Percy Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet and playwright during the early 19th century.

The Fifth Doctor once expressed a desire to meet him. (AUDIO: Castle of Fear) In his eighth incarnation, he later encountered both Shelley and his wife in the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva in Switzerland in June 1816. (AUDIO: Mary's Story) Mary regarded her husband as being her soulmate. (AUDIO: Army of Death)

Biography
He was born in 1792. (PROSE: Managra)

Percy abandoned a wife and a child for Mary Shelley when Mary was 16.

In June 1816, Percy was spending time with Mary, his future wife, when they encountered the Eighth Doctor, who introduced himself as Dr Frankenstein. When the Doctor appeared to have died, Percy suggested to make an experiment with lightning on the Doctor's body, modelled after the experiments of signor Galvani on frogs. During the experiment, Percy calls himself "the modern Prometheus". This experience, as well as Mary's travels with the Doctor, whose companion she later became, must have influenced her science based horror story Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, for which she is best known. (AUDIO: Mary's Story)

Percy's circle of friends included his fellow Romantic poet Lord Byron and John Polidori, one of the first authors to write about vampires. (AUDIO: Mary's Story)

Although in June 1816 Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as their friends, often called each other husband and wife, Mary admitted that they were not yet officially married. At the same time, Percy had an affair with Claire Clairmont, Mary's half-sister. Percy and Claire found Mary knowing about their affair amusing. (AUDIO: Mary's Story)

Percy often took laudanum. (AUDIO: Mary's Story)

In between writing poetry and drinking, Percy liked to read impenetrable scientific journals. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)

In 1819, Shelley wrote a poem about the Peterloo Massacre. The Fifth Doctor recited an excerpt of it to his companions Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka:
 * "Rise, like lions after slumber
 * In unvanquishable number!
 * Shake your chains to earth like dew
 * Which in sleep had fallen on you:
 * Ye are many — they are few!" (AUDIO: The Peterloo Massacre)

In 1822, Shelley drowned after his schooner sank off the coast of Italy. (PROSE: Managra)

Other information

 * A Reprise of Shelley lived in Europa. (PROSE: Managra)

Behind the scenes

 * Percy and Mary Shelley were married on 30 December 1816.
 * Percy Shelley wrote a poem about the Peterloo Massacre in real life. It was called The Masque of Anarchy, although this was never stated in The Peterloo Massacre. The Doctor quoted its final stanza.
 * He was played by Lee Cornes in an episode of Blackadder the Third.