Shelleys prometheus unbound

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound A VARIORUM EDITION SHELLEY'S Prometheus Unbound A VARIORUM EDITION EDITED BY Lawrence John Zillman 19S9 University of Washington Press SEATTLE Copyright 1959 by the University of Wanhington !** Second printing, with corrections, 1960 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number* 50-90M PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEfilCA Preface IT WAS EAULY in my work on the present volume that I read the comment of George S Hillard (1345) with respect to the 1805 Henry James Todd edition of Spenser's works; "This is what is technically called a variorum edition, containing a reprint of all the labours of the previous editors There is a great deal of learned rubbish in it; much trouble is often wasted , in elucidating what is plain, and really difficult points are frequently passed by in silence" (Hillard, Spenser* I, v-vi) It soon became evident that Shelley, like Spenser, was not without his 9' tribute of "learned rubbish, which may have led Douglas Bush to suggest that "one of the worst things about Shelley is the effect he has on his admirers; nearly all of them are reduced to a common denominator, of which the outward evidence is perhaps a wild glitter in the eye" (Mythology, p 156) But in the case of Pronmtlieus Unbound* at least, the judg- ment of Kenneth Neil Cameron is, in the main, both true and pertinent; "The divergence of [the views on Prometheus Unbound] results, it should be emphasized, not from critical caprice but from genuine difficulty Pmmethem Unbound is unquestionably one of the most profound and subtle of the great English poems And difference and divergence in its interpretation are notas might at first appear- leading us farther from it but closer to it" ("Shelley Scholarship/' p 100) Too frequently, however, the "difference and divergence" in interpretation available to the student are those of a few major names only, and to suggest, as does Bennett Weaver, that for critical comment on Prometheus Unbound we must "follow the way of the books for there are few articles drama" (Rom&ntic Poets, p 187), is to overlook a fertile body of smaller, but certainly not always minor, studies or brief comments whose impact on our understanding of the poem, and of the changing written on this attitudes toward it, is negligible only because they are in large part incomprehensive variorum treatment of the full range of these writings would appear to be the corrective to this situation For, although accessible, A vii viii Matthew Arnold in 1888 could argue that "Shelby i not a classic, various readings are to be no ted with earnest attention" ("Shelley*" p, 206), the need for such a treatment was evident to Swinburne some twenty years earlier He wrote: It is seldom that the work of a scholiast has been The first is noon wanted an collected edition of his works in Shell** y*n had many gapn and