“Horror!- What form is this?”: the Transformation of Space and
Spectacle on the Gothic Stage
By S. Faith Lundgren
Within the last few decades, the gothic novel of the 18th century has moved from
pulp fiction into the realms of critical analysis. A newfound awareness that “pulp”
cannot simply be dismissed as base entertainment has enriched the curriculum of
college campuses across the country, evidenced by 18th century student handbooks
which routinely include chapters on the gothic novel. The gothic stage, however, is
usually overlooked. For convenience, dramatic texts are often lumped in with the
literature of a given period and the elements that distinguish them as performance
based art are ignored or shuffled to the margins of critical discourse. For many
reasons, an account must be made of the gothic play that separates it from the novel.
Mathew G. Lewis, author of the immensely popular novel, The Monk, achieved equal
popularity as a playwright with The Castle Spectre in 1797. Many have attributed his
success to his unapologetic abundance of spectacle. However, when compared to
other texts operating within the genre, Lewis’ spectacle was unique in only one respect;
the ghost actively participated in the action of the plot. The gothic stage, prior to The
Castle Spectre was actually quite a bit less sensational than the novel. A production
that came too close to staging the supernatural was jeered at and driven from the
playhouse: the exception being The Castle Spectre. Making its debut at the perfect
moment in the development of the gothic stage, Lewis utilized dramatic convention to
perfect effect. The movement of the play in terms of theatrical space and spectacle, is a
reflection of the historic movement of the gothic stage.
Modern critical inquiry into The Castle Spectre is obsessively driven by a need to
understand its popular, if not critical, success. In examining the triumph of a play, both
the dramatic text and the production must be considered. In a drama as written text, the
reader is constrained by the imagined play space. The stage exists in the mind of the
reader and so acts on the imagination. The same is true for the understanding of
actors, sets and costumes. While the space of the novel is limitless, the reader of a
dramatic text is restricted by an understanding of the proscenium arch, the painted
scenery, and the ever present fourth wall. In fact, the reading of a play is more
restrictive than actually attending a production of the same play where the practical
considerations have been attended to. In this way, the audience is free to participate in
the play without the demand of situating the play. However, it was just this type of play
that inaugurated the gothic stage: the closet drama. Critics agree that the first gothic
play was The Mysterious Mother, written by Horace Walpole between 1766-68. It was a
text never intended to be produced for an audience.
The reason for its relegation to the closet is, without a doubt, the mother-son
incestuous relationship. Two Catholic monks, wishing to manipulate the reign of the
Countess of Narbonne, attempt to uncover the sin from her past. Her sin is, of course,
the one-night sexual encounter with her son. This coupling produces a daughter,
Adeliza, with whom the father/brother, Edmund, then unknowingly falls in love with and
marries. Their secret marriage is discovered too late by the Countess who commits
suicide by throwing herself onto Edmund’s dagger, leaving her daughter in a convent
and her son to return to his life as a mercenary.
Having penned this play, Walpole consigned it to the closet, never intending it to
reach more than a few close friends. It did, however, move into circulation. To avoid
pirated editions, Walpole published a limited number of copies in 1781. Its reception
was, on the whole, not an enthusiastic one. Alice Stayert Brandenberg cites from
Madame d’Arblay’s letters when noting Fanny Burney’s response to a reading of The
Mysterious Mother:
Dreadful was the whole! truly dreadful! A story of so much horror, from
atrocious and voluntary guilt, never did I hear! Mrs. Smelt and myself heartily
regretted that it had come in our way, and mutually agreed that we felt ourselves
ill-used in having ever heard it. She protested she would never do herself so
much wrong as to acknowledge she had ever suffered the hearing so wicked a
tale…For myself, I felt a sort of indignant aversion rise fast and warm in my mind,
against the willful author of a story so horrible: all the entertainment and pleasure
I had received from Mr. Walpole seemed extinguished by this lecture, which
almost made me regard him as the patron of the vices he had been pleased to
record. (464)
Upon the discovery that unauthorized copies of the play were being distributed, Walpole
wrote, “My tragedy has wandered into the hands of some banditti booksellers, and I am
forced to publish it myself to prevent piracy. All I can do is to condemn it myself, and
that I shall” (Brandenberg 465). In light of his play reaching a wider than intended
audience, Walpole wished to make it known that not only did he feel it to be unfit for the
stage, he felt it was also unfit to be read. The question is why?
Though Fanny Burney seems to indicate that the subject matter was the cause
of her reaction, it seems unlikely that a readership now familiar with gothic fiction would
be shocked by “so wicked a tale.” Incest was a popular theme for the gothic literary
text. Audiences would have been neither unfamiliar with nor uncomfortable with the
Countess’ sin as a motivating factor within the story. In his article, “‘What is this secret
sin, this untold tale . . . ?’”: The Representation of Incest in Early British Gothic
Narratives”, Min-tser Lin notes that “the story of incest is far from being an ‘untold tale’
in the Gothic narrative, even in the early stages of its development. In fact, when
literary historians catalogue defining features of the Gothic genre, ‘incest’ as a plot
component is rarely left out” (5). If the theme, in itself, is not at issue, then there must
be an alternative reason for its secretive circulation and poor reception.
The answer must, in part, be related to the nature of a dramatic text: a nature
that distinguishes it from the novel. Despite being written for the closet, the dramatic
space of the play influences the reader’s experience. Again, it must be noted that the
imagined play space acts on the reader’s ability to interpret the text. It restricts
audience perception by way of an assumed production. Space operates with in the text
as the space of the theatre and not that of a literary text.
A play cannot be simply read because of the self-referential nature of space
within a script. Physical direction is marked (upstage, downstage, stage left, and stage
right), exits and entrances are marked, and offstage business is marked, bringing into
sharp relief the perforamtive nature of the text. A reader’s response to a play is different
from that of a novel because a playwright’s relationship to (and use of) space is vastly
different from that of a novelist.
If space operates in unique ways on readers of a script, it is because it operates
uniquely on the writers of scripts. Producing space discursively requires authors to
consider their work in three ways. Thomas C. Crochunis describes these
considerations in his article, “Writing Gothic Spaces.” He explains that,
referring to space in a script represents a complex interaction among textual
utterances that are promotional (describing a play that should be staged),
pragmatic (explaining how the play can be staged), and literary (giving an
experience of the meaning that might be conveyed when the play is staged).
Therefore, a writer of scenically complex Gothic dramas produces space in
textual form for various rhetorical purposes while seeming to assume the
existence of the medium of theatrical space. (158)
Walpole’s intentionally closeted play was written without promotional concerns,
but the closet did not except him from pragmatic and literary considerations. The stage,
as a representational space, not only informs the meaning of the text, but constructs it.
Critics have noted that the live action of a staged production makes it difficult for the
audience to entirely divorce the play from reality. It becomes a space where the
audience is constantly negotiating their shifting subjectivities. The reading of a closeted
drama adds yet another point from which the subject must attempt to position
themselves. It offers the reader an imagined play space of an imagined reality. The
space (imaginary and representational) operating within The Mysterious Mother played
an important part in the negative response of readers. The movement from printed text
to stage allowed for a vastly different reception of gothic drama by 1797.
The evolution of the discursive production of space in a theatrical text can be
traced by reading Walpole’s first Gothic drama against Lewis’ The Castle Spectre. The
intention behind the production and circulation of the later is a near reversal of the
former. Lewis began work on The Castle Spectre prior to The Monk, but left it when he
conceived the idea for his infamous novel. Originally written to be a novel, the story
gathered dust until he returned from a trip to Germany, at which time, he picked it up
with new direction. Novelist turned playwright, Lewis never intended to introduce his
specter in print. Indeed, the printed version of his script didn’t reach the public until a
full year after it was first produced.
While Walpole deemed his play to be unfit for a viewing audience, Lewis deemed
his play to be unfit for a readerly audience. As discussed below on the topic of
spectacle, Lewis did not believe that his play would have fared well as a closet drama.
In his afterward as a note addressed to the reader, Lewis declared that the work was
meant to be viewed. Though he is speaking against the abundant criticism leveled at
him for the staging of his ghost, the full effect and meaning behind his drama could not
have succeeded in print for a reason other than spectacle. The construction of meaning
in his drama is too heavily dependent upon his use of space.
The gothic stage, by 1797, had a multitude of conventions: the use of space was
no exception. Crochunis highlights three strategies that these dramatists employ:
Scenes are presented that contrast with previous scenes (for example, a scene
in a monastery is followed by one on a mountainside)…Scenes depict spaces
that constrain characters (for example, a scene in a dungeon)…Scenes provide
a view that establishes a mood for characters and spectators (for example, a
scene that provides a sublime view of a landscape)… (160).
These are often seen by modern critics as a gothicist’s formula for doing cultural work in
light of the French Revolution, religious insecurities, and class conflicts. Walpole’s work
does not fail in the use of these methods, but as a dramatist, he is more closely aligned
to the classicists in his adherence to the unities (Cox 123). His gothic text ultimately fails
to “signify through its gestures with space” (Crochunis 160).
Lewis, on the other hand, not only uses scenes that depict constraint or
expansiveness, but employs them in the same scene together. If, as Crochunis points
out, Gothic texts “offer the reader an entry to enclosed spaces precisely in order to
provoke imagination of public theatrical enactments of restraint and liberation,” then
Lewis’ play represents the point at which these theatrical conventions culminate. Or, as
Bertrand Evans remarks, “The Castle Spectre is one of the most remarkable Gothic
plays. In it Lewis exploited the combined materials of his predecessors and
contemporaries, English and German, and out-Gothicized them all” (132). Though
citing the “combined materials,” Evans is largely concerned with the theatricality of the
play. He makes no mention of the psychological use of space as a material from which
Lewis draws on and develops.
This development is most markedly displayed in Act 2, scene 3, where Lewis
stages the hero’s escape. The scene is set; “A spacious Chamber: On one side is a
Couch: on the other a Table, which is placed under an arched and lofty Window.” Two
of the villain’s henchmen are playing dice while guarding Percy. His initial attempt at
escape was to bribe the two guards. Failing in this, Percy throws himself on the couch
to lament his situation. It is at this point that the space is transformed. Distant singing
is heard offstage, revealing to the audience that there is something beyond the
chamber. This is not the typical “enactment of restraint and liberation.” Percy creeps
toward the window, and after failing once, eventually succeeds in leaping from it.
Crochunis notes that reviewers found this scene ‘undignified,’ but also relates that
“spatial transformations do often break dramatic tone in ways that reveal the uncanny
psychological significance of a play’s spatial structures and gestures” (161).
This opening up of spaces that, prior to Percy’s leap, were limited to the
representational space of the stage causes the audience to reconsider their relationship
to that stage. Percy’s leap turns the standard depiction of liberation into a space that
now seems almost limitless. It does what no amount of painted scenery is capable: the
staging of a space that is truly liberating. Crochunis finds that the leap offers a new
context to the room and insists that, “For the reader, the imagined theatrical
transformation of the space prompts reconsideration not only of the space of the castle,
but also of the play’s larger social structures” (161). It must be argued, however, that
this is only truly possible if viewing the play. As discussed above, space operates
differently on the page. A reading audience is continually intruded upon by the directive
voice of the author and cannot freely experience the enactment of liberation. Lewis
himself writes about the probability of the play’s failure as a closet drama. “Still its
success on the stage (great enough to content even an author) does not prevent my
being very doubtful as to its reception in the closet, when divested of its beautiful music,
splendid scenery, and, above all, of the acting, excellent throughout” (“A Note to the
Reader”). While speaking of gothic spectacle, he clearly understood that as printed text
alone, his drama, which so very beautifully articulated discursive spaces, would fail.
It is in his use of spectacle that Lewis again reaches a culminating point on the
gothic stage. First, a look back again to Walpole, whose gothic novel, The Castle of
Otranto, made it to the stage as The Count of Narbonne in 1781. To capitalize on the
infamy of The Mysterious Mother, the adapting playwright, Robert Jephson, changed
the names of the novel’s characters to those of Walpole’s printed drama. This was not
the only change Jephson made in his attempt to stage the gothic. Nearly all of the
spectacular elements from the novel were removed under the authorship of the
playwright. Missing from the adaptation were the most remarkable elements of the
supernatural: the enormous helmet, the bleeding portraits, giant arms and legs strewn
about the castle, and, of course, the apparitions. Walpole himself approved of these
changes and remarked in a letter to Jephson, “One cannot be quite ashamed of one’s
follies, if genius condescends to adopt and put them to sensible use” (Thorp 476). Once
again, Walpole, at heart a classicist, disparages his own work.
Willard Thorp lays the necessity of eliminating the spectacular elements at the
feet of audience approval, claiming that, “Both author and adaptor…were aware that
they were dealing with dangerous material. The horrors must be eliminated or the
audience would mutiny” (476). Novelist and playwright were rewarded for their caution
by the commendation from both audience and critics. Evans quotes from a review in
The London Chronicle in which it was reported that “…the play went off with warm and
general applause” (52). To Seymore Conway, Walpole wrote, “The Count of Narbonne
was played last night with great applause and without a single murmur of
disapprobation” (Thorp 51). Thorp finds that, while audiences did not mutiny, the effect
of the changes was to turn a highly Gothicized novel into a dark and moody melodrama.
Some allowance must be made for the abilities of theatre at this time to manufacture the
spectacle of the Castle of Otranto, but it was not a lack of technical innovations which
caused the removal of the novel’s specters. Enlightened audiences, unable to separate
their reality from the representational space of the theatre, felt the appearance of a
ghost to be a forced and ridiculous attempt to excite their imagination. The only
acceptable form of drama for such spectacle was burlesque and comedy.
In 1785, Harlequin incorporated the gothic into its pantomime with Miles Peter
Andrews’ the Enchanted Castle. Gothic elements are quickly noticed with a cast of
vocal characters that include the Necromancer, two Magicians and the Genius of the
Wood, and silent players that include sprites and phantoms. The preface announces
the aim of the production.
IN this Age of Theatric change, when TRAGEDIES have found themselves to be
COMEDIES, and COMEDIES have bordered upon PANTOMIME; nothing has
changed so little as Pantomime itself. Harle|quin skips away his Passion;—
Colombine foots it to the same Tune;—the chosen Lover slides across the Stage,
melancholy and gentlemanlike;—the Clown breaks his Head pleasantly against
the Scene, and the Father tumbles over him, in the same Way, and fortunately
with the same Merriment, he has done any Time these Hundred Years.
The audience is given license to enjoy the spectacle because its purpose is that of
“Merriment.” As the preface states, much of the story is taken from Walpole’s the
Castle of Otranto and Anne Letitia Barbauld’s Sir Bertram, but in bringing it successfully
to the stage, a reasonable viewing public required the pretext of laughter. Hidden
behind reason, however, is a psychological yearning for terror.
The firm Mind certainly may laugh at all this; but if ever, on a late Winter Evening,
at a well-told Story of an Apparition, the Company have found themselves
unusually attentive, and sometimes unwittingly look'd back;—if they have felt no
Wish to part;—if imperceptibly they have sat more closely together, and heard
the Summons to Rest and Separation,—the retiring to a lone Chamber with
Reluctance, not to say Disquietude;—if all this has happen'd, then are we right in
thinking there is somewhat of Enthusiasm, or Superstition in these Matters, which
Reason smiles at, but cannot prevail over.—
A growing awareness that reason was unable to cope with horrific and desperate social
conditions, made possible a theatre that more closely resembled the conditions and
intentions behind the gothic novel. From closet drama to burlesque, the national
imagination would undergo yet another drastic change under the political and social
upheaval of the French Revolution.
The psychological dimensions long inhabited by the gothic novel gained force
under the uncertainties of revolution. Of the gothic in general, Evans notes that
“Otranto and the genre it initiated erupted from two related ideas: first, medieval life was
dark, gloomy, and barbarous; second, it would be terrifying if enlightened gentlemen
and ladies were transported from contemporary society and suddenly thrust into that
earlier time” (8). The 18th century’s rising social concerns with class, poverty and
education, reached a horrifying climax with “The Reign of Terror.” Fear of being thrust
into a barbarous society had crossed from imagination into reality, moving staged
representations of the supernatural out of the realms of comedy and into serious drama.
This was the state of gothic theatre when The Castle Spectre opened. Of the
play’s popularity, James Robert Allard finds that “…critics have been able to dismiss [it]
as nothing more than sensationalism pandering to the lowest common denominator”
(247). This insistence that spectacle was solely responsible for its ability to pack the
playhouse is evident in both the reviews of the time and in modern critical analysis.
As the first example of a theatre that the Romantics would later lay claim to, both
Wordsworth and Coleridge commented upon The Castle Spectre. Allard cites from
Coleridge’s collected letters when remarking that though Coleridge spent considerable
ink on disparaging the script, he also felt that some merit could be found. “The whole
plot, machinery, & incident are borrowed- the play is a mere patchwork of plagiarismsbut they are very well worked up, & for stage effect make an excellent whole” (249).
Reviews at the end of the 18th century nearly all draw the same conclusion; the popular
success of the play rested with the sensational appearance of the specter.
Nor is this conclusion limited to the age in which it was produced. In his seminal
work, Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelly, Bertrand Evans dedicates a complete
chapter to The Castle Spectre but focuses only on it supernatural manifestations. He
writes, “Obviously, theatricality, not literary merit, was responsible for the success.
Consistency of character, probability of action, and forward movement of plot are
sacrificed throughout to immediate sensational effect” (133). Lewis, himself, does not
disavow his intention of utilizing sensation. In response to the often noted anachronism
of his four villainous “blacks,” Lewis writes, “I thought I could give a pleasing variety to
the characters and dresses, if I made my servants black; and could I have produced the
same effect by making my heroine blue, blue I should have made her” (“A Note to the
Reader”). Without much argument, it may be said that Lewis’ effects played a part in its
reception, but to leave the analysis with this as its sole inducement to merit comes short
of a critical understanding of its importance in the development of the gothic stage. This
becomes most apparent when we bear in mind that it was this stage that, prior to The
Castle Spectre, had given spectacle over to comedy and pantomime.
A compelling argument that revises earlier attempts to account for this sudden
acceptance of sensational elements is made by Allard who finds that it is actually a lack
of spectacle that compels audiences. “The delays, preventions, and moments of
apparent invulnerability that permeate all aspects of the play continually serve to
manipulate and frustrate the audience’s expectations of a spectacle while, at the same
time, perpetuating and heightening their desire for Gothic spectacle by making
satisfaction an always immanent possibility” (248). It would seem to be a considerable
oversight in previous critiques of this drama given the abundant use of suspense in
modern gothic horror, but this omission can be accounted for if we take into
consideration the difference between a readership and an audience. Evans, for
example, refers often to “the reader” in his analysis. Much like the discussion on the
development of theatrical spaces, Lewis’ use of suspense requires a viewing audience.
The scene in which Percy escapes his guards seems a stretched and tired
comedic ploy. The staging of it, on the other hand, offers the viewer the delay of which
Allard refers. Scenes featuring the bloody dagger, the advancing form of Percy
concealed within a suit of armour, and various near misses, all prepare the spectator for
the appearance of the specter, Evilina. The psychological development of suspense,
for the reader, is broken by the intrusion of the author in the text. The following stage
direction lies flat upon the page, but the staging of it allows the cathartic moment that
the play has been building up to.
The folding-doors unclose, and the Oratory is seen illuminated. In its center
stands a tall female figure, her white and flowing garments spotted with blood;
her veil is thrown back, and discovers a pale and melancholy countenance; her
eyes are lifted upwards, her arms extended towards heaven, and a large wound
appears upon her bosom…At length, the Spectre advances slowly, to a soft and
plaintive strain…She then turns, approaches Angela seems to invoke a blessing
upon her, points to the picture and retires to the Oratory.
There is nothing in this description to recommend it to a reader, who would, in all
likelihood, find in it nothing more than the farcical pantomime that had come before it.
Indeed, a reader’s reaction to the play verses a spectator’s reaction can be found in the
recommendations Lewis received from friends and colleagues prior to production. In “A
Note to the Reader,” Lewis writes:
The Friends to whom I read my Drama, the Managers to whom I presented it,
and Actors who were to perform it- all combined to persecute my Spectre, and
requested me to confine my Ghost to the Green-Room. Aware that without her
my catastrophe would closely resemble that of the Grecian Daughter, I persisted
in retaining her. The event justified my obstinacy: The Spectre was as well
treated before the curtain as she had been ill-used behind it; as she continues to
make her appearance nightly with increased applause I think myself under great
obligations both to her and her representative.
It is for this reason that the discussion of Lewis’ The Castle Spectre, despite the modern
development of critical discourse on the gothic narrative, remains that of an
investigation into theatrical sensationalism.
A true analysis of a dramatic work must begin with a differentiation between text
and stage. The living text of dramatic literature must inform any analysis that seeks to
uncover the meaning behind its representations. The gothic stage, begun in the closet,
reached a spectacular climax with The Castle Spectre. Lewis, writing at the perfect
moment in the development of the gothic stage, mastered new theatrical techniques by
manipulating the conventions of space and spectacle. Many playwrights in the
Romantic era would take the reins, reaching all the way back to the work Walpole, but it
was the success of Lewis’ The Castle Spectre from which their efforts would spring.
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performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden. The words by Miles Peter
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