ABSTRACT
The Cyclops could conceivably have been written at almost any time between May 1818 and November 1819. The Cyclops was first published in 1824. The Cyclops was evidently among the major unpublished works which she transcribed, and it is clear that she left her copy with Hunt in Italy after her own return to England. The Cyclops is the only example of a satyr-play that survives complete. A satyr-play was normally the fourth play in a tragic tetralogy, and was characterised by a comic burlesque manner deriving mainly from the behaviour of the pleasure-loving but cowardly and unreliable satyrs. The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit on this wild shore their solitary caves, and one of these named Polypheme has caught us To be his slaves; and so, for all delight of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody, we keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks.
