The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Education Of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Later editing
Shelley continued working on the play until his death on 8 July 1822. After his death, his father Timothy Shelley refused to allow Mary Shelley to publish any of Shelley's poems, which kept any immediate corrected editions of the play from being printed. Although reluctant to help the Parisian publishers A. and W. Galignani with an edition of Shelley's works, she eventually sent an "Errata" in January 1829. The Galignanis relied on most of her punctuation changes, but only a few of her spelling changes. The next critical edition was not released until 1839, when Mary Shelley produced her own edition of Shelley's work for Edward Moxon. Included with the edition were Mary Shelley's notes on the production and history of Prometheus Unbound.
Before his death, Shelley completed many corrections to a manuscript edition of his work, but many of these changes were not carried over into Mary Shelley's edition. William Rossetti, in his 1870 edition, questioned Mary Shelley's efforts: "Mrs. Shelley brought deep affection and unmeasured enthusiasm to the task of editing her husband's works. But ill health and the pain of reminiscence curtailed her editorial labours: besides which, to judge from the result, you would say that Mrs. Shelley was not one of the persons to whome the gift of consistent accuracy has been imparted". Later, Charles Locock, in his 1911 edition of Shelley's works, speculated: "May we suppose that Mrs. Shelley never made use of that particular list at all? that what she did use was a preliminary list, – the list which Shelley "hoped to despatch in a day or two" (10 November 1820) – not the "formidable list"... which may in the course of nine years have been mislaid? Failing this hypothesis, we can only assume that Shelley's 'formidable list' was not nearly so formidable as it might have been".

Although Mary Shelley's editing of Prometheus Unbound has its detractors, her version of the text was relied on for many of the later editions. G. G. Foster, in 1845, published the first American edition of Shelley's poems, which relied on both Mary Shelley's edits and her notes. Foster was so attached to Mary Shelley's edition that, when Edgar Allan Poe suggested changing some of the text, Foster responded "But I have not felt at liberty to change the text sanctioned by Mrs. Shelley – whom I regard as the evangelist of her transifigured lord". However, he, like Rossetti, tended to differ from Mary Shelley when it came to punctuation and capitalisation. Rossetti went beyond Foster, and, prefaced his edition with: "I have considered it my clear duty and prerogative to set absolutely wrong grammar right... and to set absolutely wrong rhyming right... and to set absolutely wrong metre right..." but made sure to point out that his purpose was to respect Shelley's original poetic intent.

1 Gurr does not acknowledge that “Aeschylus [...] failed ethically in his responsibilities as a poet towards the emancipation of mankind” (1998:72) but argues instead that the “sarcastic validation of death or suffering” in PrometheusUnbound “can hardly be taken seriously,” for “a play ending in reconciliation could either be seen as a mere utopia of reconciliation or even as an undermined sarcastic ending” (1998:78).