ABSTRACT

The memory of Walpole as a collector of antiquities has been preserved chiefly through his whim of transforming Strawberry Hill into a kind of Gothic castle. Shakespeare’s castles are more directly related to the haunted castles of the later period, although, appearing as they do in stage plays, they demand more of the reader’s intuition and imagination than the direct pictures of romances. The reader quickly observes that this “haunted castle” plays an exceedingly important part in the romances; so important, indeed, that were it eliminated the whole fabric of romance would be bereft of its foundation and would lose its predominant atmosphere. The castle is built with Gothic magnificence, its high towers seeming in their proud inaccessible majesty to frown defiance on the whole world; the entire edifice bears witness to the power of its past owners. In the castle hall there is a portrait of Manfred’s grandfather, the original usurper of Otranto.