No Way for a Victim to Act?: Beatrice Cenci and the Dilemma of Romantic Performance

Abstract

TWO PROBLEMS HAVE HISTORICALLY PREOCCUPIED READERS OF THE CENCI. First of all: what does this verse-play have to do with theatre? If only by default, Shelley's drama occupies liminal space between closet and stage. Shelley indisputably wished Cenci to be acted, picked out his lead actors, and even asked friend to procure ... its presentation at Covent Garden.(1) play's subject made such performance impossible. Yet, while moral strictures against play about incest had expired by 1886, aesthetic judgment of Cenci as undramatic (first voiced by Byron) has lasted considerably longer. Until recently, critics tended to view dramatic form and stage destination of play as contingencies to be overlooked in favor of its poetic aspects and/or its political subtexts, on assumption that Cenci makes poor theatre. This assumption derives in part, as Stuart Curran notes, from critical stereotypes of Shelley as an inward-turning poet who coveted power of stage performance while lacking pragmatic grasp of medium.(2) But traditional judgment against Cenci as theatre is also deeply grounded in text itself, and here we approach second critical problem. At first glance, unspeakable incest aside, Cenci seems to serve up just sort of Gothic/melodramatic duel which pleased early nineteenth-century spectators. But problem with this duel as melodrama or tragedy is that its sole survivor is finally neither heroic, nor even sympathetic. Critics agree that Beatrice Cenci turns readers and spectators against her in fifth act, where, under arrest for murder of father who raped her, she undertakes to save herself by lying about her role in crime. Not content with having a higher truth on her side in court, Beatrice denies petty facts of her story as well. know thee! How? where? when? (to her hired assassin).(3) Worse still, perhaps, Beatrice fails to make audience party to her deceit. Unlike many romantic antihero, she does not expose and deplore her own hypocrisy in soliloquy. Joseph Donohue observes that even jaded modern spectators of Cenci are repelled by this breach of trust(4)--one which seems to implicate author as well as his creation. (In Preface, Shelley condemns parricide but makes no mention of Beatrice's cover-up performance.) Critics have expressed their own discomfort with Beatrice by charging Shelley with aesthetic error of inconsistency. Roger Blood pinpoints this reaction, even as he suggests that supposed between various moments in Beatrice's performance merely externalizes which is basis of theatre. [T]he inconsistency [in Beatrice] which all critics sense ... is not merely result of discrepancy between character and action ... but absolute self-contradiction, literal counter-statement of her deceit, which mars her self-representation and self-justification after murder.(5) Julie Carlson is more explicit about why Beatrice bothers readers and viewers who want tragic victim-heroine. The trial scene allows her to finally appear as what and who she `is': commanding actress.(6) In short, and strangely enough, Shelley's heroine proves her own unfitness for stage by acting. Yet, is this (anti-)climax of Cenci inconsistent with its beginnings? On contrary, I contend that Beatrice's performance of public deceit is merely most off-putting of play's densely layered theatrical metaphors. From Cenci's declaration that his crimes are a matter (1.i.71), to Beatrice's prediction that the vain and senseless crowd, / ... that they may make our calamity / Their worship and their spectacle, will leave / churches and theatres as void / As their own hearts ...(V.iii.36-40), Cenci is text which seems to refuse to let us forget that it was intended for stage, and what such an intention entails. …