ABSTRACT

Cox's claims that in the Gothic drama 'women were either terrorized and mad, or stoic and indomitable, but they were always passive' ought to be somewhat re-adjusted to include such characters as the Countess of Narbonne. Most critics seek to set clear chronological limits to the Gothic drama. Since at least Bertrand Evans's pioneering study, Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley, Gothic drama is usually said to begin with the private printing of Horace Walpole's The Mysterious Mother in 1768 and to end with Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Cenci in 1819. If the early chronological boundary of the Gothic drama is then more or less definite, no date indicates the end of the vogue. In general terms, however – and rightly so – critics are wary of naming prescribed and clear-cut chronological divides. During the 1820s domestic melodrama gradually took the place of the Gothic as the dominant form of serious popular drama.