ABSTRACT
In Walpole’s play The Mysterious Mother, there are, certainly, two criminal monks, but these remain exceptions, the more so as the play itself was very little known and its chief interest centred elsewhere. The central character of The Italian, the confessor of the Vivaldi family, Father Schedoni, is conceived differently from Ambrosio. He is no longer a young and inexperienced saint preserved from temptations, but a person long hardened in the ways of crime and vice, alarmingly gifted and strenuous, hypocritical, unfeeling and merciless, more like Monvel’s Laurent. The story of the criminal goldsmith awakens particular interest because it forms a bridge back to English literature. Like Ambrosio or the goldsmith, Dr. Jekyll maintains his former reputation and personality in the daytime, to prowl at night, in the shape of Mr. Hyde, the roads of crime and vice.
