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In 19th-century Nova Scotia, Beatrice is the multiracial daughter of slave owner Francis Chancy and Mafa, a Guinean enslaved woman whom Francis raped. After Francis forces Beatrice into an incestuous encounter, Beatrice and Mafa conspire to murder him.
Count Francesco Cenci celebrates the death of his sons with a masked ball, while his daughter Beatrix and second wife Lucrecia fear him. Beatrix asks Orsino to deliver a plea to the Pope, but he destroys her letter and falsely says the Pope refused. After the guests leave, Cenci rapes Beatrix. Later, Beatrix and her brother Giacomo arrange for assassins to kill their father, with Lucrecia giving him a sleeping potion. When the body is discovered, Beatrix is arrested, tortured, and executed.
In surviving fragmentary scenes, citizens watch a royal masque and foresee civil conflict; at Whitehall, Charles I and his advisers discuss bypassing Parliament and suppressing dissent; a Star Chamber scene depicts state punishment of its critics, and parliamentarians prepare to resist.
Through dialogue between Sultan Mahmud and Ahasuerus and choruses of enslaved Greek women, the drama views the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman side. Mahmud’s dream and the Greeks’ hopes of freedom frame an antiwar meditation on defeat and liberation.
In this mythological verse drama, Pan and Apollo compete musically, and King Midas overturns the judge’s decision in Pan’s favor. Apollo gives Midas ass’s ears; Midas later receives the golden touch, discovers that it makes ordinary life impossible, and asks Bacchus to remove it.
Shelley recasts the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings as grotesque political satire: King Swellfoot, a corrupt George IV figure, and his ministers try to suppress the pig-chorus and prosecute Queen Iona Taurina. The pigs challenge parliamentary and clerical hypocrisy; Iona and the Minotaur briefly ally against the royal court, which is transformed and driven away as the people gain freedom.
In 19th-century Nova Scotia, Beatrice is the multiracial daughter of slave owner Francis Chancy and Mafa, a Guinean enslaved woman whom Francis raped. After Francis forces Beatrice into an incestuous encounter, Beatrice and Mafa conspire to murder him.
Count Francesco Cenci celebrates the death of his sons with a masked ball, while his daughter Beatrix and second wife Lucrecia fear him. Beatrix asks Orsino to deliver a plea to the Pope, but he destroys her letter and falsely says the Pope refused. After the guests leave, Cenci rapes Beatrix. Later, Beatrix and her brother Giacomo arrange for assassins to kill their father, with Lucrecia giving him a sleeping potion. When the body is discovered, Beatrix is arrested, tortured, and executed.
In surviving fragmentary scenes, citizens watch a royal masque and foresee civil conflict; at Whitehall, Charles I and his advisers discuss bypassing Parliament and suppressing dissent; a Star Chamber scene depicts state punishment of its critics, and parliamentarians prepare to resist.
Through dialogue between Sultan Mahmud and Ahasuerus and choruses of enslaved Greek women, the drama views the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman side. Mahmud’s dream and the Greeks’ hopes of freedom frame an antiwar meditation on defeat and liberation.
In this mythological verse drama, Pan and Apollo compete musically, and King Midas overturns the judge’s decision in Pan’s favor. Apollo gives Midas ass’s ears; Midas later receives the golden touch, discovers that it makes ordinary life impossible, and asks Bacchus to remove it.
Shelley recasts the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings as grotesque political satire: King Swellfoot, a corrupt George IV figure, and his ministers try to suppress the pig-chorus and prosecute Queen Iona Taurina. The pigs challenge parliamentary and clerical hypocrisy; Iona and the Minotaur briefly ally against the royal court, which is transformed and driven away as the people gain freedom.
Prometheus endures captivity under Jupiter and refuses to yield the secret that could secure Jupiter's rule. Asia seeks answers from Demogorgon; he rises against Jupiter, whose power collapses. Prometheus is freed, reunites with Asia and witnesses humanity transformed by love, equality and liberation from tyranny.
In a child-oriented retelling of the Proserpine myth, Ceres leaves her daughter with two nymphs, who lose her when Pluto abducts her. Ceres and the nymphs search and appeal to Jove; Proserpine's return to earth is made seasonal by the pomegranate seeds she ate.
In Rome, Beatrice Cenci and her family endure the tyrannical Count Francesco Cenci. After he abuses Beatrice and blocks appeals for help, she joins a plot to kill him; the conspirators are tried and sentenced, and Beatrice walks to her execution.
Artaud's adaptation of Shelley's tragedy foregrounds cruelty, violence, incest, revenge, and familial murder. It replaces extended reflection with abrupt transitions and sensory action, using sound and stage effects to make the Cenci family's violence palpable.
Zastrozzi pursues Verezzi, whom he blames for his mother's death, and plots to make the religious artist commit suicide and face eternal damnation. With Bernardo and Matilda, he drives the pursuit through swordplay and deception, while Verezzi's tutor Victor challenges his nihilism.