ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the supernatural in Fontainville Forest benefits from a contextual and transmedial approach. It presents the consideration two complementary phenomena: the contemporary visual representations of William Shakespearean ghosts and contemporary theatrical stagings of Shakespearean plays at Drury Lane. The chapter considers Fontainville Forest, the first of the plays, and shows how the presence of an onstage ghost offers a complex representation of the often implicit, yet far-reaching, Shakespearean influence on the arts in the 1790s. The plot of Fontainville Forest is very formulaic as it presents all the cultural icons of the Gothic tradition. In Fontainville Forest the suitably Gothic abbey is emphasized at the expense of the heroine’s long wanderings through scenic parts of France and Switzerland, a journey that covers ten out of twenty-six chapters in the novel. In light of Radcliffe’s theory of creative evocation, the introduction of a ghost in Fontainville Forest may thus explain the aesthetics of James Boaden “Romantic” adaptation.
