Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem

In this book, the poem turns explicitly political. As Queen Mab shows Ianthe’s spirit the deathbed of a tyrannical king, whose reign exploited his subjects. Now, like all mortal beings, the king is rendered helpless by his illness; even his monarchical authority cannot save him from the natural cycle of life and death. As has been the case in the first two books, Queen Mab resists feeling pity or empathy for the dying. However, here, the reader is invited to join her in condemning this king to his painful demise: Queen Mab calls this death Nature’s justice for his life of seeking power and wealth at the expense of virtue and morality. This view of royalty would have struck Shelley’s contemporary readers as controversial—Shelley was writing this only two years after King George III’s bouts of severe mental illness forced him to abdicate at the height of his popularity, leaving the English throne to his young son, who became Regent. The implication that the king’s affliction was divine retribution would have been incendiary.

More broadly, Queen Mab describes the desire for power as a sign of spiritual immaturity and wealth as a poison that produces vanity and vice. Kings are the epitome of this because monarchies place earthly possessions and worldly power over spiritual integrity, becomes tyrants. People who live in such a society are basically enslaved, a condition that limits human freedom and corrupts the spirits of both rulers and those they rule over. A reference to Emperor Nero, a Roman emperor whose cruelty made him a byword for despotic excess, supports the argument that monarchies are a bad development for the world and will eventually be done away with once society evolves. Shelley’s vision of a utopian society prioritizes maximizing freedom, which he believed would minimize human aggression and blind obedience; the idea of kings endorsing the enslavement of others is both vague enough to seem like a broad historical generalization, and also specific enough to again be a comment about George III, who was deeply against the abolition of the slave trade in England and in the American colonies.

Shelley juxtaposes this depressing view of human history with an optimistic view of individual people and the hope that good people will slowly enact change. Queen Mab points out that even though Nero destroyed so much, he could not stop “human kindness” (Line 3.188): There is still virtue, goodness, and beauty in the world because of the spirit of nature. The problem, as Queen Mab sees it, is that humans feel alienated from nature’s overwhelming tranquility, responding to this misunderstood sublime by fashioning a “sword to stab [t]his peace” (Line 3.200).