The cup of its joy was mingled- IV Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden ད་ Methinks too little cost For a moment so found, so lost! NOTES CEDIPUS TYRANNUS Edipus Tyrannus ; / or, / Swellfoot the Tyrant. / A Tragedy. / In Two Acts. / Translated from the original Doric. / Choose Reform or civil-war, / When thro' the streets, instead of hare with dogs, /A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, / Riding on the Ionian Minotaur. / London / Published for the Author, / By J. Johnston, 98, Cheapside, and sold by/all booksellers. / 1820. Collation: Octavo. Title (with imprint, Printed by C. F. Seyfang, 57, Fleet-Market, on verso), pp. i. ii.; Advertisement (with Dramatis Persona on verso), pp. iii. iv.; Edipus Tyrannus, pp. 5-39. Issued as a pamphlet without wrapper. [The volume is described after Forman, The Shelley Library, p. 97, as are also the readings of the original edition, the book not being accessible in this country.] A fragment of the MS. is in the possession of Mr. H. A. Bright and a transcript, of doubtful authenticity, by John Gisborne, is in that of Forman. Mrs. Shelley first republished the drama in 18392. The text of other editions shows variations, except as already noted, only in I. 59 your 18392, Rossetti; I. 135 own omit, 1820, 18392; I. 219 Enter Gadfly 18392, Enter Gadfly followed by Leech and Rat, Rossetti; I. 260 Enter the Leech and the Rat Forman conj., omit, 1820, 18392, Rossetti, Dowden; I. 373 nor 18392; II. i. 19 Bristles and sausages Rossetti conj. (the conjecture is one of a class of metrical corrections already sufficiently commented on); II. i. 112 the 1820, 18392. Shelley put footnotes to his edition as follows: I. 8 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants. I. 153 And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Æthiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc.- - Ezekiel. 204 If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone. Cymbeline. II. 173 Rich and rare were the gems she wore.— - See Moore's Irish Melodies. Mrs. Shelley's Note (18392, p. 191): "In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded in August [24], 1820, 'Shelley begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.' This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV. to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the 'Green Bag' on the table of the House of Commons, demanding, in the King's name, that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano; a friend [Mrs. Mason] came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows. Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus-and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the 'Society for the Suppression of Vice,' who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside. "Hesitation of whether it would do honor to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first; but I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to |
