Prometheus Unbound

In the final act of Prometheus Unbound, all of the play’s elements unite in a final series of songs that celebrate togetherness, Platonic beauty, and the perfection of the natural world. It is the ultimate expression of Shelley’s vision of Cosmic Harmony as an Ideal of Human Progress. The new voice of ultimate power, Demogorgon, joins in song with celestial bodies, the Moon and the Earth, and with humans both living and dead. It is key to this vision that the dead are described as “happy” (IV.534); rather than being tormented in hell, they simply “change and pass away” (IV.538). Shelley is thus rebelling both against monarchism and against Christian dogma about the afterlife as a place of judgment. 

This Act offers the culmination of the polyphony, or overlaid voices, of the rhyming passages throughout Prometheus Unbound. In the final moments, Demogorgon calls on every aspect of the universe, both above and below, to join in song. Voices are heard from all things animate and inanimate. The resulting chorale embodies the twinned notions of the Musica universalis, or universal music, and Hamonices Mundi, or the music of the spheres. The ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras believed that the motion of the celestial bodies creates a sound, the resonance of which impacts life on Earth. In the early 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler built on this idea to posit that the music of the spheres is essential to the harmony of all things. Shelley’s treatment of these notions in Prometheus Unbound is not scientific, as Pythagoras’ and Kepler’s were, but rather based on his humanism and his belief that art could meaningfully contribute to harmonizing mankind, nature, and the universe. Shelley hoped poetry could bring about the world described by the Demogorgon at the end of the play: “Conquest” “dragged captive through the deep” by “Love,” restoring cosmic harmony (IV.556-557).

Shelley’s description of the “kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods” as a “great Republic” is notable for its contribution to his project of Myth Rewritten as Political Allegory (IV.529). In the traditional Greek mythological worldview from which he derives the story of Prometheus, the rulership of the suns and stars is explicitly hierarchical and monarchical. However, in Shelley’s rendition, dethroning Jupiter restores cosmic harmony and essential equality amongst the planets and their mythical personifications. For instance, no longer does Jupiter reign over Apollo; instead, they have equal power and representation, both as deities and as representations of celestial bodies (the planet Jupiter and the sun). This symbolizes Shelley’s desire for the monarchy and hierarchy to be dissolved and replaced with a republic where all people are equal.