The Cenci - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

A reviewer writing for the Literary Gazette in 1820 wrote that the play was "noxious", "odious", and "abominable". Alfred and H. Buxton Forman, on the other hand, praised The Cenci as a "tragic masterpiece", elevating Shelley into the company of Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare. Leigh Hunt, to whom the play was dedicated, effused over Shelley's "great sweetness of nature, and enthusiasm for good." Mary Shelley, in her note on the play, wrote that "niversal approbation soon stamped The Cenci as the best tragedy of modern times." She critically assessed Act V: "The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet." She noted that "Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted", intending the work, which she wrote was of "surpassing excellence", to be an acting play, not a "closet drama". Shelley sought unsuccessfully to have the play staged at Covent Garden. Byron wrote his criticisms of the play in a letter to Shelley: "I read Cenci - - but, besides that I think the subject essentially un-dramatic, I am not a great admirer of our old dramatists as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power and poetry." Byron told Thomas Medwin in conversation: "The Cenci is ... perhaps the best tragedy modern times have produced." William Wordsworth reportedly called the play "the greatest tragedy of the age." After seeing a performance of the play in 1886, George Bernard Shaw commented that "Shelley and Shakespeare are the only dramatists who have dealt in despair of this quality." The taboo subjects of incest, patricide, and parricide, as well as the negative depiction of the Roman Catholic Church, however, prevented The Cenci from being staged publicly. The first public performance in England was in 1922.