[It would seem as if some proposal as to Charles the First had emanated from Mr. Ollier; for in a letter to that gentleman dated " Pisa, Feb. 22nd, 1821" (Shelley Memorials, pp. 154-5), Shelley writes thus: " I doubt about Charles the First; but, if I do write it, it shall be the birth of severe and high feelings. You are very welcome to it on the terms you mention, and, when once I see and feel that I can write it, it is already written." In another letter to Mr. Ollier, dated "September 25th, 1821," and also published in the Shelley Memorials (p. 159), we read,-" Charles the First is conceived, but not born. Unless I am sure of making something good, the play will not be written. Pride, that ruined Satan, will kill Charles the First, for his midwife would be only less than him whom thunder has made greater." He does not mention to Mr. Ollier the misad venture to which he had alluded, in writing, on the 5th of June, 1821, to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne,-in the following terms: "My unfortunate box! it contained a chaos of the elements of Charles I. If the idea of the creator had been packed up with them, it would have shared the same fate; and that, I am afraid, has undergone another sort of shipwreck (Essays &c., 1840, Vol II, p. 294). Again on the 10th of April, 1822, he writes to Mr. Gisborne (Ibid., p. 339)—“I have done some of Charles I.; but although the poetry succeeded very well, I cannot seize on the conception of the subject as a whole, and seldom now touch the canvas." He had already, in January, 1822, written to Peacock, “I am now engaged on Charles the First, and a devil of a nut it is to crack (Fraser's Magazine, March, 1860, p. 318). Mrs. Shelley records in her note on the Poems of 1822 that Shelley believed the subject of Charles I. to be "adapted for a drama," and that he had recommended it to her, when he had encouraged her "to attempt a play." She adds that he "proceeded slowly, and threw it aside for... The Triumph of Life,' on which he was employed at the last.” An explanation of this languid procedure may be found in Shelley's letter to Godwin dated "July 25th, 1818" (Essays &c., Vol. II, p. 127): he writes "I am unfortunately little skilled in English history, and the interest which it excites in me is so feeble, that I find it a duty to attain merely to that general knowledge of it which is indispensable." The fragments given to the world by Mrs. Shelley occupy but twelve pages of the Posthumous Poems; and it is to Mr. Rossetti that we are indebted for deciphering and arranging the bulk of the fragments in their present form, and also for certain emendations and additions obtained by close scrutiny of the passages which Mrs. Shelley did publish. Mr. Rossetti's modest expression "not without some trouble" scarcely represents the labour and ingenuity required for such a task as this of transcribing from one of Shelley's chaotic note-books. In regard to the speakers' designations and the heading of scenes, I have followed Mr. Rossetti where his edition differs from Mrs. Shelley's, because, having worked upon the larger mass of the fragments, I presume he found good reason for the changes; but in the details of the text I have adopted whichever seemed most Shelley-like, -knowing, from the nature of the source from which the text is derived, that much in the way of punctuation &c., must have been supplied conjecturally by both editors.-H. B. F.] DRAMATIS PERSONE KING CHARLES I. QUEEN HENRIETTA. LAUD, Archbishop of Canterbury. WENTWORTH, Earl of Strafford. LORD COTTINGTON, LORD WESTON. LORD COVENTRY. WILLIAMS, Bishop of Lincoln. Secretary LYTTELTON. JUXON. ST. JOHN. ARCHY, the Court Fool. HAMPDEN. PYM. CROMWELL. CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER. SIR HARRY VANE the younger. LEIGHTON. BASTWICK PRYNNE. Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursuivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk. [The list of Dramatis Personæ given on the preceding page is certainly not a complete list of all the persons who would have figured in the tragedy, had it been finished; but it seemed to me that it would be useful to insert such a list of the persons who actually do appear (either speaking or spoken to) in the existing fragments. I need hardly say that there is no authority for such a list except the fragments as here given from Mrs. Shelley's and Mr. Rossetti's editions, and the records of History. The only innovations I have consciously made, without separate specification, on the portions of the play deciphered by Mr. Rossetti, are the substitution of a small h for a capital in his and he when applied to God, and the spelling of aye with a final e. These changes I believe to accord with Shelley's practice; and, as regards aye, there is the authority of the Posthumous Poems, the word being so printed in that volume in what is line 149 of Scene I in the present edition. I presume the words here and there placed within square brackets are supplied by Mr. Rossetti, to fill actual gaps, that the words which he has marked as doubtful by a parenthetic note of interrogation represent, not gaps, but indistinct words in the MS.-H. B. F. and CHARLES THE FIRST. SCENE I. THE MASK OF THE INNS OF COURT.1 A PURSUIVANT. Place, for the Marshal of the Mask!? FIRST CITIZEN.3 What thinkest thou of this quaint mask which turns, The night to day, and London to a place SECOND CITIZEN. And Hell to Heaven. 5 Eight years are gone, And they seem hours, since in this populous street 10 Anarchy, it has seemed to me safe to adopt that spelling throughout this fragment. In Mrs. Shelley's editions these persons of the drama figure as First Speaker, Second Speaker, and Third Speaker (a Youth.) |