ABSTRACT
[Shelley] Queen Mab (1813); Theological Inquirer, I (March 1815), 34–39; (April 1815), 105–110; (May 1815), 205–209; (July 1815), 358–362. The story in the first sentence about August von Kotzebue, the German dramatist (1761–1819), owning and recommending Queen Mab, sounds very contrived, but it would be worthwhile to investigate the possibility that Shelley may at least have sent a copy of Queen Mab to Kotzebue in 1813. If the series of reviewing letters was, in fact, written by Shelley (or by someone with whom he was friendly at the time), the great value of the summary and comments is that they would represent (or reflect) Shelley’s own view of Queen Mab at the distance of two years. Note the comparison with Milton’s Paradise Lost (p. 38) and the closing quotations on page 362 from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (V.i.12) and Milton’s Comus (lines 476ff.).
