ABSTRACT
Drafted in mid–late April 1820 as an ironic counterpart to Arethusa arose, which S. contributed to Mary’s drama Proserpine. While Arethusa arose remains relatively faithful to Ovid’s account of the innocent nymph Arethusa, who is pursued from Greece to Sicily by the lustful river god Alpheus, these lines appear to develop the version of the story given in Pausanias, Description of Greece V vii 2:
They say that there was a hunter called Alpheius, who fell in love with Arethusa, who was herself a huntress. Arethusa, unwilling to marry, crossed, they say, to the island opposite Syracuse called Ortygia, and there turned from a woman to a spring. Alpheius too was changed by his love into the river.
S., in these lines, has Alpheus and Arethusa as mortals who are transformed into semi-divinities through the destructive action of vanity and frustrated desire, incorporating Ovid’s account of Alpheus’ pursuit of Arethusa, but breaking off before the two reach Sicily. GM observes the extent to which S. is unsympathetic to Arethusa, no longer presented as Alpheus’ innocent victim (as in Ovid), or as an unwilling bride (as in Pausanias), but rather as a vain and conceited character; Alpheus, by contrast, is transformed from Ovid’s lustful aggressor into a lovelorn victim (Stand v (1961) 2–3). GM suggests that S. took the hint for this altered perspective from Met.: ‘Ovid had hinted that Arethusa was rather prudish (she says, “crimque placere putavi” — “I thought it wrong to be attractive” [Met. v 584]), and Shelley disliked prudery as much as he did vanity’. S. evidently did not intend this version of the story for Proserpine; whether he ever conceived its publication, or whether it was simply a jeu d’esprit, remains unknown.