As the Revolution began to play out, the absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in only three years.
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley all shared the same view of the French Revolution as it being the beginning of a change in the current ways of society and helping to improve the lives of the oppressed.
As the French Revolution changed the lives of virtually everyone in the nation and even continent because of its drastic and immediate shift in social reformation, it greatly influenced many writers at the time.
Hancock writes, "There is no need to recount here in detail how the French Revolution, at the close of the last century, was the great stimulus to the intellectual and emotional life of the civilized world, how it began by inspiring all liberty-loving men with hope and joy.
Triggered by the revolutionary spirit, the writers of the time were full of creative ideas and were waiting for a chance to unleash them.
Under the new laws writers and artists were given a considerable amount of freedom to express themselves which did well to pave the way to set a high standard for literature.
[3] Prior to the French Revolution, poems and literature were typically written about and to aristocrats and clergy, and rarely for or about the working man.
However, when the roles of society began to shift resulting from the French Revolution, and with the emergence of Romantic writers, this changed.
Common themes that Shelley incorporated into his works include the hatred of kings, faith in the natural goodness of man, the belief in the corruption of present society, the power of reason, the rights of natural impulse, the desire for a revolution, and liberty, equality and fraternity.
"[7] Byron believed neither in democracy nor in equality, but opposed all forms of tyranny and all attempts of rulers to control man.
The French Revolution played a huge role in shaping Byron's beliefs and opposition to monarchy [citation needed].
While Shelley and Byron both proved to support the revolution to the end, both Wordsworth and Coleridge joined the aristocrats in fighting it.