The Unseen and the Unsayable: Walpolean Gothic Theatre

Abstract

One of the defining features of the Gothic mode is its attraction to obscurity, its central interest in what cannot quite be apprehended. Gothic writing circles around the unseen, the unsayable, and the unknowable, and often self-consciously draws attention to the withholding of information. This article focuses on the foundational example of the Walpolean Gothic: Horace Walpole’s unperformed tragedy The Mysterious Mother (1768) is structured around what cannot be said, while Robert Jephson’s The Count of Narbonne (1781) – a dramatic adaptation of The Castle of Otranto (1764) – repeatedly draws attention to elements that are imminent but never quite realised. In these two plays, silence and absence make their paradoxical presence felt. The tragedies draw attention to questions of what can be said and done on stage, while simultaneously exploring the power of the negative to reveal the cracks in narratives of patriarchal order. Together, they demonstrate how the Gothic can use the force of what is not there to trouble theatrical and political hierarchies.