Revelation, After the Fact

The Mask of Anarchy, once given the glowing praise of being ?the greatest poem of political protest ever written in English,? was a reaction to an event that had occurred more than a month before it?s author had even heard about it, who was thousands of miles away in Italy, and published a full decade after his death. Although a casual reading with some minor tidbits gleaned from a footnote or two might cause the reader to make the unfortunate mistake of ascribing the poem too much to the particular political climate which spawned the Peterloo Massacre (see Peterloo Cartoon), and delude Percy Bysshe Shelley?s universal condemnation of corruption inherent in any social system, a slightly more in-depth look at The Mask of Anarchy?s curious disconnect with the occasion to which it was written, reflective of Shelley?s own curious disconnect with England as a whole, leads to a much more dramatic and reflective appreciation for a poem that could and should be invoked at the occasion of any misappropriation of power invested in the few by the many.

The events that inspired, or more accurately, shaped and spurred, what became The Mask of Anarchy took place on August 16th, 1819 at St. Peter?s Field, outside of Manchester. Over sixty thousand impoverished men, women and children, dressed in their Sunday go-to-meeting best, assembled in orderly, peaceful fashion to discuss ?the most legal and effectual means? of obtaining reform in House of Commons. Parliament was at that time under the seemingly unshakable dominance of the wealthy landowners, who attempted to curb financial losses from the reopening of England to foreign imports at the end of the Napoleonic wars with a healthy tax on corn, the biggest competitor to British wheat. In essence, these taxes forced laborers and the working class to buy bread, which was, to this working class, infuriating, as the bread was more expensive. The situation was exacerbated in 1816, in which an abysmal harvest caused bread prices to skyrocket, which in turn led to rampant civil unrest as industrial laborers demanded, and failed to receive, higher wages to compensate for the rising cost of food. A great deal of the assembled sixty thousand at St. Peter?s field were there specifically as a result of these corn tariffs, and part of the ?reform? mentioned earlier was to deal with these laws. Unfortunately, the mechanical, well-rehearsed, and deadly calm nature of this non-violent assembly frightened the government far more than the vulgar chaos invoked by the still lingering phantoms of the French revolution, and troops were ordered to arrest the group?s leaders and disperse the crowd. Fittingly, the first military group sent in was the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, a government-sponsored militia of deeply conservative upper-middle class men who hated radicals with a passion, and who also, to some eye-witness accounts, happened to be roaring drunk. Frustrated by the assemblies? tactic of locking their arms to prevent the capture of their leaders, men of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry drew sabers and began literally cutting their way through the crowd, wounding many. Completing the political metaphor, when the 15th Hussars arrived on the scene, a local magistrate implored them to save the Yeomanry, who he claimed were under attack by the mob. The Hussars dove in and dispersed the remaining crowd in a manner of ten minutes, in the process killing eleven, and wounding over four hundred, a third of which were women and children. These numbers, eleven dead, over four hundred wounded, was the conservative and understandably reticent government?s final toll, leading to rampant speculation as to the actual total of killed and wounded. The only reporter of a national newspaper at the Peterloo Massacre, John Tyas of the The Times, was imprisoned following the incident, causing a local contributor to the The Manchester Gazette to send a report to The Time editor in his place, for fear of suppression. Two days later, August 18th, The Times ran an article condemning what at first was known as ?the St. Peter?s Field Tragedy? and later became popularized as ?the Peterloo Massacre.?

It is this August 18th, 1819 issue of The Times which arrives to Shelley, still abroad in Italy on the self-imposed exile that would last for the rest of his short life, on September 5th, in a packet of newspapers routinely sent to Shelley by his friend and conduit to England, Thomas Love Peacock. Contrary to some erroneous accounts, Shelley was for the most part, ignorant of the events of the Peterloo Massacre until he received this bundle sent express by Peacock, and although there could have been some rumors and conjecture which Shelley might have picked up, it was not until he read that specific article in The Times did an indignant Shelley decide that the matter needed condemnation. For four days, from the 5th to the 9th of September, Shelley did nothing but fume with righteous wrath over the subject, determined to use his position as a shaper of history to direct a devastating counterstrike. In a letter to his publisher, Charles Ollier, on the 6th, Shelley vocalized his unfettered odium and showed the undeveloped inklings of what would manifest into his poetical response. ?The same day that your letter came, came the news of the Manchester work, & the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to hear how the Country will express its sense of this bloody murderous oppression of its destroyers. 'Something must be done . . . What yet I know not.? Three days of furious conceptualizing later, Shelley decides to construct a work designed to reinvigorate social reform, exoteric rather than esoteric, which could inspire the populace to force a non-violent revolution. In a letter to Peacock, on the 9th, before he begins writing, Shelley details the deeply felt revolutionary spirit which this work is imbued with: ?Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers which contain the terrible and important news of Manchester. These are, as it were, the distant thunders of the terrible storm which is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be learnt with equal docility! I still think there will be no coming to close quarters until financial affairs decidedly bring the oppressors and the oppressed together.?

Shelley actually began writing what would become The Mask of Anarchy shortly after he wrote that letter, in a prolonged state of intense focus and agitation. Fortuitously, the mask manuscript which he wrote and Mary copied from is still intact, and it provides and interesting parallel to the Ode to the West Wind manuscript, available at the bottom of the Percy Bysshe Shelley author page. Shelley is not renowned for his clear hand or remarkable penmanship- what manuscripts that have survived are either nearly illegible or heavily edited, words jammed onto every available space, representative of his teeming mind. This is quite evident in the Ode to the West Wind manuscript, which has lines clumsily criss-crossing lines, large strikethroughs, and an almost preternatural resistance to readability. In contrast, the mask manuscript is almost stark, structured, and guided by a clarity that was rare in his poetry, not to mention his actual handwriting. Shelley?s determination and drive to make what he perceives as real change, quite possible at this fertile juncture, shines through in his powerful simplicity.

From the 9th to the 21st of September, Shelly wrote The Mask of Anarchy, which would cement his place as one of the greatest writers in the English language. As most of his poems from this period were written, his wife, Mary, would transcribe his manuscripts upon completion and then edit them, usually making minor alterations to the use of punctuation and adding certain textual notes. Mary completed this process on the 23rd, and Shelley sent the completed poem to Charles Ollier, for publication in The Examiner, which had published some of Shelley?s earlier works, including most famously Ozymandias. Unfortunately, Shelley appears for the most part unaware of the climate to which the poem is introduced. English government in late 1819 had handled the public outcry to the Peterloo Massacre through strong-armed censorship of the press, and it is notable that in 1819 there were seventy-five prosecutions of seditious or blasphemous libel, a charge that Charles Ollier was infamous familiar with, having served some jail time for criticizing the Prince Regent. The Mask of Anarchy had landed in a poetical no-man?s-land. No publisher, Ollier included, was willing to risk the inevitable governmental backlash that publishing would result. Had Shelley been aware, and had written the poem earlier, then it?s possible he could have been published in the wave of public outcry, as Shelley had intended. However, the inevitable delay that comes from ?laying asleep in Italy? gives publishes the time necessary to redevelop the layers of caution and self-preservation that they had temporarily relieved themselves of.

Shelley?s reaction is, for the most part, undocumented. Though attempts to find a publisher last into mid-1820: ?I wish to ask you if you know of any bookseller who would like to publish a little volume of popular songs wholly political, & destined to awaken & redirect the imagination of the reformers" Shelley appears to a certain extent resigned, and concentrates on his other work, namely Prometheus Bound. Some letters hint at Shelley?s admission that the one who would bear the brunt of the sacrifice in publishing The Mask of Anarchy would not be himself, in Italy and extremely well-connected otherwise, but whoever was unfortunate enough as to the publish the poem for him, and his understanding of their unwillingness to do so. Although it is often said that The Mask of Anarchy was only published after Shelley?s death, it?s important to note that it was published in 1832, a decade after Shelley had drowned. Whether or not Shelley was alive would have made little difference; what had changed, and what caused the poem to be finally published, was the Reform Laws of 1832, destined to usher in a new era in British politics and right the wrongs of the Peterloo Massacre thirteen years previously. What makes this fascinating is that the audience received the poem in a manner much like ourselves, after the events had long since become part of history. The many delays which the Mask suffered only help to heighten it?s timeless quality, and remove it from the stigma of being topical.