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Shakespeare's Influence on the English Gothic, 1791-1834: The Conflicts of Ideologies Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Wiley, Jennifer L. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 25/09/2021 09:09:01 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/594386 1 SHAKESPEARE’S INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH GOTHIC, 1791-1834: THE CONFLICTS OF IDEOLOGIES by Jennifer L. Wiley __________________________ Copyright © Jennifer L. Wiley 2015 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2015 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Jennifer L. Wiley, titled Shakespeare’s Influence on the English Gothic, 1791-1834: The Conflicts of Ideologies and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _____________________________________________________ Date: 11/23/15 Jerrold E. Hogle _____________________________________________________ Date: 11/23/15 Frederick Kiefer _____________________________________________________ Date: 11/23/15 Allison Dushane Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: 11/23/15 Dissertation Director: Jerrold E. Hogle 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Jennifer L. Wiley 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank the members of my committee for their ongoing assistance and motivation. Thanks to Allison Dushane, whose spirited and engaging classes helped me early on in my project by giving me insight into the writers of the Romantic era. Thanks to Fred Kiefer who inspired me, even many years before I met him in person, with his passion for Shakespeare and the dramas of the Early Modern period. A huge thank you in is order for my chair, Jerry Hogle, for his patience, guidance, inspiration, and constructive criticism throughout the entire dissertation process. I never could have accomplished this goal if it had not been for you. Finally, thank you to my family for your unfailing support and encouragement. I especially want to thank my husband Mikael for his enduring faith in me. 5 DEDICATION For Mikael, Elise, and Suzanna 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….….. 7 INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….. 9 CHAPTER ONE: THE PRE-GOTHIC IN SHAKESPEARE……………………………………………….26 CHAPTER TWO TRANSGRESSING BOUNDARIES: ANN RADCLIFFE AND MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS…………………………………………………………………..… 56 CHAPTER THREE: P. B. SHELLEY: THE TYRANNY OF GENDER IN ZASTROZZI, ST. IRVYNE, AND THE CENCI.………...………………………………………………………………….. 90 CHAPTER FOUR: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS IN THE GOTHIC DRAMA OF JOANNA BAILLIE…………..…………………………………………………… 136 EPILOGUE………………………………………………………………………….… 173 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………….… 186 WORKS CONSULTED………………………………………………………….…… 194 7 ABSTRACT Shakespeare’s Influence on the English Gothic, 1791-1834: The Conflicts of Ideologies examines why some of the most influential Gothic novels and playwrights of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries frequently alluded to Shakespeare. During a time of great conflict between changing views of religion, class systems, and gender roles, writers of the Gothic addressed these important issues by looking back to Shakespeare’s treatment of the conflicted ideologies of his own time. This project begins by examining the links established between the horrors exposed in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother and Shakespeare. Walpole’s incorporation of unsettling scenes from Shakespeare sets the stage for other Gothic writers to allude to similar Shakespearean quandaries in their own works. The first chapter establishes what is “pre-Gothic” about some of the conflicted ideologies hinted at in Shakespeare’s darkest plays. The second chapter explores how Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis incorporate Shakespearean epigraphs, quotations, and allusions into their own works to confront terrors of the 1790s. The third chapter reveals how P. B. Shelley, in his Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, and The Cenci responds to worrying questions originally raised Shakespeare. Chapter four focuses on the Romantic era’s most renowned female playwright, Joanna Baillie, and her use of Shakespeare to hint at the treatment to which women are still subject in England during her own time. Finally, this study concludes with a brief look at how the threatening implications of the Gothic continue to revisit the dramas of Shakespeare through major works of Gothic fiction from the past 200 years including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte 8 Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Though the threats of the past might have changed, Shakespeare still plays an important role in speaking to the unresolved ideological conflicts that still haunt the consciousness of Western civilization. 9 INTRODUCTION One of the most influential Gothic novelists of the eighteenth century, Matthew Gregory Lewis, begins The Monk (1796) with an epigraph from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1604) to associate the hidden nature of Ambrosio, his title character, with Shakespeare’s deputy Duke, Angelo, who condemns others for sexual indiscretions that he himself longs to commit: Lord Angelo is precise; Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. (I.iii.50-53, qtd. in Lewis 39) This epigraph sets the scene for a character full of religious and, especially, of sexual hypocrisy. Publically suppressing all the desires of his body, the deceptive Angelo is secretly full of lust, just as Lewis’s pious Ambrosio will prove to be. Raised an Anglican Protestant, Lewis uses the allusion to Angelo, who “Though angel on the outward side” conceals demonic thoughts within (III.ii.272), to raise questions about temptation and hypocrisy in the Catholic Church. Lewis’ monk supposedly possesses a character “perfectly without reproach, since he is a man who has passed the whole of his life within the walls of a convent, cannot have found the opportunity to be guilty, even were he possessed of the inclination” (Lewis 50). Yet Ambrosio both accepts and rejects religious tenets, tenets which, as a monk, should be central to his ideology. Ambrosio outwardly upholds the values of the church, as evidenced by his universal renown and popularity in Madrid, but, ironically, it is within the protective walls of the monastery 10 where he succumbs to the temptation offered by Matilda, and it is beneath the abbey itself where Lucifer finally appears to Ambrosio. Lewis suggests that people are capable of indulging in evil no matter what their circumstances, and even strict religious discipline or political control cannot eliminate misdeeds and harsh restrictions—and could even drive sin into deeper, though no less threatening, recesses. In fact, Lewis insinuates that stringent control might lead to greater desire to commit crimes or greater opportunity to sin. This problem is compounded by Lewis’ sense of Catholicism as both demanding idolization and devotion while also forbidding, and even punishing, the very desire it also arouses. Similarly, an ideological conflict over responsibility for sexual desire is raised by Shakespeare’s Angelo upon realizing his lust for the would-be nun Isabella. He asks: “Is this her fault, or mine? / The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha?” (II.ii.162-3). As one possessing an “angelic” character, Angelo wishes to place blame for his attraction on Isabella’s enticing virtue. The idea that an honorable woman such as Isabella, by virtue of her blameless life, can accidentally seduce seemingly-virtuous men has troubling implications for expectations of female chastity. Alternately Angelo suggests that the devil might have orchestrated his all-consuming attraction to Isabella: “O cunning enemy, that to catch a saint, / With saints dost bait thy hook!” (II.ii.179-80). If Satan is responsible for placing Isabella within Angelo’s grasp in this view, Angelo could be an unlucky victim of demonic conspiracies to cause his downfall rather than a man just as, if not more, spiritually and morally corrupt as ordinary men. Lewis makes use of Shakespeare’s ideas in his Ambrosio’s