PROSEPINE & MIDAS
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Proserpine & Midas are poetic verse dramas written for children credited to the English writer Mary Shelley with assistance from her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote Proserpine and Percy contributed two lyric poems after reading the manuscript. It was written in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, it is often considered a partner to the Shelleys' play Midas. Proserpine was originally published in the London periodical The Winter's Wreath in 1832 and then promptly forgotten. There is no evidence that the drama was ever intended to be staged.
The drama is based on Ovid's tale of the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto, God of the Underworld. Ovid based his story on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Mary Shelley's version concentrates on the female participants. This largely feminist retelling is from Ceres's point of view, Shelley emphasises the separation of mother and daughter and the strength offered by other women. Ceres represents life and love, and Pluto represents death and violence. The genres of the text also reflect gender debates of the time. 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.
Midas is a play in blank verse by the Romantic writers Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary wrote the drama and Percy contributed two lyric poems to it. Written in 1820 while the Shelleys were living in Italy, Mary Shelley tried unsuccessfully to have the play published by children's magazines in England in the 1830s; however, it was not published until A. Koszul's 1922 scholarly edition. The play combines the stories of the musical contest between Apollo and Pan and that of King Midas and his ability to turn everything he touches to gold.
Largely concerned with gender issues, Midas comments on the definitions of femininity and masculinity in the early nineteenth century and the developing ideology of se
The genre of Midas bears the marks of gender debates, as well, with Percy writing in the traditionally male-dominated form of the lyric and Mary focusing on the details of everyday life in her verse drama. Since the play's first publication in 1922, critics have paid more attention to Percy Shelley's lyrics than Mary Shelley's drama. However, since the 1990s, this trend has reversed itself as scholars explore works of Mary Shelley other than Frankenstein.
PROSEPINE & MIDAS
$8.50