SOURCE: Schell, John F. “Shelley's The Cenci: Corruption and the Calculating Faculty.” University of Mississippi Studies in English n. s. 2 (1981): 1-14.

In the following essay, Schell evaluates Shelley's suggestion that reason is inadequate compared to imagination in The Cenci.

Shelley believed drama to have a greater potential for influencing man's moral improvement than any other art form. In A Defense of Poetry he notes: “the connexion of scenic exhibitions with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally recognized,”¹ and he then remarks that “the connexion of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama than in any other form” (p. 492). In light of such statements, one would expect to find an unequivocal social message in the one drama that Shelley wrote for a mass audience. But the failure of critics to agree on an interpretation of The Cenci proves that this...