Gothic Print Culture, 1789-1900: Volume IV: Drama

The fourth volume of Gothic Print Culture, 1789-1900 reprints Gothic plays that foreground the complex relationship between print and performance and the role of theatre in the development of Gothic conventions. Gothic dramas helped consolidate the Gothic tradition, keeping Gothic fiction from the late eighteenth century alive in an alternate form and extending the Gothic canon in new directions through the spectacular stage effects demanded by the nineteenth-century theatre. Novels that in the late eighteenth century were shocking reappeared later in the nineteenth-century theatre as parodies, poking fun at what was once considered terrifying. Toy theatres gave domestic consumers a chance to rehearse and revise their favourite Gothic dramas in miniature, and acting editions kept Gothic plays alive decades after their initial release, helping to build the Gothic canon. The Gothic pantomimes, melodramas and spectacles included in this volume invite new questions about the relationship between theatre, adaptation, print culture and the development of the Gothic.