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Bloody Poetry (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

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Percy Bysshe Shelley, an English Romantic poet. Thin, sallow, sensitive, and neurotic, Bysshe, who passes through his middle and late twenties in the course of the play, champions the cause of workers, though he is the son of an aristocrat. He is a teetotaler and fights for the rights of women, yet he abandons his first wife, Harriet, to prostitution and takes Mary Godwin as his lover. Although he marries Mary after Harriet’s suicide, he is never faithful. He sleeps with Claire and, later, a boatman’s daughter. Bysshe advocates free love but confesses...

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