Introduction

The English Gothic drama, like the Gothic novel, was characterized by a reliance on supernatural elements and dramatic spectacles of suffering. Generally confined to a brief period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Gothic plays were condemned by critics as atheistic and unenlightened, but were tremendously popular with audiences seeking the escapism the works provided. Romantic poets and dramatists ridiculed Gothic productions as superstitious, and the stereotypical ghostly figure slowly rising through a trap door on the stage became synonymous with Gothic excess, often eliciting more laughter than terror.

Critics point to a number of factors that converged in the late eighteenth century to produce the sudden success of the English Gothic drama. These include domestic civil unrest in England, revolutionary events in America and France...