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XV.—Shelley's Swell-Foot the Tyrant in Relation to Contemporary Political Satires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Newman I. White
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Extract

Few readers of Shelley devote much time to Oedipus Tyrannus, or Swell-foot the Tyrant, and for a very good reason. Intrinsically, the play is not worth it. Mrs. Shelley, ever careful of the poet's reputation, warns us not to take this piece for more than was meant. We are indebted for its inception, and for some of its devices, to the grunting of a drove of pigs beneath Shelley's window. This fact, notwithstanding what we owe to equally trivial experiences persistently reported of Newton and Dick Whittington, adds nothing to the gravity with which the poem is generally read. The revolting setting, with its thigh-bones and skulls, the outrageous characters introduced, such as a sow-gelder, a chorus of swine, and a hoydenish queen, together with extravagant speeches and actions, sometimes in a serious mood of protest, more often with the hysteric sort of grotesquerie which was Shelley's nearest approach to humor—these factors have combined to make most readers regard the poem as a failure even when taken for no more than was meant. Shelley's serious devotion to liberty could never allow him to treat it in burlesque fashion without a touch of hectic incongruity. Byron could have succeeded much better with Shelley's material, and Fielding could have made an uproarious farce of it, but not Shelley.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 1921 , pp. 332 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1921

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References

1 Other cartoons and satires are reproduced, quoted, or mentioned by title in J. F. Molloy's Court Life Below Stairs, iv, 315 pp., Lewis Melville's An Injured Queen, ii, 473, and Dowden's Life of Shelley, ii, 346, footnote. The note by Professor Dowden which is quoted herewith, is the only reference to these satires by writers on Shelley: “The Rat and the Leech of Shelley's drama were common property of the pamphleteers and versemongers. See the picture in which these vermin feed on John Bull's corpse and on the Tree of Liberty in ‘The Queen and Magna Charta’ (Dolby, 1820).” It is evident from this that Dodwen did not perceive the full significance of the relationship.

2 Toynbee, Glimpses of the Twenties, p. 49. See also Melville, An Injured Queen, ii, 511.

3 Quoted as “Strayed and Missing” in Molloy, op. cit., iv, 321.

4 Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, 11, 280.

5 Woodberry, Shelley's Poetical Works, iii, 470, 474.

6 Molloy, op. cit., iv, 319.

7 A Study of Shelley's Poetry, p. 207.

8 Mrs. Shelley in her Note to the poem (1839) erroneously says Castlereagh, but see Harriet Martineau: History of the Peace, Book ii, chapter ii.

9 Trial of Queen Caroline, 3 vol. 1820.

10 Op. cit., 206, 8.

11 Farmer and Henry: Slang and its Analogues, etc.

12 A. Slap at Slop, 1822, p. 26.

13 I, 152.

14 Toynbee, op. cit. p. 66.

15 See Royal Rumping, p. 14, Queen's Matrimonial Ladder, John Bull Peppering the Italian Rascals, (cartoon) The Queen that Jack Found, etc.

16 Toynbee, op. cit. p. 66.

17 Two solicitors, a Mr. Powell of London and Vimercati of Milan, were used in the taking of evidence, but they were less conspicuous in both trial and satires than Browne and Cooke. Lewis Melville: An Injured Queen, ii, 389-96.

19 I, 352 ff.