SOURCE: "The Gothic World as Stage: Providence and Character in The Castle of Otranto," Wascana Review 14, No. 2, Fall, 1979, pp. 17-30.

[In the following essay, Ehlers analyzes the theatrical elements of The Castle of Otranto.]

Perhaps no eighteenth-century writer has elicited more conflicting responses than has Horace Walpole. Known today primarily for his voluminous collection of letters, Walpole is also familiar to every beginning student of literature as the author of that notorious, entertaining piece of Gothic fiction, The Castle of Otranto. While Otranto is, and was in its own day, widely read, the question remains whether it has been well read. Walpole's self-proclaimed purpose is "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."¹ But the critical reception of his Gothic romance was at best contradictory; while the book was popular with the reading public and went through six editions between 1764 and 1791, one reviewer sneered at its "rotten materials," particularly the giant helmet and sighing portrait.² Modern critics are no less divided in their responses. Robert Kiely considers it a "slight work" betraying an "apparent lack of seriousness" and "total confusion."³ In contrast, Martin Kallich finds Otranto to be a coherent narrative with "a strict unity of action."⁴ Evidently the twentieth century is as much bemused by this Gothic romance as was the eighteenth.

This critical debate arises from the relation of the supernatural, that most outstanding manifestation of disorder, to the overall order or narrative structure of the romance. To comprehend the true "unity of action" behind Otranto, we must first recognize that it clearly draws on the stage as an appropriate analogy for its own narrative order. Walpole's interest in the stage is, of course, apparent in both his dramatization of incest in The Mysterious Mother (1768, unstaged) and his approval of the successful stage adaptation of Otranto as The Count of Narbonne (1781, by Robert Jephson).⁵ While Kallich notes that Otranto is much like a melodramatic play, with a five-act division, stock characters and a catharsis of pity and terror, the implications of this stage analogy are more central to the romance's narrative unity than has been acknowledged heretofore. Just as the five-act structure subsumes disorder (the supernatural) into an overall movement toward order (the happy ending) the religious context of Otranto is that of a providential manipulation of disorder into order. Walpole, in fact, has a serious purpose in allowing the seeming disorder of the supernatural to rule his fictive world. The ghosts, giant helmet, portraits and apparitions are agents of providence and as such introduce chaos into the princedom in order to expose the villain Manfred and to reveal the true heir Theodore. In a sense the supernatural is the means to a theatrical-religious poetic justice that affirms the power of Heaven to intervene in the affairs of man. Much earlier in the century Thomas Rymer made explicit the parallel between God's justice and the poetical justice of the playwright.⁶ Following this pattern, Walpole creates in prose a Gothic theatrum mundi in which the hand of God operates in and through the supernatural and the human responses to such ghosts. Though one should not ignore the amusing aspects of Otranto—the preface to the first edition calls it "a matter of entertainment" (p.4)—something of Walpole's didactic purpose is evident in the prefatory poem that requires its reader to "guard the marvels I relate/Of fell ambition scourg'd by fate,/From reason's peevish blame" (p. 13).

The religious and theatrical contexts affect both narrative structure and characterization in Otranto. To establish a fictive world governed by a Christian providence, Walpole relies on a religiously oriented pattern of events. The initial vision of earthly order, a stable society headed by the prince Manfred, is replaced by instability as the supernatural agents of providence bring about the villain's downfall and the restoration of order in the accession of the true heir to the throne. This tripartite structure of prose romance reflects, for an eighteenth-century critic like John Dennis, man's position within a Christian universe: "as soon as [Man] … fell from his Primitive State, by transgressing Order, Weakness and Misery was the immediate Consequence of that universal Disorder that immediately follow'd his Conceptions, in his Passions and Actions. The great Design of Arts is to restore the Decays that happen'd to human Nature by the Fall, by restoring Order."⁷ The result is a fiction shaped, as Martin C. Battestin remarks, by "fortunate contingencies and surprising turns" under the direction of "a personal and particular Providence," and with, as Aubrey Williams notes, the ultimate purpose that "virtuous characters can be tested and then rewarded and so that the evil can be proved and punished."⁸ In Otranto the overall "providential" pattern emerges from three central conflicts: villain vs. hero, villain vs. heroine, villain vs. priest. The fortunes of the principal virtuous characters, Theodore, Isabella and Jerome, embody different human concerns, politics, society and religion, that fall under the ultimate guidance of heaven and that are manipulated toward the rather "stagy" denouement restoring truth and justice to the world.

Similarly religious and theatrical are the characterizations. While the good people are stock characters identified by their sentimental speeches, the villain Manfred is developed by his struggles against the supernatural and particularly by a series of allusions to Shakespearean plays. The result of Manfred's role-playing is the exposure of his evil and finally his confession of his crimes and inner torments. Otranto unites both the religious and the theatrical and thus demonstrates the power of divine intervention into the affairs of prince and state.

i

Otranto opens with a shock. The young Conrad, heir apparent to the princedom, is killed on his wedding day by the falling of the giant helmet. This "accident" not only deprives Manfred of his only son but also immediately brings him into conflict with the hero Theodore, the "peasant" who provokes the prince's anger by commenting on the similarity between the helmet and the statue of the good prince Alfonso. This conflict between villain and hero is at the heart of the political manifestation of the providential pattern. Centering on problems of dynasty and true identity, this political conflict involves the overthrow of an establishment founded on murder and usurpation and the restoration of the true family line. The outline of this political upheaval is summarized by the ancient prophecy predicting "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" (pp. 15-16). In the end Manfred becomes his true self, a deposed tyrant accorded only the courtesy title of "your lordship" (p. 109), and Theodore, no longer the peasant, becomes the "real owner" of Otranto.

Although Manfred struggles against loss of power, providence thwarts his attempts to re-establish his dynasty. Despite his wife Hippolita's warning that "the hand of Providence is stretched out" against them (p.87), Manfred plots an intermarriage between his and Frederic's family, which has the closer claim to the throne. But when Manfred proposes marriage to Isabella, the giant helmet emits "a hollow and rustling sound" (p.23). Isabella's warning that "heaven itself declares against your impious intentions" provokes Manfred's defiance: "Heaven nor hell shall impede my designs" (p.23). Reinforcing the prince's dynastic concern is the obvious allusion to Henry VIII's arguments for his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, who like Hippolita failed to provide a living male heir: "Hippolita is related to me in the fourth degree … To this state of unlawful wedlock I impute the visitation that has fallen on me in the death of Conrad!" (p.49). The villain's sophistry obscures the real purpose of the "visitation," and only after the death of Matilda and irrevocable destruction of his dynastic line does Manfred admit his and his grandfather's guilt: "May this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants.… Alfonso died by poison. A fictitious will declared Ricardo his heir. His crimes pursued him—yet he lost no Conrad, no Matilda! I pay the price of usurpation for all!" (p. 109). Thus "the will of heaven" (p. 109) has destroyed the prince's political power, shattering his castle's walls as well, and forced the usurper into exile and atonement for the remainder of his life.

While engaged in bringing down the usurper, providence arranges a series of dramatic manipulations which reveal Theodore as the true prince of Otranto. In the guise of a peasant, Theodore "happens" to wander into the castle and to arouse Manfred's anger. When the villain subjects the hero to imprisonment within the giant helmet, that very confinement providentially works to Theodore's advantage. Describing his discovery of the entrance to the underground passage, Theodore states, "Providence, that delivered me from the helmet, was able to direct me to the spring of a lock" (pp. 29-30) by means of a timely "ray of moonshine" (p.27). Theodore demonstrates his nobility by his "courteous" and "generous" (p.27) behavior to the princess Isabella, whom he helps to escape into the passage. When Manfred condemns him to death, the hero displays both courage and "undaunted … resignation" (p.53) as well as the birthmark by which Jerome recognizes the youth as his long-lost son. Finally, providence offers dramatic proof of Theodore's true identity when the vision of Alfonso appears in the castle ruins and declares, "Behold in Theodore, the true heir of Alfonso!" (p. 108). The import of these discoveries of identity is not, as Kiely argues, that Walpole reveals lack of artistry in relying on an "overused stock device."⁹ Rather, the repeated instances of identity reversals affirm providence's power to turn the seeming confusion of mistaken identities into political and dynastic order and to reward the hero's courage and virtue while punishing the villain's defiance and crimes.

Paralleling the political conflict between Manfred and Theodore is the sexual tension between Manfred and Isabella, which is part of a larger context of social disorder. The opening scene briefly establishes a stable social hierarchy including all ranks—peasants, servants, aristocrats and the family of Manfred. Soon, however, the reluctant bride is saved, in the providential "nick of time," by Conrad's sudden death, throwing society into a disorder that lasts until providence makes possible Isabella's true marriage. The transition between the two weddings is marked by social chaos throughout the population. The crowd of spectators at the first wedding quickly becomes a mob after Conrad's death; the servants Diego and Jaques are thoroughly frightened and provoke Manfred's wrath by their hesitations and superstitious chatterings. Manfred himself seeks to dissolve his own family by disowning his daughter and divorcing his wife, but Jerome suddenly gains a family in his son Theodore. Such pervasive social disorder is resolved only when providence has punished Manfred and frees Isabella to marry her true love.

At the heart of that social disorder is Manfred's rampant sexuality, which because of its incestuous overtones presents a most damaging challenge to family and society. At the outset Manfred is the respectable paterfamilias, and his sexuality is contained within the proper family unit and sanctioned by the church. Once his son is dead, Manfred despairs of another heir from Hippolita because of her "sterility" (p. 15), and his awakened lust turns to the young and beautiful Isabella, from whom he expects "a numerous offspring" (p.23). Outraged, Isabella resists an incestuous and immoral union with her "father in law! the father of Conrad! the husband of the virtuous and tender Hippolita!" (p.23). Likewise, Jerome later warns the prince "not to pursue the incestuous design on thy contracted daughter" (p.48). Ironically, the union that Manfred wishes to dissolve is almost as incestuous as the projected union with Isabella, for the prince and Hippolita are close cousins, married under a special dispensation. Having once defied social taboos to marry Hippolita, Manfred now disregards the sanctity of the marriage bond and pursues Isabella so lustfully that she fears rape in the basement of his castle, "a place where her cries were not likely to draw any body to her assistance" (p.25).

In the end the prince's forbidden lust providentially causes his downfall. Angered by his intended's coolness and "flushed by wine and love" (p. 103), Manfred jealously mistakes the lady with Theodore in the chapel for Isabella and assaults her in a sexual manner by "plunging … [his dagger] over her shoulder into the bosom …" (p. 104). The death of Matilda punishes Manfred for his incestuous sexuality and the attempt to break the marriage bond; in effect, providence has turned the villain's own weakness against himself. The ancient prophecy from St. Nicholas has predicted prosperity for Manfred's family "as long as issue-male from Ricardo's loins should remain to enjoy it" (p. 109). Once Manfred's sexuality breaks out of the legal bounds, his lust works to his ultimate downfall and exile to a sterile life in a monastery.

In addition to the political and sexual conflicts, the villain struggles with a third opponent, Father Jerome, the spokesman for the church. As an agent of providence, Jerome is instrumental in defeating the villain's challenge against church authority. Realizing that to allow a divorce and nullification of a special dispensation would undermine the church's spiritual and moral influence in the princedom, Jerome bluntly reprimands the prince's "adulterous intention" (p.48). Manfred, however, extends his challenge from mere requests for a divorce to an actual invasion of the monastery church. Here the villain attempts to separate Hippolita from her confessor and provokes Jerome's denunciation: "The church despises thy menaces.… Dare to proceed in thy curst purpose of a divorce, until her sentence be known, and here I lance [sic] her anathema at thy head" (p.93). The seriousness of Manfred's threat to ecclesiastical authority is indicated by his later plot to "advance his suit at the court of Rome" by bribery (p.96). The corruption that began in the castle has moved to the neighboring church and verges on becoming universal.

Heaven defends the earthly church by the various supernatural interventions, which Jerome underscores by overtly religious commentary. Repeatedly the father provides a providential interpretation of events. In Jerome's hands the death of Conrad becomes an example of the ubi sunt theme: "Heaven mocks the short-sighted views of man. But yester-morn, whose house was so great, so flourishing as Manfred's?—Where is young Conrad now?" (p.48). The death of Matilda elicits Jerome's most providential denunciation: "Now, tyrant! behold the completion of woe fulfille-d on thy impious and devoted head! The blood of Alfonso cried to heaven for vengeance: and heaven has permitted its altar to be polluted by assassination, that thou mightest shed thy own blood at the foot of that prince's sepulchre!" (p. 105). The Biblical echo (Abel's blood crying to the Lord) reinforces and epitomizes the clearly religious nature of Jerome's position of spokesman for an "offended heaven" that moves to punish murder and usurpation (p. 109).

The final paragraph of the romance ties together the political, social and religious manifestations of the providential pattern. Theodore, Isabella and Jerome are united in a single act of poetic justice, while Manfred is cast out. The virtuous characters are rewarded by marriage and parenthood, but the villain is punished by exile from his wife and loss of children. Thus the romance has moved toward a strict fulfillment of the basic principle, "a tyrant's race must be swept from the earth to the third and fourth generation" (pp. 90-91). Murder and usurpation merit severe punishment, while faith and virtue merit reward. Both dispositions are achieved simultaneously by the providential appearance of Alfonso's apparition.

If this providential pattern is, as I have attempted to demonstrate, the informing structure of Otranto, the question remains why certain critics have failed to note any didactic point in the romance. Both modern and eighteenth-century responses often see Otranto as a frivolous or even dangerous work. Kiely charges Walpole with "ambiguity of… moral and aesthetic position" (Romantic Novel, p.37), while Stanley J. Solomon concludes that the romance lacks "apparent didactic point."¹⁰ More to the heart of the issue is The Monthly Review's complaint that Otranto presents "not only a very useless, but a very insupportable moral" in its "unchristian doctrine of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children."¹¹ The crucial factor in such distaste for the providential denouement is the fate of Matilda, the seemingly innocent "fourth generation" of the tyrant's (Ricardo's) family. Even Theodore is somewhat dissatisfied with the outcome, for despite marriage to Isabella, he remains in a permanent state of semi-mourning, knowing "no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could forever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul" (p. 110). Matilda's death may seem an unnecessarily harsh punishment for helping Theodore escape and for seeing him despite her vow to the contrary. However, this defiance of her father, albeit a tyrant-father, is after all a sin of disobedience, with all the attendant Edenic overtones. Like Matilda's disobedience, the usurpation of Ricardo and hence that of Manfred also constitutes a defiance of the father-prince Alfonso, the divinely designated ruler.

The fact that Otranto ends on a note of sorrow mixed with joy does not undermine Walpole's didactic point. The death of Matilda underscores the essentially fallen nature of man and his world. Theodore's melancholy responds to the inevitability of suffering in this world, but his marriage and restoration to the throne affirm the power of providence to dispose human lives for the overall good and to restore eventually the faithful to full happiness in heaven. Thus in contrast to the "perfectly" happy ending of Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron, another extremely didactic Gothic romance, Walpole's ending prepares his reader for providential dispositions resulting in sorrows amid the joy, a condition more closely approximating the reader's everyday experience. In effect, Walpole warns us not to expect perfect restoration until we enter heaven. No conclusion could seem more properly didactic or Christian.

ii

Walpole's characterizations have been misunderstood by critics who attempt to impose on his romance standards of the modern psychological novel. For instance, Solomon faults Otranto for having "no organizing intelligence … neither a narrative personality nor a character's mind."¹² Walpole's interest is not in the hidden depths of the human psyche but rather in the responses of his characters to the providential interventions in their lives. In his first preface Walpole requests his reader to accept "this air of the miraculous" and to note that the characters exist exclusively within that providential context: "Allow the possibility of the facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation" (p.4). The word "actors" is highly significant. The characters in Otranto are conceived and presented rather theatrically, as participants in a Gothic drama revealing the means by which providence resolves chaos into order.

To reinforce the general theatrical context, Walpole draws certain characters and lines from Shakespeare, as one might expect from his defense of Shakespearean tragicomedy in his second preface. Kiely argues that the evidence of this "adoption of character-types and episodes from Shakespeare" and the attempt to show a character's "emotional agitation by means of theatrical gesture and movement"¹³ is proof of Walpole's artistic ineptitude. To the contrary, such theatricality is deliberate and well suited to the dramatized demonstration of providence. Most of the characters are stock types, especially associated with Shakespeare—the "humorous" servants, the talkative nurse, the doomed lovers, the ghosts, among others. As E.L. Burney notes, "the spirit of Shakespeare haunts the courtyard, the halls, galleries, battlements and dungeons of the Castle of Otranto."¹⁴ Within that setting (a stage set, if you will), characters like Isabella, Hippolita and Theodore reveal themselves in actions and brief, often sentimental speeches. For example, Hippolita not only demonstrates her unswerving loyality to her husband by repeated "marks of tenderness and duty" (p.35), but she also delivers a speech indicative of her type as the submissive wife. She reminds the young princesses "it is not ours to make election for ourselves; heaven, our fathers, and our husbands, must decide for us" (p.88). Modern readers quite frequently are impatient with such stock theatrical figures (if not with such "male chauvinistic" paternalism) as they also are with the sentimental characters like Matilda, who broods over her love while "leaning pensively on her arm" (p.84). Walpole, however, demands that we see characters as actors on a providential stage, as role players representing all the conceivable responses (albeit outwardly presented) to the evidence of divine intervention in their lives. Character, then, is a kind of structural correlative; a Theodore or Manfred simply does not exist apart from the providential pattern of the romance at large.

Given that the providential pattern ultimately controls characterization, we can see why Walpole focuses the greatest detail on his villain while the good characters like Theodore remain sketchy. Providence's first concern is to expose and defeat evil, in this case Manfred's defiance of the divine anointment of Alfonso. Because Manfred is that disorder preventing the harmonious establishment of God-prince-people, providence puts into motion a long series of events leading to his deposition. This initial recognition of evil requires a greater amount of detail for his characterization than for any other principal.

The details of Manfred's exposure function in a suitably theatrical and providential context. The various allusions to Shakespearean plays, more than mere attempts for "atmosphere," undermine Manfred's authority and emphasize his unstable vacillation between reason and passion resulting in eventual madness and self-defeat. Taking on progressively evil roles from Shakespearean plays, the villain reveals, rather than masks, his past and present crimes. This is not to say that Manfred is the only Shakespearean role-player. Certainly we might recognize in Bianca the nurse to Matilda's Juliet or in the garrulous servants Diego and Jaques any number of gravediggers, rude mechanics and jesters. These Shakespearean "low" characters are, as Walpole notes, a counterpoint to the tribulations of the aristocrats so that "the contrast between the sublime of one, and the naïveté of the other, sets the pathetic of the former in a stronger light" (p. 8). Hence the Shakespearean allusions highlight the conflict within the nobility and especially focus attention on Manfred, the central power of the aristocracy.

We first see Manfred as the prince of Otranto desperately attempting to control the disorder in his realm. His proposal of marriage to Isabella is interrupted by the ghost of Ricardo, who steps out of his portrait and descends "on the floor with a grave and melancholy air" (p.24). Manfred, of course, echoes Hamlet in saying "Speak, infernal spectre!" and again "Lead on! … I will follow thee to the gulph of perdition" (p.24). Although Manfred's obvious courage may lend him a kind of heroic stature, the hints about his guilt establish him as the flawed, self-tormented prince. His interrupted description of himself as Ricardo's "wretched descendant, who too dearly pays for—" (p.24) indicates a desire to conceal his guilt despite the ghostly visitation, and his renewed pursuit of Isabella indicates his desperation to retain his political power.

The somewhat heroic overtones of Manfred's courageous dealings with the ghosts give way to a stronger impression of his evil tyranny over his estate and family. If, as seems abundantly clear, Matilda and Theodore are Juliet and Romeo, the star-crossed lovers sharing stolen interviews, Manfred then becomes the tyrant-father bent on separating the lovers. Thus, Matilda ends her first meeting with Theodore in her father's name: "Dost thou come hither to pry into the secrets of Manfred? Adieu. I have been mistaken in thee" (p.42). Again Manfred's villainy comes between the lovers when Matilda and her family is answered "supernaturally" by "a deep and hollow groan" (p.70), which is, of course, providentially designed to separate the lovers. As Jerome later states, it is heaven's will that "the blood of Alfonso will never mix with that of Manfred" (p.93). Hence the father's tyranny in dividing the lovers actually furthers the designs of providence by preventing an intermarriage and reconciliation between the rival families claiming the throne.

Far more villainous is Manfred's next Shakespearean role—that of the murderer plagued by his victim's ghost. The prince reveals a guilty conscience to the assembled cast in what we might term the "Banquo scene":

Ha! what are thou, thou dreadful spectre! Is my hour come?—My dearest, gracious lord, cried Hippolita, clasping him in her arms, what is it you see? Why do you fix your eye-balls thus?—What! cried Manfred breathless—dost thou see nothing, Hippolita? Is this ghastly phantom sent to me alone—to me, who did not—For mercy's sweetest self, my lord, said Hippolita, resume your soul, command your reason. There is none here but we your friends.—What, is not that Alfonso? cried Manfred: dost thou not see him? Can it be my brain's delirium?—This! my lord, said Hippolita: this is Theodore, the youth who has been so unfortunate—Theodore! said Manfred mournfully, and striking his forehead—Theodore, or a phantom, he has unhinged the soul of Manfred. (p.80).

In this highly theatrical scene, complete with dialogue and stage gestures, Manfred like Macbeth outwardly reveals "his most secret sensations" (p.82), his obsession with murder and usurpation. Significantly, this revelation is exceedingly public, before the entire royal family and noble visitors so that no question of the villain's guilty past remains.

While exposing Manfred as a murderer's descendant, providence also manipulates the villain into situations driving him toward madness and self-defeat. Manfred's downfall stems from his chief weakness, his tendency to allow "passion" to "obscure his reason" (p.30). Repeatedly providence places the prince in situations that paralyze his reason and leave him at the mercy of uncontrollable passions. The giant helmet, for example, stuns Manfred and takes "away the prince's speech" (p. 17). Again, when trying to hide from Frederic the fact of Isabella's flight, the villain is so disconcerted by Jerome's sudden intrusion that he utters "nothing but incoherent sentences" (p.67). In the end, Manfred is totally mad, and once more a Shakespearean allusion underscores his evil. Offended by Frederic and Isabella, Manfred loses all rational control over "a frame of mind capable of the most fatal excesses" (p. 103), and mistakenly stabs Matilda. The parallel to Hamlet's stabbing Polonius hidden behind the arras seems clear. Manfred's madness is like the "imperfect gleam of moonshine" (p. 104), which deludes him into destroying his daughter and his power, a self-destruction visually suggested by the collapse of the castle itself. This his last Shakespearean role as the deluded, self-defeating, murderous Hamlet completes Manfred's progression from heroic courage to exposed villainy and also emphasizes the means by which providence has manipulated him into achieving his own downfall. Manfred has indeed been, as Shakespeare says, "hoist with his own petar."

The poetic justice of the conclusion brings both characterization and narrative structure into a clear, final relationship. Within the theatrical context of five acts and "Shakespearean" actors, Otranto embodies a providential pattern and character response to divine intervention culminating in a restoration of justice in the world of men. Even the seeming disorder of the Gothic machinery—ghosts, skeletons, apparitions, hidden passages, dungeons, bleeding statues—is ultimately subsumed by the providential order, just as the physical presence of the proscenium arch contains the action of a play. Otranto, in fact, functions as a kind of Gothic theatrum mundi, a staging of the providential means by which the prevailing disorder and confusion in human affairs is resolved into a final order and justice.

Notes

¹ "Preface to Second Edition," The Castle of Otranto, ed. W.S. Lewis (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), p.7. All subsequent references to Otranto are to this edition.

²Critical Review, 19 (1765), 51.

³ Kiely, The Romantic Novel in England (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 33, 36.

⁴ Kallich, Horace Walpole (New York: Twayne, 1971), p. 94.

⁵ Bertrand Evans, Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1947), pp. 34, 50. Jephson's adaptation omitted, as unstageable with eighteenth-century methods of production, the more startling instances of the supernatural—the giant helmet, bleeding portraits, Alfonso's apparition—and stressed instead the guilty agonies of Manfred.

⁶ Rymer argues for the necessity of "Poetical Justice" in literature: "a Poet must of necessity see justice exactly administered, if he intended to please. For … if the World scarce be satisfi'd with God Almighty … a Poet (in these matters) shall never be pardon'd.…" See The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt. A. Zimansky (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 22-23.

⁷ Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), in Critical Works, ed. E.N. Hooker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939-43), I, 335-36.

⁸ Batttestin, The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the Arts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 151. Williams, "Interpositions of Providence and the Design of Fielding's Novels," SAQ, 70 (1971), 284.

⁹Romantic Novel, p. 39.

¹⁰ Solomon, "Subverting Propriety as a Pattern of Irony in Three Eighteenth-Century Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, and Fanny Hill," Erasmus Review, 1 (1971), 109.

¹¹Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, 32 (1765), 99.

¹² Solomon, p. 109.

¹³Romantic Novel, p. 34.

¹⁴ Burney, "Shakespeare in Otranto," Manchester Review, 12 (1972), 62. Burney also notes an allusion to Julius Caesar and the Shakespearean style of "rustic prose" for the servants and "irregular iambic rhythm" for the aristocrats (p.62). Allusions to Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet have also been identified by Lewis in his preface to the Oxford edition of Otranto, p.xiv.