Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/70

52 When Panthea arrives, and is told "How late thou art!" she replies,

and in her next speech,

and she goes on to relate it, ending:—

The identity of time is marked in the three leading passages by the same closing signal, the paling or whitening of the eastern star.

We have thus, as it appears to me, the manifest contradiction that in Act I. Panthea and Ione are watching the action and bearing part in the dialogue throughout the dawning of this first day up to the moment of Panthea's departure to visit Asia; while in the opening of Act II. they are both sleeping, Panthea dreaming, throughout the same period, save the last moments, in which Panthea gathers her thoughts and listens, and Ione wakens and speaks.

Following on with this first scene of Act II., we find that almost immediately Panthea's other dream appears (and this Dream, as a Shape that speaks, ought to be in the list of dramatis personæ along with the Phantasm,