The Cenci, a tragedy in five acts

This is actually a proper play as opposed to a lyrical drama but, in what seems to be the story of Shelley's life, the play so offended people that it was never performed until 1922. Once again Shelley is pushing the boundaries of his society by demonstrating things that are so shocking that people really do not want to see them. In a way people are willingly keeping themselves blindfolded because what Shelley is revealing to us is so shocking that it can shake the foundations of our own subjective reality.
The Cenci is set in 1599, when the Reformation had reached its height and the glory days of the Catholic Church were far behind them. However it is not necessarily a religious play, but rather it is a political play with uses events show more in the past to criticise the political reality of the day. What was shocking about the play was that it dealt with incestral rape and how the whole event was covered over by the powers that be. This forced the children of the antagonist, Francesco Cenci, to take the law into their own hands and then have the full force of the law come down upon them.
The play is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy not because of some aspect of a fatal flaw but rather that the perpetrator of the crime was never going to be punished for his crime, and in the end it was the victim that was punished for the act of another. This is something that, sadly, we still see today, and not a week goes by when we hear of some woman in some conservative country being punished because she was raped.
What the play shows is how the legal system is heavily weighed in favour of the powers that be. Francesco Cenci was a powerful noble in Italy, and in a way he was above the world. However we still see aspects of familial support, because when he rapes his daughter, his sons crowd around his daughter to seek to restore her honour. However the arbitrator of justice, at that time the church, found itself going against those who had been wounded. Okay, there is also revenge in this play, but much of it has to do with the fact that nobody else would make a move against Cenci. There is also the idea that justice cannot be taken into one's own hands because when people start taking justice into their own hands then the rule of law breaks down (if it ever existed, as at times it seems to apply to one group of people and not to another).
While the rule of law did not theoretically exist in sixteenth century Rome, there was still very much a law: ecclesiastical law. However, at the time, and even for centuries beforehand, this law was abused, mostly to keep the church in power, which meant that nobody could actually question the church. Even Cenci would not have been immune to the power of the ecclesiastical courts, however it is the nature of the hypocrisy because those who were guilty only of thinking for themselves were punished while the real monsters would be free to roam the land, simply because nobody could bring any charges against them. show less

Shelley the romantic poet tries his hand at writing a stage script, set in sixteenth century Rome during the papacy of Clement VIII. The story of the Cenci family, the degenerate and abusive patriarch, and the family that suffered at his hands. Appeals to the pope for help led nowhere, and the family concocts a plot to be rid of him and find peace. This story is an indictment of the Catholic Church, the papacy, and the patriarchal system in general that allows the young and innocent to suffer horribly at the hands of a brutal father. Written in a style reminiscent of Shakespeare, but with definite traces of the romantic era to which Shelley belonged, this piece makes beautiful reading even when the subject matter is horrifying.

Shelley continues to deliver, and is quickly becoming one of my favorite poets.