Proserpine (play)

In a largely feminist retelling from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by a community of women.

Percy contributed in the lyric verse form traditionally dominated by men; Mary created a drama with elements common to early nineteenth-century women's writing: details of everyday life and empathetic dialogue.

[5] Percy also encouraged Mary to translate Vittorio Alfieri's play Mirra (1785), a tragedy about father-daughter incest which influenced her own novel Mathilda.

[8] Her other reading included Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophical treatise Emile (1762) and his sentimental novel La nouvelle Héloïse (1761), as well as Thomas Day's children's book The History of Sandford and Merton (1783–89).

[10] Percy Shelley contributed two lyric poems: "Arethusa" and "Song of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers on the Plain of Enna".

A fragment of the manuscript survives, housed in the Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library, and demonstrates the couple working side-by-side on the project.

In 1824 Mary Shelley submitted Proserpine for publication to The Browning Box, edited by Bryan Walter Procter, but it was rejected.

[7] She cut one-fifth of the play—about 120 lines—for this version, deleting some of the stories from the first act, including Percy's poem "Arethusa", and rewrote individual lines.

Ceres returns, angry and frightened at the loss of her child: I will away, and on the highest top Of snowy Etna, kindle two clear flames.

Night shall not hide her from my anxious search, No moment will I rest, or sleep, or pause Till she returns, until I clasp again My only loved one, my lost Proserpine.

The group leaves to fetch Proserpine, who believes she has not consumed any tainted food, but she is reminded by Ascalaphus, a shade of the Underworld, of some pomegranate seeds that she ate.

Iris relates Jove's decision regarding Proserpine's fate: When Enna is starred by flowers, and the sun Shoots his hot rays strait on the gladsome land, When Summer reigns, then thou shalt live on Earth, And tread these plains, or sporting with your nymphs, Or at your Mother's side, in peaceful joy.

But when hard frost congeals the bare, black ground, The trees have lost their leaves, & painted birds Wailing for food sail through the piercing air; Then you descend to deepest night and reign Great Queen of Tartarus.

[24] Mary Shelley also refused to embrace the visual sensationalism of early nineteenth-century theatre, focusing instead on "scenes of heightened emotion".

[26] However, eighteenth-century theatrical scholar Judith Pascoe challenges this conclusion, pointing to detailed stage directions in the manuscript: "Ceres and her companions are ranged on one side in eager expectation; from the cave on the other, enter Proserpine, attended by various dark & gloomy shapes bearing torches; among which Ascalaphus.

[28] Literary scholar Jeffrey Cox has argued that Proserpine, along with Midas, Prometheus Unbound and other plays written by the Leigh Hunt circle, were "not a rejection of the stage but an attempt to remake it".

[31] Mary Shelley expanded and revised the Roman poet Ovid's story of Proserpine, which is part of his larger Metamorphoses.

[38] Although the myth is fundamentally about rape and male tyranny, Shelley transforms it into a story about female solidarity and community—these women are storytellers and mythmakers who determine their own fate.

[40] Shelley tells the story almost entirely from Ceres's point of view; "her play elegiacally praises female creativity and fecundity as 'Leaf, and blade, and bud, and blossom.'

[43] Pluto's "egotistical, predatory violence" is juxtaposed with Ceres's "loving kindness, her willingness to sustain life, [and] her unswerving devotion to her child".

"[2] Poets such as Dorothy Wellesley, Rachel Annand Taylor, Babette Deutsch, and Helen Wolfert as well as Mary Shelley portray the procreative mother as a heroine who creates an arena for nurturing relationships that challenge "the divisions between self and other" that rest at the centre of patriarchy.

Literary critic Elizabeth Nitchie writes that the plays are "distinguished only by the lyrics that [Percy] Shelley wrote for them", and Sylvia Norman contends that they "do not really call for analytical and comparative study".

Half=length portrait of a woman turned sideways, holding a pomegranate. She is wearing a blue robe and dark brown hair tumbles down her back, which is partially exposed. She has classical Roman features and bright, red lips.
Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874)
The first page of "Proserpine", with the title, "Personages", and the beginning of the play's text.
Proserpine as it was first published in the Winter's Wreath in 1832.
Painting showing Pesephone fleeing Hades. She is covered in flowers and bathed in light from the left-hand side of the painting. Hades emerges from the darkness on the right-hand side of the work. Only the outlines of his body, arm, and head can be seen. He is pulling of her blouse, revealing her upper body.
The Rape of Persephone by Simone Pignoni (c. 1650)
Half-length oval portrait of a man wearing a black jacket and a white shirt, which is askew and open to his chest.
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote about Proserpine in his poem Prometheus Unbound .
Half-length portrait of a woman wearing a black dress, sitting on a red sofa. Her dress is off the shoulder, exposing her shoulders. The brush strokes are broad.
Mary Shelley 's version of the Proserpine myth is a feminist retelling. [ 32 ]