ABSTRACT
… [W]hat drew Shelley to drama was the very idea of motion, because drama is the literary form whose very essence is in motion. It creates objectivities but not fixities. Drama, in this conception, is like the process of thought itself, which is … the only constant there is, but whose constancy is an absolute paradox, apparent in its never stopping, being always in movement. Aristotle claims that objective representation is the mimesis of action. But the real action for Shelley is in the mind. And it is that action, the incessant process of thought, that Shelley’s drama attempts to imitate, to mirror, and to encourage.
