SOURCE: Evans, Bertrand. “Gothic Survival in Literary Drama.” In Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley, pp. 216-38. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947.

In the following excerpt, Evans discusses the use of Gothic elements in the plays of the major Romantic poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, and Shelley.

The purpose of this final chapter is to suggest the extent and the nature of Gothic manifestations in selected plays by major romantic poets. There is no attempt here to present these dramas in all of their complex relationships. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, and Shelley brought to their works, from the age and from themselves, much that must be omitted here. Their dramatic works have been illuminated in other volumes and monographs by consideration of the currents and crosscurrents of the age, the literary and philosophical implications involved in the nebulous romanticism, and the intellectual and emotional inclinations, attitudes, and convictions...