‘Plaything[s] of the imagination’

The Cenci is a riveting performance, a palpable tragedy, a historical drama, a character study and a performative testament to the desperation and despair felt by many Britons in the post-Waterloo era. This tragedy presents audiences with the impossibility of escaping either history's violent trajectory or the powerful vortex of cultural casuistry. After the political debacle of Peterloo in August of 1819 and the renewed calls for reform this event instigated, there were, according to William Keach, ‘many reasons to believe in early 1820 that the prevailing winds of history still favored the old monarchical order […]’. ¹ Frustrated with the reactionary politics that defined British national policy in this period, reformers and more radical political activists could all agree with Beatrice Cenci when she tells her stepmother, Lucretia, ‘Aye, something must be done;/What, yet I know not […]’ (The Cenci, III, i, 86–7). Driven to desperate measures there were those like Beatrice who would attempt ‘make/The thing that I have suffered but a shadow/In the dread lightning which avenges it […]’ (The Cenci, III, i, 87–9). The pernicious and internecine violence Shelley dramatizes in The Cenci reflected the fact that British nation was on the verge of revolution. Tinder was scattered; sparks were flying; it seemed only a matter a time before it was all set ablaze.