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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The Darkness of Castle Otranto illuminates the interplay between Gothic shadows and Enlightenment ideals through a carefully curated collection that deftly explores the human psyche's cavernous depths. This anthology presents classic Gothic motifs such as haunted castles, familial secrets, and the supernatural, inviting readers into a maze of dark corridors and haunting atmospheres. The works within this volume span diverse literary styles from suspense-laden narratives to rich, descriptive passages that evoke a palpable sense of dread and wonder, showcasing the labyrinthine complexity and timelessness of the Gothic tradition. This anthology bridges the foundational contributions of authors such as Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve, whose works are seminal in the Gothic literary movement. Their narratives reflect a world in transition, capturing the tension between emerging rationalist thought and the enchantment of dark romance. Reeve's and Walpole's stories resonate with historical echoes that continue to influence contemporary Gothic literature, encouraging a reevaluation of cultural anxieties and individual fears reflective of their eras. Together, these authors open a dialogue that not only illuminates the thematic core of the Gothic but also situates their works within a broader literary and cultural context. The Darkness of Castle Otranto offers readers an unparalleled foray into Gothic literature's mysterious and intricate world. Its cohesive yet diverse collection presents an invitation to explore the thematic richness and historical significance of the genre. By engaging with this anthology, readers are afforded the unique opportunity to witness how these distinctive voices converge to elevate and redefine the Gothic scope. Whether for scholarly exploration or sheer literary enjoyment, this volume promises a captivating journey into the Gothic imagination's depths and enduring allure. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Darkness of Castle Otranto
Table of Contents
Introduction
Within a fortress whose shadowed chambers magnify ambition and fear, the struggle to secure a precarious lineage collides with a past that refuses burial, turning authority into anxiety and inheritance into ordeal, as private desires, public claims, and whispers of prophecy braid into a crisis that presses on every threshold—from chapel to stair, from locked cabinet to open court—until the very architecture seems to answer the living with the weight of history, a pressure that cannot be bargained with, only faced, and, at cost, understood.
First published in 1764, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto is a seminal work of Gothic fiction, set in a medieval castle on the Italian coast and composed in a style that blends chivalric romance with the emerging realist novel. Walpole initially framed the tale as a discovered manuscript translated from Italian, then later acknowledged his authorship, a move that underscores the book’s play with authenticity, antiquity, and narrative masks. Its setting is not mere backdrop but an active instrument: towers, chapels, and underground passages orchestrate mood and meaning, shaping a drama in which space and history are inseparable.
The premise is deliberately stark and immediate: a noble house faces a crisis of succession, a marriage is arranged to secure power, and ominous signs suggest that the claims of blood and title are not as firm as they appear. From this setup, the narrative moves swiftly through confrontations, flights, and revelations in a voice that favors momentum over reflection. Readers encounter an atmosphere of heightened emotion and compressed time, a mood closer to stage spectacle than domestic realism, where apparitions punctuate human schemes and each choice seems to echo through corridors as loudly as steel upon stone.
Walpole’s style favors contrasts: archaic diction beside urgent pacing, courtly ceremonials interrupted by sudden marvels, private prayers colliding with public decrees. The effect is theatrical, sometimes abrupt, and designed to make the castle feel like a pressure chamber for conscience and desire. Doors, staircases, and galleries repeatedly frame the action, producing a choreography of approach and withdrawal that keeps attention fixed on thresholds. The supernatural functions less as allegory than as event, forcing characters to confront the legacies they inherit and the roles they perform, while the prose sustains a tension between credulity, skepticism, and awe.
At its core, the book probes questions of power, legitimacy, and responsibility under the sign of inheritance. It scrutinizes the mechanisms by which authority sustains itself—through marriage, lineage, and ritual—and how those mechanisms can be haunted by injustice. It raises the conflict between personal conscience and political necessity; it explores how patriarchal command confines bodies and choices; and it tests the line between providence and chance. The castle concentrates these pressures into tangible form, a built environment that remembers what its rulers prefer to forget, making architecture a medium for ethics as well as fear.
Clara Reeve, writing a little over a decade later in The Old English Baron (1777), engaged directly with the innovations of Walpole’s tale, refining Gothic materials toward greater probability and moral clarity while preserving an atmosphere of antiquity and suspense. Read in dialogue, these two early landmarks illuminate the spectrum of the nascent genre: Walpole’s bold embrace of the marvellous and spectacle on one end, Reeve’s measured calibration of plausibility on the other. Together they map crucial questions about how fiction should balance wonder with reason, inherited mystery with ethical order, and sensory shock with psychological coherence.
For contemporary readers, the attraction lies not only in historical priority but in the way these pages dramatize perennial anxieties about power, legacy, and the stories institutions tell to justify themselves. The blend of concentrated setting, compressed time, and disruptive marvels offers an experience at once brisk and resonant, an origin point for later Gothic traditions that still feels immediate. Engaging with this work invites attention to how fear operates—socially, politically, and intimately—and how the past insists on recognition. The result is a compact, atmospheric narrative that rewards both first encounters and reflective rereadings.
Synopsis (Selection)
This volume, presented under the title The Darkness of Castle Otranto, gathers two influential Gothic narratives by Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve. Set in medieval halls shadowed by ancestry and ambition, the stories trace the strain between lawful inheritance and perilous desire. Both employ castle architecture, prophetic warnings, and concealed passages to stage conflicts that test duty, piety, and power. Without modern commentary, the book lets the tales speak in their original idioms: Walpole’s startling wonders and swift reversals, and Reeve’s measured emphasis on virtue and procedure. Together they establish the groundwork of a tradition exploring how the past presses upon the present.
Walpole’s tale opens with ceremonial anticipation as a noble household prepares a marriage meant to secure its line. A sudden, prodigious mishap shatters the celebration and throws into doubt the legitimacy of the ruling family. Whispers of an old prophecy gain force, and the lord of the castle, confronted by public fear and private dread, moves urgently to avert the doom foretold. Domestic bonds strain under the pressure of dynastic anxiety, while the younger generation—obedient yet fearful—must navigate expectations they did not choose. The initial shock sets a tone of agitation, where every corridor and courtyard seems charged with threatening significance.
Pressing his advantage, the lord pursues a controversial solution that draws a virtuous young bride into danger and scandal. She flees through vaulted halls and dank passages toward sacred protection, seeking counsel from a devout friar who becomes a moral counterweight to worldly force. Along the way appears a humble youth of uncertain birth, whose courage and bearing disturb social boundaries. The castle’s recesses yield signs that blur coincidence and omen, deepening the impression that ancestral wrongs seek redress. Authority hardens into tyranny as fear mounts, and the household’s matriarch is quietly urged to sanction choices that imperil both conscience and kin.
External pressures intensify when a claimant with noble rank arrives, bringing his own history, retinue, and expectations. Negotiations over alliance and succession are recast as proposals of marriage, setting virtue and prudence against expediency. Meanwhile, prodigies recur: strange movements in galleries, vast shadows, and emblems that appear out of scale with human proportions. A compassionate daughter observes the turmoil and forms sympathies that complicate the household’s designs. The faithful friar urges moderation and acknowledgment of limits, yet the castle’s lord improvises bold measures. Politics and marvels mingle, steering events toward a sequence of encounters that tighten the web of obligation and risk.
Night scenes, hurried duels, and misread signals converge as identities are tested in chambers, chapels, and subterranean ways. Confessions and disclosures edge toward a reckoning, while the spectral atmosphere thickens to echo the characters’ fears. Bonds of filial duty and the claims of love collide beneath the pressure of a sentence pronounced long before the action began. In the mounting tumult, each principal must decide whether to follow conscience, command, or fear. The prophecy’s final implication approaches, and the castle itself seems to strain under the weight of it, yet the decisive turn is withheld here to preserve the story’s culmination.
Reeve’s companion narrative turns to a quieter estate where a foundling of obscure origin grows under the protection of a just lord. The youth’s steadfast conduct wins trust and advancement, drawing envy from peers and suspicion from those invested in established hierarchies. Rumors gather around a neighboring seat long associated with loss and absence, and faint intimations suggest that the past has unfinished business. Where Walpole’s marvels are abrupt, Reeve’s signs are temperate, guiding rather than overwhelming. The emphasis falls on patience, integrity, and the social forms by which truth can emerge without uproar, even as hints of lineage and injury intensify.
A seasoned knight returns from service abroad, bearing memories and tokens that connect the foundling to a history others would prefer remain closed. Inquiries proceed with attention to fairness: witnesses are summoned, manuscripts examined, and contested claims set out in orderly fashion. Oaths and hospitality bind rivals to a code that restrains private vengeance. A duel or formal encounter is proposed not as spectacle but as a recognized means of resolution. Quietly, secret apartments and buried objects add corroboration without displacing reasoned judgment. The household divides along lines of loyalty and jealousy, yet the process itself promises a path toward clarity.
Resolution gathers through testimony and conscience rather than terror. Admissions are weighed, guardianship reconsidered, and the rights attending name and estate approached with formality. Supernatural touches remain, but they serve to endorse human deliberation instead of supplanting it. Reeve’s narrative prizes reconciliation where possible, presenting restitution as a social act that heals fractures in family and tenure. Unions are contemplated with care, and rewards flow from constancy rather than force. The final passages gesture toward restored order and acknowledged identity, but the exact arrangements and revelations are left unstated here so that the tale’s concluding satisfactions remain for the reader.
Taken together, the paired narratives trace a movement from startling portent to measured justice, offering complementary visions of how the past asserts claims upon the present. They explore tyranny, legitimacy, filial duty, and the uses of faith and law, showing how private passion can unsettle public order until truth is faced. The castles themselves become instruments of memory, their vaults and portraits pressing characters toward acknowledgment. The volume’s core message is that authority must answer to lineage and conscience, whether through marvels that shock or procedures that persuade. Within this compact space, readers encounter the Gothic’s origins without forfeiting discovery.
Historical Context
Set in a medieval stronghold on the Adriatic fringe, The Castle of Otranto imagines a feudal principality in Apulia, southern Italy, where lineage, land, and ecclesiastical authority intertwine. The locale takes its name from the real port of Otranto, a gateway between Italy and the Balkans, long contested by Normans, Byzantines, and later Angevin and Aragonese rulers. The novel frames itself as a translation of a 16th-century Neapolitan manuscript, evoking the earlier centuries of chivalric rule when primogeniture, arranged marriages, and monastic influence were decisive. Cloisters, chapels, and the castle keep situate the drama within a world regulated by canon law and lordly jurisdiction.
The Norman conquest of southern Italy (11th century) and the creation of the Kingdom of Sicily established the feudal architecture and political culture the novel dramatizes. In 1059, Pope Nicholas II invested Robert Guiscard as Duke of Apulia and Calabria at Melfi; by 1071, Bari fell, ending Byzantine rule. Roger II united the territories and was crowned King at Palermo in 1130, entrenching a lattice of fortified seats and vassal allegiances. The feudal lord presiding from a stone citadel, dispensing justice and arranging dynastic marriages, reflects this Norman legacy. Walpole’s castle politics and disputes over rightful succession echo the structures born in this consolidation.
Thirteenth-century dynastic crises in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily supply a striking historical analogue to the novel’s usurpation plot. Frederick II (1194–1250) and his heirs battled papal hostility; Manfred of Sicily, Frederick’s son, seized the crown in 1258 but was slain by Charles of Anjou at Benevento in 1266. Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen heir, was executed after Tagliacozzo in 1268. The Sicilian Vespers of 1282 expelled Angevin rule from Sicily, splitting the realm between Aragonese Sicily and Angevin Naples. The very name Manfred in the novel resonates with this era’s contested legitimacy, signaling how claims of blood, prophecy, and force collide in southern Italian history.
Eighteenth-century British succession politics, from the Glorious Revolution to the Jacobite risings, decisively shaped Walpole’s treatment of legitimacy and tyranny. The Revolution of 1688–89 displaced James II and installed William III and Mary II, later codified by the Act of Settlement (1701), which redirected the crown to Protestant heirs and subordinated dynastic blood to parliamentary title. The Hanoverian accession in 1714 brought George I, while Jacobite risings in 1715 and 1745 sought to restore the Stuarts; the latter, led by Charles Edward Stuart, ended at Culloden on 16 April 1746. Horace Walpole, son of Robert Walpole (prime minister 1721–1742), inherited a Whig suspicion of arbitrary, hereditary claims unsupported by law and consent. The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, transposes these anxieties into a medieval register: Manfred’s imperious bid to secure his house mirrors the specter of usurpation and pretender politics haunting Britain. The novel’s insistence on true descent revealed through trials, omens, and witnesses can be read alongside parliamentary mechanisms that vetted succession. Clara Reeve’s engagement, culminating in The Old English Baron (1777), further channels this post-1745 climate: she presses for an orderly restoration of the rightful heir by credible proofs, aligning narrative justice with the English legal settlement. In both writers, the dramatization of contested titles, coerced marriages as instruments of power, and the exposure of counterfeit claims offers a clear analogue to Britain’s long reckoning with Stuart pretensions and Whig constitutionalism.
Questions of inheritance and marriage law, central to 18th-century Britain, reinforce the novel’s preoccupation with dynastic control. English primogeniture and strict settlements tied land to the eldest male, while entails limited alienation; Blackstone’s Commentaries (1765–1769) codified these principles for lay readers. The Marriage Act of 1753 imposed formalities and parental consent for those under 21, curbing clandestine unions. In the novel, Manfred’s coercive marital schemes recall the legal and social instruments used to consolidate estates, extinguish rival claims, and control female heirs under coverture. Reeve’s emphasis on lawful restoration and documentary proof reflects contemporary confidence in juridical process governing lineage and property.
The medieval Church’s jurisdiction in Italy supplied mechanisms of conscience, sanctuary, and adjudication that the narrative mobilizes. Papal inquisition procedures coalesced under Gregory IX in the 1230s; mendicant orders like the Franciscans (approved 1209) and Dominicans (1216) mediated between laity and law through confession and preaching. Ecclesiastical courts oversaw marriage validity and kinship impediments, while monasteries and chapels provided literal refuge. Father Jerome and monastic spaces in the story invoke this institutional fabric. For British readers in the 1760s–1770s, such scenes also refracted debates about Catholic authority and arbitrary power, inflecting the portrayal of spiritual courts and clerical admonition with contemporary political resonance.
The real Otranto’s most infamous ordeal, the Ottoman siege and sack of 1480, underscores the port’s historical volatility. Gedik Ahmed Pasha captured the city between July and August 1480 under Sultan Mehmed II; tradition holds that roughly 800 inhabitants were executed for refusing conversion, later venerated as the Martyrs of Otranto. A coalition retook the town in 1481 under Alfonso, Duke of Calabria. Although not depicted in the novel, this episode frames Otranto as a liminal bastion facing external incursion and sudden regime change. The book’s preoccupation with fragile sovereignty, threatened households, and divine portents harmonizes with the city’s record of abrupt conquest and restoration.
By staging the fall and righting of a household’s rule, the book interrogates the legitimacy of power, the abuses of patriarchal authority, and the instrumentalization of marriage as policy. It exposes how coerced unions, forged genealogies, and violence sustain inequitable structures, while gestures to confession, testimony, and lawful recognition valorize accountable governance. For 18th-century readers shaped by contested successions and property regimes, its medieval plot functions as political critique: arbitrary command is shown as unstable, social order depends on verifiable title and consent, and women’s bodies should not serve as collateral in elite bargains. Reeve’s juridical inflection intensifies this call for justice bound to law.
The Darkness of Castle Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole, the fourth son of Sir Robert Walpole, was born at 17 Arlington Street on 24 September, 1717. He spent the greater part of his boyhood at his father’s house in Chelsea, a building that is now part of the Hospital. At Eton, Walpole did not distinguish himself in any way. After leaving Cambridge in 1737, his father appointed him Inspector of Imports and Exports in the Customs House, and, in the following year, Usher to the Exchequer. In 1739 he began the usual “grand tour” on the Continent, where he developed a passion for antiquities. He returned to England at the end of 1741. His father died in March 1745, and in 1747 Walpole settled in the neighbourhood of Twickenham at Strawberry Hill. The transforming of this house into “a little Gothic castle” and museum was the chief occupation of the greater part of his life. Here he erected a private printing press on which he printed many of his own works as well as some poems of Gray. Although never really interested in politics, in 1754 Walpole entered Parliament as member for Castle Rising in Norfolk, vacating this seat three years later for that of Lynn. About this time, too, he made an unsuccessful attempt to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng. He went to Paris in 1765, where he formed a friendship with Madame du Deffand which lasted until her death in 1780. But from 1769 until his death, his life, apart from intermittent literary work and adding to his museum, was comparatively uneventful. In 1773, however, his comedy Nature Will Prevail was acted at the Haymarket with considerable success. In 1791, on the death of his brother, he acceded to the Earldom of Orford. He died at what was then 40 Berkeley Square on 2 March, 1797.
Preface To The First Edition
The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is of the purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first crusade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards. There is no other circumstance in the work that can lead us to guess at the period in which the scene is laid; the names of the actors are evidently fictitious, and probably disguised on purpose; yet the Spanish names of the domestics seem to indicate, that this work was not composed until the establishment of the Arragonian kings in Naples had made Spanish appellations familiar in that country. The beauty of the diction, and the zeal of the author (moderated, however, by singular judgment), concur to make me think that the date of the composition was little antecedent to that of the impression. Letters were then in the most flourishing state in Italy, and contributed to dispel the empire of superstition, at that time so forcibly attacked by the reformers. It is not unlikely that an artful priest might endeavour to turn their own arms on the innovators; and might avail himself of his abilities as an author to confirm the populace in their ancient errors and superstitions. If this was his view, he has certainly acted with signal address. Such a work as the following would enslave a hundred vulgar minds beyond half the books of controversy that have been written from the days of Luther to the present hour.
This solution of the author’s motives is, however, offered as a mere conjecture. Whatever his views were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancies, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times who should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them.
If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibility of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. There is no bombast, no similes, flowers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends directly to the catastrophe. Never is the reader’s attention relaxed. The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the conduct of the piece. The characters are well drawn, and still better maintained. Terror, the author’s principal engine, prevents the story from ever languishing; and it is so often contrasted by pity, that the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude of interesting passions.
Some persons may, perhaps, think the characters of the domestics too little serious for the general cast of the story; but, besides their opposition to the principal personages, the art of the author is very observable in his conduct of the subalterns. They discover many passages essential to the story, which could not be well brought to light but by their naïveté and simplicity: in particular, the womanish terror and foibles of Bianca, in the last chapter, conduce essentially towards advancing the catastrophe.
It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my author’s defects. I could wish he had grounded his plan on a more useful moral than this; that the sins of the fathers are visited on their children to the third and fourth generation. I doubt whether, in his time, any more than at present, ambition curbed its appetite of dominion from the dread of so remote a punishment. And yet this moral is weakened by that less direct insinuation, that even such anathema may be diverted by devotion to St. Nicholas. Here the interest of the monk plainly gets the better of the judgment of the author. However, with all its faults, I have no doubt but the English reader will be pleased with a sight of this performance. The piety that reigns throughout, the lessons of virtue that are inculcated, and the rigid purity of the sentiments, exempt this work from the censure to which romances are but too liable. Should it meet with the success I hope for, I may be encouraged to reprint the original Italian, though it will tend to depreciate my own labour. Our language falls far short of the charms of the Italian, both for variety and harmony. The latter is peculiarly excellent for simple narrative. It is difficult in English to relate without falling too low or rising too high; a fault obviously occasioned by the little care taken to speak pure language in common conversation. Every Italian or Frenchman, of any rank, piques himself on speaking his own tongue correctly and with choice. I cannot flatter myself with having done justice to my author in this respect: his style is as elegant as his conduct of the passions is masterly. It is pity that he did not apply his talents to what they were evidently proper for—the theatre.
I will detain the reader no longer, but to make one short remark. Though the machinery is invention, and the names of the actors imaginary, I cannot but believe that the groundwork of the story is founded on truth. The scene is undoubtedly laid in some real castle. The author seems frequently, without design, to describe particular parts. The chamber, says he, on the right hand; the door on the left hand; the distance from the chapel to Conrad’s apartment: these, and other passages, are strong presumptions that the author had some certain building in his eye. Curious persons, who have leisure to employ in such researches, may possibly discover in the Italian writers the foundation on which our author has built. If a catastrophe, at all resembling that which he describes, is believed to have given rise to this work, it will contribute to interest the reader, and will make The Castle of Otranto a still more moving story.
Preface To The Second Edition
The favourable manner in which this little piece has been received by the public calls upon the author to explain the grounds on which he composed it. But before he opens those motives, it is fit that he should ask pardon of his readers for having offered his work to them under the borrowed personage of a translator. As diffidence of his own abilities, and the novelty of the attempt, were the sole inducements to assume that disguise, he flatters himself he shall appear excusable. He resigned his performance to the impartial judgment of the public; determined to let it perish in obscurity, if disapproved; nor meaning to avow such a trifle, unless better judges should pronounce that he might own it without a blush.
It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and improbability; in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.
The author of the following pages thought it possible to reconcile the two kinds. Desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct the mortal agents in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak, and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions. He had observed, that in all inspired writings, the personages under the dispensation of miracles, and witnesses to the most stupendous phenomena, never lose sight of their human character; whereas, in the productions of romantic story, an improbable event never fails to be attended by an absurd dialogue. The actors seem to lose their senses, the moment the laws of nature have lost their tone. As the public have applauded the attempt, the author must not say he was entirely unequal to the task he had undertaken; yet if the new route he has struck out shall have paved a road for men of brighter talents, he shall own with pleasure and modesty, that he was sensible the plan was capable of receiving greater embellishments than his imagination or conduct of the passions could bestow on it.
With regard to the deportment of the domestics, on which I have touched in the former preface, I will beg leave to add a few words. The simplicity of their behaviour, almost tending to excite smiles, which at first seems not consonant to the serious cast of the work, appeared to me not only not improper, but was marked designedly in that manner. My rule was nature. However grave, important, or even melancholy, the sensations of princes and heroes may be, they do not stamp the same affections on their domestics; at least the latter do not, or should not be made to express their passions in the same dignified tone. In my humble opinion, the contrast between the sublime of the one and the naïveté of the other, sets the pathetic of the former in a stronger light. The very impatience which a reader feels while delayed by the coarse pleasantries of vulgar actors from arriving at the knowledge of the important catastrophe he expects, perhaps heightens, certainly proves, that he has been artfully interested in the depending event. But I had higher authority than my own opinion for this conduct. That great master of nature, Shakespeare, was the model I copied. Let me ask if his tragedies of Hamlet and Julius Cæsar would not lose a considerable share of their spirit and wonderful beauties, if the humour of the grave-diggers, the fooleries of Polonius, and the clumsy jests of the Roman citizens, were omitted, or vested in heroics? Is not the eloquence of Antony, the nobler and affectingly unaffected oration of Brutus, artificially exalted by the rude outbursts of nature from the mouths of their auditors? These touches remind one of the Grecian sculptor, who, to convey the idea of a Colossus within the dimensions of a seal, inserted a little boy measuring his thumb.
No, says Voltaire, in his edition of Corneille, this mixture of buffoonery and solemnity is intolerable.—Voltaire is a genius1—but not of Shakespeare’s magnitude. Without recurring to disputable authority, I appeal from Voltaire to himself. I shall not avail myself of his former encomiums on our mighty poet, though the French critic has twice translated the same speech in Hamlet, some years ago in admiration, latterly in derision; and I am sorry to find that his judgment grows weaker when it ought to be farther matured. But I shall make use of his own words, delivered on the general topic of the theatre, when he was neither thinking to recommend or decry Shakespeare’s practice; consequently at a moment when Voltaire was impartial. In the preface to his Enfant Prodigue, that exquisite piece, of which I declare my admiration, and which, should I live twenty years longer, I trust I shall never attempt to ridicule, he has these words, speaking of comedy (but equally applicable to tragedy, if tragedy is, as surely it ought to be, a picture of human life; nor can I conceive why occasional pleasantry ought more to be banished from the tragic scene, than pathetic seriousness from the comic): “On y voit un melange de serieux et de plaisanterie, de comique et de touchant; souvent meme une seule avanture produit tous ces contrastes. Rien n’est si commun qu’une maison dans laquelle un pere gronde, une fille occupée de sa passion pleure; le fils se moque des deux, et quelques parens prennent part differemment à la scene, etc. Nous n’inferons pas de là que toute comedie doive avoir des scenes de bouffonerie et des scenes attendrissantes: il y a beaucoup de tres bonnes pièces où il ne regne que de la gayeté; d’autres toutes serieuses; d’autres melangées: d’autres où l’attendrissement va jusqu’aux larmes: il ne faut donner l’exclusion à aucun genre: et si l’on me demandoit quel genre est le meilleur, je repondrois, celui qui est le mieux traité.”2 Surely if a comedy may be toute serieuse, tragedy may now and then, soberly, be indulged in a smile. Who shall proscribe it? shall the critic, who, in self-defence, declares that no kind ought to be excluded from comedy, give laws to Shakespeare?
I am aware that the preface from whence I have quoted these passages does not stand in Monsieur de Voltaire’s name, but in that of his editor; yet who doubts that the editor and author were the same person? or where is the editor who has so happily possessed himself of his author’s style and brilliant ease of argument? These passages were indubitably the genuine sentiments of that great writer. In his epistle to Maffei, prefixed to his Merope, he delivers almost the same opinion, though I doubt with a little irony. I will repeat his words, and then give my reason for quoting them. After translating a passage in Maffei’s Merope, Monsieur de Voltaire adds, “Tous ces traits sont naïfs: tout y est convenable à ceux que vous introduisez sur la scene, et aux mœurs que vous leur donnez. Ces familiarités naturelles eussent été, à ce que je crois, bien reçues dans Athenes; mais Paris et notre parterre veulent une autre espece de simplicité.”3 I doubt, I say, whether there is not a grain of sneer in this and other passages of that epistle; yet the force of truth is not damaged by being tinged with ridicule. Maffei was to represent a Grecian story: surely the Athenians were as competent judges of Grecian manners and of the propriety of introducing them, as the parterre of Paris. On the contrary, says Voltaire (and I cannot but admire his reasoning), there were but ten thousand citizens at Athens, and Paris has near eight hundred thousand inhabitants, among whom one may reckon thirty thousand judges of dramatic works.—Indeed! but, allowing so numerous a tribunal, I believe this is the only instance in which it was ever pretended, that thirty thousand persons, living near two thousand years after the era in question, were, upon the mere face of the poll, declared better judges than the Grecians themselves of what ought to be the manners of a tragedy written on a Grecian story.
I will not enter into a discussion of the espece de simplicité, which the parterre of Paris demands, nor of the shackles with which the thirty thousand judges have cramped their poetry, the chief merit of which, as I gather from repeated passages in The New Commentary on Corneille, consists in vaulting in spite of those fetters; a merit which, if true, would reduce poetry, from the lofty effort of imagination, to a puerile and most contemptible labour—difficiles nugæ with a witness! I cannot, however, help mentioning a couplet, which, to my English ears, always sounded as the flattest and most trifling instance of circumstantial propriety: but which Voltaire, who has dealt so severely with nine parts in ten of Corneille’s works, has singled out to defend in Racine:
De son appartement cette porte est prochaine,Et cette autre conduit dans celui de la reine.
In English:
To Cæsar’s closet through this door you come,And t’other leads to the queen’s drawing-room.
Unhappy Shakespeare! hadst thou made Rosencrantz inform his compeer, Guildenstern, of the ichnography of the palace of Copenhagen, instead of presenting us with a moral dialogue between the Prince of Denmark and the grave-digger, the illuminated pit of Paris would have been instructed a second time to adore thy talents.
The result of all I have said is, to shelter my own daring under the canon of the brightest genius this country, at least, has produced. I might have pleaded, that having created a new species of romance, I was at liberty to lay down what rules I thought fit for the conduct of it: but I should be more proud of having imitated, however faintly, weakly, and at a distance, so masterly a pattern, than to enjoy the entire merit of invention, unless I could have marked my work with genius as well as with originality. Such as it is, the public have honoured it sufficiently, whatever rank their suffrages allot to it.
SONNETTO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY MARY COKE
The gentle maid, whose hapless taleThese melancholy pages speakSay, gracious lady, shall she failTo draw the tear adown thy cheek?
No; never was thy pitying breastInsensible to human woes;Tender, though firm, it melts distrestFor weaknesses it never knows.
Oh! guard the marvels I relateOf fell ambition scourg’d by fate,From reason’s peevish blame.Blest with thy smile, my dauntless sailI dare expand to fancy’s gale.For sure thy smiles are fame.
H. W.
1The following remark is foreign to the present question, yet excusable in an Englishman, who is willing to think that the severe criticisms of so masterly a writer as Voltaire on our immortal countryman, may have been the effusions of wit and precipitation, rather than the result of judgment and attention. May not the critic's skill, in the force and powers of our language, have been as incorrect and incompetent as his knowledge of our history? of the latter, his own pen has dropped glaring evidence. In his preface to Thomas Corneille's Earl of Essex, Monsieur de Voltaire allows that the truth of history has been grossly perverted in that piece. In excuse he pleads, that when Corneille wrote, the noblesse of France were much unread in English story; but now, says the commentator, that they study it, such misrepresentations would not be suffered—yet forgetting that the period of ignorance is lapsed, and that it is not very necessary to instruct the knowing, he undertakes, from the overflowing of his own reading, to give the nobility of his own country a detail of Queen Elizabeth's favourites—of whom, says he, Robert Dudley was the first, and the Earl of Leicester the second. Could one have believed that it would be necessary to inform Monsieur de Voltaire himself, that Robert Dudley and the Earl of Leicester were the same person? "One sees there a mixture of the grave and the light, of the comic and the tragic; often even a single adventure exhibits all these contrasts. Nothing is more common than a house in which the father scolds, a girl occupied by her passions weeps, the son ridicules both, some relations take a differing part in the scene, etc. We do not infer from this that every comedy ought to have scenes of buffoonery and of gravity. Now there is gaiety, now seriousness, now a mixture. Then there are others in which tenderness moves one to tears. We must not exclude any type, and if I were asked which is the best I would answer, 'the one which is best made.'"
2"One sees there a mixture of the grave and the light, of the comic and the tragic; often even a single adventure exhibits all these contrasts. Nothing is more common than a house in which the father scolds, a girl occupied by her passions weeps, the son ridicules both, some relations take a differing part in the scene, etc. We do not infer from this that every comedy ought to have scenes of buffoonery and of gravity. Now there is gaiety, now seriousness, now a mixture. Then there are others in which tenderness moves one to tears. We must not exclude any type, and if I were asked which is the best I would answer, 'the one which is best made.'"
3"All of these characteristics are naive. Everything is convenient to those who introduce the scene and to the customs that you give them. These natural familiarities would, I think, have been well received in Athens, but Paris and our nation prefer another type of subtlety.
Chapter I
Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenza’s daughter, Isabella; and she had already been delivered by her guardians into the hands of Manfred, that he might celebrate the wedding as soon as Conrad’s infirm state of health would permit. Manfred’s impatience for this ceremonial was remarked by his family and neighbours. The former, indeed, apprehending the severity of their prince’s disposition, did not dare to utter their surmises on this precipitation. Hippolita, his wife, an amiable lady, did sometimes venture to represent the danger of marrying their only son so early, considering his great youth, and greater infirmities; but she never received any other answer than reflections on her own sterility, who had given him but one heir. His tenants and subjects were less cautious in their discourses: they attributed this hasty wedding to the prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced, that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it. It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; and still less easy to conceive what it had to do with the marriage in question. Yet these mysteries, or contradictions, did not make the populace adhere the less to their opinion.
Young Conrad’s birthday was fixed for his espousals. The company was assembled in the chapel of the castle, and everything ready for beginning the divine office, when Conrad himself was missing. Manfred, impatient of the least delay, and who had not observed his son retire, dispatched one of his attendants to summon the young prince. The servant, who had not stayed long enough to have crossed the court to Conrad’s apartment, came running back breathless, in a frantic manner, his eyes staring, and foaming at the mouth. He said nothing, but pointed to the court. The company were struck with terror and amazement. The Princess Hippolita, without knowing what was the matter, but anxious for her son, swooned away. Manfred, less apprehensive than enraged at the procrastination of the nuptials, and at the folly of his domestic, asked imperiously what was the matter? The fellow made no answer, but continued pointing towards the court-yard; and, at last, after repeated questions put to him, cried out:
“Oh! the helmet! the helmet!”
In the mean time, some of the company had run into the court, from whence was heard a confused noise of shrieks, horror, and surprise. Manfred, who began to be alarmed at not seeing his son, went himself to get information of what occasioned this strange confusion. Matilda remained endeavouring to assist her mother, and Isabella stayed for the same purpose, and to avoid showing any impatience for the bridegroom, for whom, in truth, she had conceived little affection.
The first thing that struck Manfred’s eyes was a group of his servants endeavouring to raise something that appeared to him a mountain of sable plumes. He gazed without believing his sight. “What are ye doing?” cried Manfred, wrathfully. “Where is my son?”
A volley of voices replied, “Oh! my lord! the prince! the prince! the helmet! the helmet!”
Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily—but, what a sight for a father’s eyes!—he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, a hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.
The horror of the spectacle, the ignorance of all around how this misfortune had happened, and, above all, the tremendous phenomenon before him, took away the prince’s speech. Yet his silence lasted longer than even grief could occasion. He fixed his eyes on what he wished in vain to believe a vision; and seemed less attentive to his loss, than buried in meditation on the stupendous object that had occasioned it. He touched, he examined, the fatal casque; nor could even the bleeding, mangled remains of the young prince divert the eyes of Manfred from the portent before him. All who had known his partial fondness for young Conrad were as much surprised at their prince’s insensibility, as thunderstruck themselves at the miracle of the helmet. They conveyed the disfigured corpse into the hall, without receiving the least direction from Manfred. As little was he attentive to the ladies who remained in the chapel; on the contrary, without mentioning the unhappy princesses, his wife and daughter, the first sounds that dropped from Manfred’s lips were, “Take care of the Lady Isabella.”
