Shakespearean Gothic (Gothic Literary Studies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0708320929 ISBN 13: 9780708320921

Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2011

Synopsis

As evidenced by the vampires, werewolves, and other frights overrunning the best-seller lists, the Gothic remains immensely popular. This collection of essays traces the roots of the Gothic to an unexpected source: eighteenth-century interpretations of Shakespeare. Through close attention to literary, cultural, and historical detail, the contributors demonstrate that even as Shakespeare was being established as the supreme British writer, he was also being cited as justification for early Gothic writers’ abandonment of literary decorum and their interest in the supernatural.

About this title

About the Author

Christy Desmet is associate professor of English at the University of Georgia. Anne Williams is professor of English at the University of Georgia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Shakespearean Gothic

By Christy Desmet, Anne Williams

University of Wales Press

Copyright © 2009 The Contributors
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7083-2092-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
List of Illustrations, 
List of Contributors, 
Introduction, 
PART I: GOTHIC APPROPRIATIONS OF 'SHAKESPEARE', 
1 Reading Walpole Reading Shakespeare Anne Williams, 
2 Ann Radcliffe, 'The Shakespeare of Romance Writers' Rictor Norton, 
3 The Curse of Shakespeare Jeffrey Kahan, 
PART II: REWRITING SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS AND CHARACTERS, 
4 Shakespearean Shadows' Parodic Haunting of Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey Marjean D. Purinton and Marliss C. Desens, 
5 Fatherly and Daughterly Pursuits: Mary Shelley's Matilda and Shakespeare's King Lear Carolyn A. Weber, 
6 Into the Madman's Dream: the Gothic Abduction of Romeo and Juliet Yael Shapira, 
7 Gothic Cordelias: the Afterlife of King Lear and the Construction of Femininity Diane Long Hoeveler, 
PART III: SHAKESPEARE AS GOTHIC WRITER, 
8 'We are not safe': History, Fear and the Gothic in Richard III Jessica Walker, 
9 Remembering Ophelia: Ellen Terry and the Shakespearizing of Dracula Christy Desmet, 
10 'Rites of Memory': the Heart of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet Susan Allen Ford, 
Afterword: Shakespearean Gothic Frederick Burwick, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Reading Walpole Reading Shakespeare

ANNE WILLIAMS

* * *

Walpole's Gothic, both literary and architectural, is a thing of shreds and patches. The Castle of Otranto was inspired by the fragment of a nightmare concerning a 'gigantic hand in armour', and chapter 1 begins with the fall of an enormous helmet into the castle's courtyard. Walpole pieced together his story from patches of history, folk tale, kidnapped romance, medieval superstition and Shakespearean allusions. Strawberry Hill, the villa that Walpole constructed over nearly forty years, is a pastiche of Gothic designs, imitated (in wood or papier mâché) as adornments for fireplaces, ceilings and library shelves – to say nothing of battlements and turrets made of lathe and plaster. Walpole's prolific writings appear in an equally heterogeneous range of genres. His body of work, in short, seems as disjointed as the armour of Alphonso the Good.

Yet the works of the 1760s reveal an unexpected kinship. Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764, and in February 1768 Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third. Six months later, he printed at Strawberry Hill fifty copies of The Mysterious Mother, a tragedy in blank verse. These works mark the climax of Walpole's creative activity. With the exception of the Beauclerc Tower (1776), built to house illustrations of the play, Walpole's original work was essentially finished by the end of the 1760s. Despite their seeming diversity, however, these works share one important characteristic: they are all 'Shakespearean'. Walpole appropriated, rewrote and impersonated his precursor. I propose that under the aegis of Shakespeare, Walpole finally lived up to the Horatian motto he had chosen for his library ceiling – 'fari quae sentiat: he says what he feels'.

Walpole plays Shakespeare

[Horace Walpole's] features were covered by masks within masks ... He played innumerable parts and over-acted them all.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother are overtly fictional, though Walpole repeatedly teases us about their relation to r

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0708320929
• ISBN 13: 9780708320921
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Desmet Christy, Williams Anne