Proserpine and Midas

Proserpine and Midas

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Proserpine and Midas, by Mary
Shelley #3 in our series by Mary Shelley
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Proserpine and Midas
Author: Mary Shelley
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6447] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 14,

2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
PROSERPINE AND MIDAS ***

Produced by S Goodman and David Starner

PROSERPINE
&
MIDAS
Two unpublished Mythological Dramas
by
MARY SHELLEY
Edited with Introduction
by
A. KOSZUL

PREFATORY NOTE.
The editor came across the unpublished texts included in this volume as
early as 1905. Perhaps he ought to apologize for delaying their

appearance in print. The fact is he has long been afraid of overrating
their intrinsic value. But as the great Shelley centenary year has come,
perhaps this little monument of his wife's collaboration may take its
modest place among the tributes which will be paid to his memory. For
Mary Shelley's mythological dramas can at least claim to be the proper
setting for some of the most beautiful lyrics of the poet, which so far
have been read in undue isolation. And even as a literary sign of those
times, as an example of that classical renaissance which the romantic
period fostered, they may not be altogether negligible.
These biographical and literary points have been dealt with in an
introduction for which the kindest help was long ago received from the
late Dr. Garnett and the late Lord Abinger. Sir Walter Raleigh was also
among the first to give both encouragement and guidance. My friends
M. Emile Pons and Mr. Roger Ingpen have read the book in manuscript.
The authorities of the Bodleian Library and of the Clarendon Press
have been as generously helpful as is their well-known wont. To all the
editor wishes to record his acknowledgements and thanks.
STRASBOURG.

INTRODUCTION.

I.
'The compositions published in Mrs. Shelley's lifetime afford but an
inadequate conception of the intense sensibility and mental vigour of
this extraordinary woman.'
Thus wrote Dr. Garnett, in 1862 (Preface to his Relics of Shelley). The
words of praise may have sounded unexpectedly warm at that date.
Perhaps the present volume will make the reader more willing to
subscribe, or less inclined to demur.
Mary Godwin in her younger days certainly possessed a fair share of

that nimbleness of invention which generally characterizes women of
letters. Her favourite pastime as a child, she herself testifies, [Footnote:
Preface to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.] had been to write stories.
And a dearer pleasure had been--to use her own characteristic abstract
and elongated way of putting it--'the following up trains of thought
which had for their subject the formation of a succession of imaginary
incidents'. All readers of Shelley's life remember how later on, as a girl
of nineteen--and a two years' wife--she was present, 'a devout but
nearly silent listener', at the long symposia held by her husband and
Byron in Switzerland (June 1816), and how the pondering over
'German horrors', and a common resolve to perpetrate ghost stories of
their own, led her to imagine that most unwomanly of all feminine
romances, Frankenstein. The paradoxical effort was paradoxically
successful, and, as publishers' lists aver to this day, Frankenstein's
monster has turned out to be the hardest-lived specimen of the
'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' school of romantic tales. So much, no
doubt, to the credit of Mary Shelley. But more creditable, surely, is the
fact that she was not tempted, as 'Monk' Lewis had been, to persevere
in those lugubrious themes.
Although her publishers--et pour cause--insisted on styling her 'the
author of Frankenstein', an entirely different vein appears in her later
productions. Indeed, a quiet reserve of tone, a slow, sober, and sedate
bearing, are henceforth characteristic of all her literary attitudes. It is
almost a case of running from one to the other extreme.