poems 981scientifical.” Even after he has been warned by his
university professors that his favorite authors are
obsolete, he “does not feel inclined to commence
the study of any modern system.” He finds the small
part of the course of lectures in natural philosophy
that he manages to take in “incomprehensible,” and
he becomes “disgusted with the science of natural
philosophy.” The reader is left to doubt his later
rather cursory claim that “natural philosophy and
particularly chemistry” provided his “sole occupa-
tion” leading up to the creature’s formation and
conception, particularly given Victor’s account of
the “almost supernatural enthusiasm” that he admits
“animated” his project.
Hilary Englert
SHELLEy, PErCy bySSHE poems
(ca. 1813–1822)
Considered one of the six major poets of the English
romantic era, Percy Bysshe Shelley was a particularly
controversial writer during his own lifetime but
gained popularity in the decades following his death,
largely through the efforts of his second wife, the
novelist Mary Shelley. Although he was born into a
conservative aristocratic family, Shelley displayed an
uncompromising and liberal idealism from an early
age, much to the dismay of his father, a member of
Parliament. A proponent of atheism and free love,
Shelley continually questioned authority in his
poetry, essays, translations, and dramas. Common
themes in his work include ambition, grief, love,
nature, religion, and the stages of life. His out-
spoken criticism of church and state led to his being
denied custody of his two eldest children after their
mother, his first wife, committed suicide; he lived
the rest of his life in nomadic exile on the Continent.
Shelley was a close friend of his fellow poet George
Gordon Byron, Lord Byron, and an early pro-
ponent of the work of John Keats, another poetic
acquaintance. His work influenced such later poets
as Robert Browning; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Dante
Gabriel Rossetti; and William Butler Yeats, as
well as the labor movement in England. His life was
cut short when, shortly before his 30th birthday, he
drowned in a storm off the coast of Italy.
Caroline E. Kimberly
ambItIon in the Poems of
Percy Bysshe shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s radical liberalism showed its
strongest force in his poetry by addressing the blind
ambition of his country’s leaders in the post-Napo-
leonic regency era. He aimed his critique at all of
those who he believed had been corrupted by power,
whether that power lay in a noble bloodline, politi-
cal clout, or religious fervor. Such views made him
extremely unpopular with conservatives; as a result,
several of his poems were suppressed until after his
death and the deaths of those men whose ambition
the works directly critiqued.
One of the poems suppressed until the 1839
publication of Shelley’s Poetical Works was “England
in 1819.” The royal family, the military, the Church
of England, and Parliament are all targeted here.
This sonnet condemns those who have been led by
ambition and avarice to neglect, violate, or attack
those whom they have sworn to protect. “Golden
and sanguine laws” (l. 10) are to blame, offering jus-
tification to the ambitions of princes who drain their
country dry, an army and senate who run roughshod
over the civil liberties of civilians, and a religion that
conveniently neglects the ideals of its founder. Shel-
ley’s proffered and potentially treasonous solution
is his hope that these collective ambitions can be
sent to their graves by the specter of revolutionary
uprising.
A second suppressed poem, “The Mask of Anar-
chy,” was not published until 1832. This work was
written in reaction to the Peterloo Massacre. The
“Massacre at Manchester” took place on August 16,
1819, when a group of drunken cavalrymen violently
broke up a peaceable demonstration of several hun-
dred working-class families calling for parliamen-
tary reform; at least six civilians died, and 80 were
wounded. “The Mask of Anarchy” puts the blame
for this horrific event on specific Tory leaders, made
“fat” by feasting on “human hearts” (ll. 9, 12). By
using the double meaning of the word mask as his
theme, Shelley makes an allegory (or “masque”) out
of the actions of his country’s leaders and exposes
the masks they wear in order to disguise the cunning
ambition behind their political maneuvers. Char-
acters in his allegory include Murder, Fraud, and
Hypocrisy, “All disguised . . . / Like Bishops, lawyers,