Prometheus Unbound

Prometheus Unbound is a lyrical drama in four acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1820.[4] The work, considered Shelley's masterpiece, was a reply to Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, in which the Titan Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give to mortals and was punished by Zeus (Jupiter).[4] Shelley rewrites the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods for humans and was severely punished as a result, as a political allegory about republicanism, authoritarianism, and the power of love.[12]

Structure and Form

Prometheus Unbound is structured as a lyrical drama in four acts.[2] Shelley wrote the play to be a closet drama, which is a play not performed on stage but rather played out in the reader's mind.[11][12] Prometheus Unbound is an example of an epic poem.[14] Epic poetry borrowed themes from classical, Greek epics, such as The Iliad or The Odyssey by Homer, which focus on subjects like fate, heroism, conflict between mortals and deities, military combat, and journeys into other realms.[14]

Plot and Characters

The Titan Prometheus has been chained to a precipice in the Indian Caucuses for all eternity by the tyrant god Jupiter, as punishment for giving humanity the gift of fire.[13] He has been imprisoned for three thousand years thus far, and every day an eagle is sent by Jupiter to peck out his organs, which grow back overnight.[13] At night, the sea nymphs Panthea and Ione—daughters of the Ocean and sisters of Prometheus's wife, Asia—watch over Prometheus from the mountainside.[13]

Prometheus, tortured, is tempted to yield to Jupiter's tyranny but instead forgives him.[4] In this act, Shelley suggests, lies his salvation.[4] Panthea and her sister Asia, symbol of ideal love, decide to free Prometheus by confronting Demogorgon, the volcanic power of the underworld, who vanquishes Jupiter in a violent eruption.[4] Prometheus is reunited with his beloved Asia, and the liberation of human society is foretold.[4]

Relationship to Aeschylus

Inspired by the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, Shelley's play serves as a sort of sequel, matching its Greek predecessor in stature and pure poetic power.[3][6] However, in Aeschylus's play, Prometheus and Jupiter eventually reconcile, but they don't in Shelley's version.[11] Shelley rejects this ending because he does not believe that the oppressed should have to reconcile with their oppressors.[12] Shelley felt that the reconciliation cheapened the sacrifice Prometheus performed, and he also didn't wish to simply retell the original play.[11]

Major Themes

Authority and Resistance

Shelley's Prometheus symbolizes resistance against authoritarian forces, even if that resistance leads to punishment or isolation.[17] Shelley himself was a non-conformist and a radical thinker who was disgusted by the rigid social conventions and class systems of the nineteenth century, which he felt kept the poor enslaved and placed restrictions on the human mind, body, and spirit.[17] In the play, Prometheus's rejection of Jupiter's tyrannical rule and willingness to aid the races of men directly alludes to the outgrowth of democratic ideals born in the late eighteenth century and carried into the early nineteenth century.[16]

Knowledge and Freedom

In the classical story of Prometheus, the Titan is punished by the ruler of the Greek Gods, Zeus, for giving humanity the gift of fire.[17] By giving humans fire Prometheus gives mankind the ability to survive in the wilderness and to make use of the tools of his environment.[17] Fire in the story thus symbolizes knowledge and civilization, while the fact that Prometheus is punished for his gift to mankind has traditionally suggested[17] the conflict between enlightenment and oppressive authority.

Christianity and Forgiveness

Despite his rejection of conventional religion, Shelley fuses the classical story of Prometheus with Christian allegory, referring particularly to the teachings of Christ and his message that love and forgiveness—rather than worldly powers—are the true strengths of humanity.[17] Suffering over a long period of time leads him from curses and hatred of Jove to wisdom and feelings of pity for the tyrant god.[15]

Nature and the Sublime

Shelley viewed nature as a source of poetic and spiritual inspiration, a fact reflected in his extensive use of nature imagery in Prometheus Unbound.[17] The Romantics felt that there was a natural sympathy between emotions, imagination, and the natural world and that natural images were the most intuitive metaphors for describing emotional and psychological states.[17]

Composition and Setting

Prometheus Unbound, Shelley's most ambitious poem, was written between September 1818 and December 1819 (with later additions) and published in August 1820 as the title poem[20] of a collection. This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla[5], where during a bright and beautiful spring' that Shelley 'gave up his whole time to the composition' of Prometheus Unbound.[19]

Shelley declared Prometheus Unbound completed—in three acts—in April 1819, describing it as 'a drama, with characters & a mechanism of a kind yet unattempted'.[19] But work continued and he later added a fourth act, finally finishing the poem in Florence in December 1819.[19]

Shelley's Preface

In his preface, Shelley distinguished his Prometheus from Milton's Satan: The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest.[5][9] But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.[5][9]

Publication and Reception

On This Day in 1820: P. B. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with Other Poems is published (14 August)[19] by Charles and James Ollier. The volume contains, in addition to the lyrical drama, the following shorter poems: 'The Sensitive Plant', 'A Vision of the Sea', 'Ode to Heaven', 'An Exhortation', 'Ode to the West Wind', 'An Ode, written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their Liberty', 'The Cloud', 'To a Skylark', and 'Ode to Liberty'.[19]

Shelley himself thought it would sell no more than 20 copies, and John Gisborne remarked that Prometheus Unbound was never intended for more than five or six persons.[18] Although he was a prolific writer, his poetry was not a commercial success during his lifetime.[14]

Critical Assessment

Prometheus Unbound is the apotheosis of Shelley's poetic achievements, lauded by the poet as 'the most perfect of my productions'.[19] This brilliant but uneven work represented the culmination of the poet's lyrical gifts and political thought.[4] Prometheus Unbound is a tale of tyranny, rebellion, and rebirth, which replaces oppressive hierarchies with utopian egalitarianism, a development Shelley wished to see replicated in England and abroad.[16]

Legacy and Influence

In commemoration of the bicentenary of Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1820), this comparative essay focuses on the reception of the lyrical drama as a revolutionary manifesto in Spanish-American nations.[18] As an endorsement of non-violent revolution and social equality, Prometheus Unbound has been indelibly inscribed into the radical political and literary history of Spanish-American nations.[18]

With Prometheus and Asia, as well as the spirits of Earth and Moon rejoined, Shelley imagines a return to primordial balance and harmony.[11] Demogorgon celebrates the rebirth of the world through love and its new regime of "Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance".[12]