The Castle Spectre: A Drama in Five Acts

LEWIS'S "TO THE READER" EXPLAINS HIS AFRICAN SLAVE CHARACTER, HIS "MISANTHROPIC NEGRO"

LEWIS, M[atthew] G[regory] "Monk". The Castle Spectre: A Drama. In Five Acts. First Performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, on Thursday, December 14, 1797. By M. G. Lewis, M. P. Author of The Monk, &c. 8vo, disbound, pp. 103, [1] ad. London: Printed for J. Bell, 1798.

First Edition. An extraordinary commercial success, although not a universal favorite of the critics. To the critics who objected to his use of black slaves in a Gothic story, he defended himself by saying that if he could "have produced the same effect by making my heroine blue, blue I should have made her." "As far as Lewis's search for novelty and striking effects is concerned, it is interesting to highlight the character of Hassan, an African servant...Hassan is in Ormond's service because the earl has cruelly snatched him from his family, and, hating the white race that he considers responsible for his sufferences, the black slave refuses to escape only because he is aware of his master's evil propensity to torture people around him. Lewis exploited this unusual figure to introduce something new and surprising in his play, but also to underline the demonic instincts of the villain."-Bertrand Evans, Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley (1947) online. Lewis's To The Reader, pp. 100-103, admits borrowing from other authors, saying: "To the originality of character I make no pretence...[but] I shall not so readily give up my claim to novelty, when I mention my misanthropic Negro: He has been compared to Zanga, but Young's hero differs widely from what I meant in Hassan...Hassan is a man of violent passions, and warm feelings, whose bosom is filled with the milk of human kindness, but that milk is soured by despair,...he has lost everything, even hope; he has no single object against which he can direct his vengeance, and he directs it at large against mankind. He hates all the world...that heart was once feeling and kind..." This, Lewis's most famous play, went into eight printed editions by the following year, and a total of eleven by 1803. "A brilliant example of the more thrilling type of melodrama, accompanied by music by Michael Kelly....The story tells how Osmond, the villain, captures Angela...Father Paul is based on Juliet's nurse and on Sheridan's Father Paul...."-Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660-1900, vol. III, pp. 99-100. The play was particularly indebted to The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, andDie Räuber. Coleridge described it as a "peccant thing of Noise, Froth and Impermanence." Despite its lack of originality "it was an excellent vehicle for presenting a series of striking scenes of suspense or spectacle--the sudden appearance of the ghost in an atmosphere prepared by forebodings...Kemble and Mrs. Jordan were by all accounts superb in the leading roles...But the principle reason for its success was the appearance of the ghost in Act IV....Louis F. Peck, A Life of Matthew G. Lewis (1961), pp. 73-74. Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance, p. 66. Summers, A Gothic Bibliography, p. 254. Nicoll III, p. 281. No copies have appeared at auction since at least 1975, nor, as of this writing, are there any online. Minor browning, first and last leaves moderately so. 84146 ABAA-VBF