Abstract
In Queen Mab, a poem of some 2300 lines, we have a frank record of Shelley’s beliefs at the age of 20. He tells us clearly what he thinks the evils of society are, and how much better we should be without them. His opinions were still changing, and he hesitated to expose them too openly to the public eye. Queen Mab was privately printed, only about seventy copies being circulated. Though these qualms are worth remembering, there is no need for a great show of apology over the poem, provided we do not let its emphatic tone mislead us into thinking that Shelley is expounding a rigid dogma. Unfortunately, since he never again spoke out quite so loud and clear, the widespread delusion persists that Queen Mab fairly represents his later opinions. Shelley’s ideas are regularly undervalued because too many critics are quick to judge, and condemn, the stripling author of Queen Mab and conveniently ignore the subsequent changes in his views.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat.
Hamlet
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Notes To II: Queen Mab
Political Justice, ii. 507 (wording of third edition). F. E. L. Priestley’s edition of Political Justice (University of Toronto Press, 1946, 3 vols.) is used here for giving references. In this edition, the two volumes of Godwin’s third edition of 1798 are reprinted photographically, and in a third volume variant readings in the first and second editions are listed. The most easily available edition is the one-volume Penguin paperback: see p. 389. For Godwin, Shelley and free love, see N. Brown, Sexuality and Feminism in Shelley, Ch. 5.
See D. King-Hele, Observing Earth Satellites (1983), Ch. 2.
F. A. Lange, History of Materialism (London. 1925), p. 93.
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© 1984 Desmond King-Hele
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King-Hele, D. (1984). Queen Mab. In: Shelley. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06803-6_2
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