, iv, 198-204). IV. While
in aim a closet drama, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound does not signify the
poet’s retreat either from the theater or the theatrical. Mixing genres and blending
the lyrical with the discursive, Shelley creates a narrative structure that is
at once internalized and theatrical as it paradoxically performs itself inside
the mind of the reader. Jeffrey Cox argues that Shelley’s lyrical drama, like
Hunt’s masque, The Descent of Liberty, "draws upon a strong theatrical
tradition to imagine a stage beyond the theater. . . where [there can be] a proper
balance between word and stage effect" (127). For Shelley, the Italian opera offered
a decisive method through which to visualize a new way in which poetry could come
together with music, drama and stagecraft to form a more mentalistic, imaginative
kind of dramatic experience. In Prometheus Unbound, the most fervent realization
of this type of internalized staging occurs in the final act, a jubilatory anti-masque
that illustrates the literal de-masking of an ancien régime and the introduction
of a new world order. Although Peter Conrad notes that act IV "defies the stage
and abstracts itself into music . . . render[ing] the drama lyrical" through a
"symphon[y] of science[,]" the fourth act of Shelley’s lyrical drama nonetheless
derives many of its elements and devices from musical and gestural drama, particularly
the ballet d’action, oratorio and masque, and thus is fundamentally performative
(Conrad 72). Indeed, as Stuart Curran and Ronald Tetreault have explored at length,[10]
both the thematic conception and dramaturgical arrangement of act IV of Prometheus
Unbound have strong affinities with the tradition of ballet d’action
found in the works of Jean-Georges Noverre and also its Italian cousin in the
coreodramme of Salvatore Viganò, whose choreography the Shelleys and Claire
admired in Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia in Milan at La Scala in 1818.[11]
In act IV, the profusion of lyric forms gives the impression that
time itself has been suspended while the Spirits and Hours sing. Yet, the "dark
Forms and Shadows" who dance "by confusedly, singing" do not symbolize the ending
of time itself, but rather the end of Jupiter’s reign, and the commencement of
a new time in "Shelley’s post-revolutionary vision [in which] humanity can bring
time under a measure of control."[12]
A larger-scale version of the sextet of spirits which closes act I, act IV moves
with the quickness and confusedness of a full Mozartian concerted finale. The
variety of lyrical forms contained with the act reveals its function as an immense
bridal song to Asia and Prometheus, beginning with the complex choreography of
Hours and Spirits to the love duet between the Earth and Moon to Demogorgon’s
final epilogic blessing. The lyrical harmonization of the universe pervades all
levels of the drama, uniting the mental drama of Prometheus with the external
drama of a transformed world, signaling the affirmative revolutionary edict of
a new age for humanity. Evocative of Beethoven’s majestic choral setting of Schiller’s
"O Freunde, nicht diese Töne" in the final movement (Presto) of his ninth symphony,
the assemblage of voices in act IV of Prometheus Unbound achieves a vivid
effect through the combination of music, poetry and dance, enticing the reader
to imagine a cosmological stage upon which Shelley places his drama of universal
harmony. Ultimately, the poetic form of Shelley’s Prometheus
Unbound demonstrates the poet’s ability to combine music and poetry to create
a mental drama that is nonetheless radically performative. Utilizing music as
a dramatic tool, Shelley’s operatic employment of discursive and lyrical language
and his opera-like methods of characterization all coalesce in a project that
strains the limits of poetic form into the realm of musical drama. Yet, Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound thrives upon the same "unremitting, invigorating tension"
that Peter Conrad identifies as the driving force of opera between the "basic
incompatibilities of nonverbal imagery of music and the tendency of words to try
to pin down meaning" (Qtd. in Corse 13). That is, in his lyrical drama, Shelley
turns to music and musical themes when language is no longer an effective mode
of aesthetic mediation to communicate the desired dramatic spectacle and revolutionary
ideals to the reader’s imagination. The lyrical drama in its various forms, whether
the opera, ballet or oratorio, provides Shelley with a design through which to
establish the revolutionary ethos of a transformed world. Despite its seeming
anti-theatricality, Jeffrey Cox points out that Prometheus Unbound and
the other "mythological plays of the Hunt circle are not a rejection of the stage
but an attempt to remake it" through imagining a different kind of dramatic experience
in which music, poetry, and the other sister arts can be combined (Cox 127).
In this way, the expressive capacity of music and its links to both language and
thought provides Shelley with a unique method through which to imagine poetry’s
power to effect change. As a result, through Shelley’s use of a characterization
and mode akin to opera and other forms of musical drama, the poetic form of Prometheus
Unbound defines and determines the dramatic action, making the reader complicit
in a closet drama that is nonetheless theatrical in origin, treading the borders
between the tragic and the comic.
|
