Byron wrote his criticisms of the play in a letter to Shelley: "I read "Cenci" – but, besides that I think the subject essentially un-dramatic, I am not a great admirer of our old dramatists as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your "Cenci", however, was a work of power and poetry." Byron told Thomas Medwin in conversation: "The "Cenci" is... perhaps the best tragedy modern times have produced." William Wordsworth reportedly called the play "the greatest tragedy of the age." After seeing a performance of the play in 1886, George Bernard Shaw commented that "Shelley and Shakespeare are the only dramatists who have dealt in despair of this quality."