J. P. Kennedy, in a letter to White, proprietor of the Southern Literary Messenger, in April, 1835, mentions the fact that Poe was then "at work upon a tragedy" (Woodberry, I, p. 110). Professor Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who has carefully edited the play in its entirety (Poe's Politian, Richmond, 1923), holds (p. 58) that the play was probably written in 1835.

Text. The text here followed is verbally the same as that of 1845 (Lorimer Graham copy), but the spelling, indentation, pointing, and type (especially of the stage directions) have been altered to accord with more modern usage.

An early manuscript of the play, once owned by Mrs. Lewis and later by Mr. J. H. Ingram, is now in the possession of Mr. J. P. Morgan, of New York City. This manuscript contains six scenes not published by Poe amounting to upwards of five hundred lines, but is incomplete. These unpublished scenes are included in the edition of Professor Mabbott, which is also supplied with variorum readings, with historical and interpretative commentary, and with a detailed discussion of the sources of the play. The first "scene" of the play, as published by Poe, is scene iii of the manuscript version; the second scene (as printed by Poe) is scene iv; the third scene is scene vi; and the fourth and fifth scenes as first published are scenes vii and ix of the manuscript. The Coliseum forms a part of scene xi in the manuscript text. (See for further particulars the description given by Ingram in The Southern Magazine, November, 1875, pp. 588 f.; also a brief article in the New York Nation, September 5, 1907 (LXXXV, pp. 205-206).) Parts of the play not published by Poe are given by Ingram in The Southern Magazine (l.c.) and in a note on Politian in his Poetical Works of Poe, New York [1888], pp. 96-99.

Source. The plot of Politian, as Ingram first pointed out (Southern Magazine, XVII, pp. 588 f.), is based on a sensational tragedy enacted in Kentucky in 1825 and the following year, the killing of Colonel Solomon P. Sharp, Attorney General of Kentucky, by Jeroboam O. Beauchamp (whose wife had been betrayed by Sharp), and the trial and conviction of Beauchamp, followed by the suicide of Beauchamp's wife and the attempted suicide of Beauchamp himself on the day set for his hanging, lengthy accounts of which appeared in the newspapers of the day. The same incidents supplied Chivers with the plot of his drama, Conrad and Eudora (1834), furnished Charles Fenno Hoffman with the plot of his prose romance, Greyslaer, and gave Simms the materials for two of his romances, Beauchampe (1842) and Charlemont

(1856). Professor W. P. Trent (Life of Simms, p. 119) also mentions a poem on the subject by Isaac Starr Classon, Professor H. G. Shearin has called attention to two folk songs growing out of the tragedy which are now current in the mountain regions of Kentucky (see A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs, Lexington, 1911, pp. 16, 19), and Dr. E. C. Perrow calls attention to a ballad on the subject current in the mountains of North Carolina (see the Journal of American Folk-Lore, XXVIII, pp. 166-168). The story is also related by Hoffman in his Winter in the West (1834), and by Mary E. Macmichael, in a tale entitled The Kentucky Tragedy, in Burton's Magazine for April, 1838 (II, pp. 265– 271). Poe comments on the story and the literary employments of it in Beauchampe and Greyslaer in a notice of Hoffman in the Literati (Harrison, XV, p. 119), but mentions in that connection neither Chivers's drama nor his own, though he remarks, significantly, that the incidents of the actual event "might be better woven into a tragedy." Poe probably drew upon newspaper accounts for his plot, the newspapers of the day having been full of the story at the time of its occurrence. A comparison of Poe's play with Chivers's brings out no verbal parallels between the two, nor any incidents common to the two that are not also in the original story. The Knickerbocker remarked editorially in May, 1842 (XIX, p. 494), that the theme had already become hackneyed.

Most of the names of his dramatis persona Poe found in Italian history. "Politian" will be recognized at once as the name of the wellknown Florentine poet and scholar, Angelo Poliziano; "Alessandra" was the given name of Politian's friend, Alessandra Scala; and "Baldazzar" and "Castiglione" the given name and the surname, respectively, of the author of the famous Book of the Courtyer, Baldassare Castiglione. "Di Broglio" is apparently an Italianized form of "De Broglie," a name prominent in French politics at the time Poe was writing his drama. The name "Jacinta" occurs in Shirley's play The Example. Benito" figures as a servant in Dryden's The Assignation. "Lalage" was perhaps suggested by Horace.

None of Poe's critics have claimed for Politian any extraordinary excellence. The play is confessedly fragmentary, and so much of it as was published during the poet's lifetime is merely a series of detached scenes; it is without either climax or catastrophe; it is slow of movement; and it exhibits little of wit or of sprightly dialogue and is not always clear. But it scarcely deserves all the strictures that have been passed on it. Nichol, for instance (American Literature, p. 217), pronounces it the "stupidest fragment of a play that survives"; and

a reviewer in the London Athenæum of February 28, 1846 (p. 215), declares that "the excess of the puerile [contained in the play] amounts to imbecility." It is at least superior as poetry to Tamerlane; and in style and finish it is superior to parts of Al Aaraaf, though it contains nothing comparable to the lyrics in Al Aaraaf.

Title. The title adopted in the Southern Literary Messenger (December, 1835, January, 1836) is Scenes from an Unpublished Drama.

Scene I. This scene, which is the third scene of the first act in the manuscript version of the play, was the fourth scene published in the Messenger — the second, third, and fourth scenes (as now printed) having preceded it. The present order is plainly the natural one.

In the initial scene of the play, according to Ingram's description of the manuscript version, the information is brought out that Castiglione, who is now betrothed to Alessandra, his cousin, had at some time in the past betrayed Lalage, her friend. And in the following scene, Castiglione is pictured in a repentant mood, but being bantered by San Ozzo.

I, 1 Alessandra. Probably suggested by Alessandra Scala. Poe mentions both Politian and Alessandra Scala in his Pinakidia (first published in 1836; see Harrison, XIV, p. 65). — Castiglione. As pointed out above, this name was doubtless suggested to Poe by Baldassare Castiglione, author of the Book of the Courtyer (Venice, 1528). Castiglione was a stanch admirer of Politian, whom he mentions several times in the Courtyer.

I, 21 Di Broglio. The name was probably suggested by Victor de Broglie, who held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs for France at the time Politian was published. He is mentioned by Poe in 1841 (see Harrison, X, p. 134) as among the men "playing important parts in the great drama of French affairs" at that time.

I, 31 Lalage. Chosen, perhaps, because of its etymological significance, dulce loquens; but probably suggested, as already noted, by Horace (Odes, I, xxii).

Scene II. This scene is the initial scene of Act II in the manuscript text of the play (according to Ingram's description). It is followed in the manuscript by a scene not published by Poe, but given by Ingram in a note on Politian (Poetical Works of Poe [New York, 1888], pp. 96f.). In this excerpt of the play, Di Broglio is represented as discussing with Castiglione Politian's melancholy, when Politian appears with Baldazzar, but Politian retires abruptly after receiving Di Broglio's welcome.

Excerpts from this scene, containing lines 6-28, 57-113, were reprinted by Poe in the Broadway Journal of March 29, 1845 (Harrison, XII, pp. 98 f.) in a foolish attempt to show that the play had been imitated by Longfellow in the Spanish Student, II, iv.

II, 6, 7 Incorrectly quoted from Milton's Comus, 11. 632–633:
But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil.

II, 8-10 From the Odyssey, IV, 11. 566-568. Possibly translated by the poet himself; possibly adapted from Cowper's translation (IV, 11. 682-685):

... no snow is there,

No biting winter, and no drenching shower,
But zephyr always gently from the sea

Breathes on them, to refresh the happy race.

II, 15 f. The play referred to is Webster's Duchess of Malfi.
II, 18-20 From the Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii, ll. 261–263:
She died young.

I think not so: her infelicity

Seemed to have years too many.

Poe erroneously inserts the word "full" before "young" in the first line.

II, 23 that Egyptian queen. Cleopatra.

II, 27 Eiros and Charmion. Attendants of Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The same characters appear also in one of Poe's " dialogues of the dead," The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839).

II, 32 spirit. Pronounced as one syllable; as also in IV, 11. 20 and 62, and V, 1. 88.

II, 31, 32 balm . . . in Gilead. See Jeremiah viii, 22. The same allusion occurs in The Raven, 1. 89.

II, 34, 35 "dew sweeter far. Hermon hill." Slightly misquoted from Peele's drama, David and Bethsabe, 11. 46–47 :

Or let the dew be sweeter far than that

That hangs, like chains of pearl, on Hermon Hill,

a passage based on Psalms cxxxiii, 3: 'As the dew of Hermon and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion." The passage from Peele is quoted again in To

("Not long ago,"

etc.), 11. 9-10.

II, 46 "Is there no farther aid!" Both 1845 and the Messenger omit the quotation marks.

Scene III. This (according to Ingram) is the third scene of Act II in the manuscript text of Politian.

III, 1 Baldazzar. Accented throughout on the penult. By an interesting coincidence, both this name and

occur in George Eliot's Romola.

Politian and Alessandra "

III, 22 Fame awaits thee - Glory calls. Possibly an echo of Moore's well-known line:

Go where glory waits thee.

III, 23 the trumpet-tongued. Cf. Macbeth, I, vii, l. 19. The phrase is without pointing in the original.

III, 40 the Hours are breathing low. Cf. The City in the Sea, l. 49:

The hours are breathing faint and low.

III, 41 The sands of Time are changed to golden grains. Cf. A Dream within a Dream, 1. 15.

III, 45-50 The passage suggests the famous moonlight scene in the fifth act of The Merchant of Venice.

III, 57 heart of hearts. Cf. Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality, 1. 190:

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might,

and Hamlet, III, ii, 1. 68:

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.

Poe was fond of the phrase; he uses it again below, in IV, 1. 51; and also in the sonnet To my Mother, 1. 7- in each case adopting the Wordsworthian form.

III, 70 f. The lines are from Sir Thomas Wyatt's An Earnest Suit to his Unkind Mistress Not to Forsake Him, stanza ii. In the Aldine edition of Wyatt (pp. 108-109), the passage runs as follows:

And wilt thou leave me thus?
That hath lov'd thee so long?
In wealth and woe among:
And is thy heart so strong
As for to leave me thus?
Say nay! Say nay!

Poe, it will be observed, changes the order slightly, and garbles his original in still other particulars.