of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Æschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. When Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound, the authorship of the Prometheia and its connection as a trilogy was not in question. Of the three works, Prometheus Bound is the only tragedy that survived intact, although fragments of Prometheus Unbound remained, allowing a fairly detailed outline based on the Prometheus myth told by Hesiod and extensive prophesying in the first work. It is this assumed trilogy, including Prometheus' reconciliation with Zeus, thought to occur in the final part of the cycle, which Shelley considers in the introduction. Play Act I Act I begins in the Indian Caucasus where the Titan Prometheus is bound to a rock face and he is surrounded by the Oceanides Panthea and Ione. As morning breaks, Prometheus cries out against the "Monarch of Gods and Daemons", Jupiter, and his tyrannous kingship. From his bound position, Prometheus claims to be greater than Jupiter before relating his suffering to the conditions of nature, including the Earth, Heaven, Sun, Sea, and Shadow. He turns to how nature has aided in his torture along with the constant tearing at his flesh by "Heaven's winged hound", the hawks of Jupiter. As he accounts his sufferings more and more, he reaches a peak of declaring that he would recall "The curse / Once breathed on thee..." Four voices, from the mountains, springs, air, and whirlwinds, respond to Prometheus through describing how they see the world and how "we shrank back: for dreams of ruin