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...