The novel 'illustrative of the manners of the Middle Ages in Italy'
had to be 'raked out of fifty old books', as Shelley said. [Footnote:
Letter to T. L. Peacock, November 1820.]

But heavy as the undertaking must have been, it certainly did not
engross all the activities of Shelley's wife in this period. And it
seems highly probable that the two little mythological dramas which we
here publish belong to this same year 1820.

The evidence for this date is as follows. Shelley's lyrics, which
these dramas include, were published by his wife (_Posthumous Poems_,
1824) among the 'poems written in 1820'. Another composition, in blank
verse, curiously similar to Mary's own work, entitled _Orpheus_, has
been allotted by Dr. Garnett (_Relics of Shelley_, 1862) to the same
category. [Footnote: Dr. Garnett, in his prefatory note, states that
Orpheus 'exists only in a transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written
in playful allusion to her toils as amanuensis _Aspetto fin che il
diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole_'. The
poem is thus supposed to have been Shelley's attempt at improvisation,
if not indeed a translation from the Italian of the 'improvvisatore'
Sgricci. The Shelleys do not seem to have come to know and hear
Sgricci before the end of December 1820. The Italian note after all
has no very clear import. And Dr. Garnett in 1905 inclined to the view
that _Orpheus_ was the work not of Shelley, but of his wife. A
comparison of that fragment and the dramas here published seems to me
to suggest the same conclusion, though in both cases Mary Shelley must
have been helped by her husband.] Again, it may well be more than a
coincidence, that the Proserpine motive occurs in that passage from
Dante's _Purgatorio_, canto 28, on 'Matilda gathering flowers', which
Shelley is known to have translated shortly before Medwin's visit in