Matthew G. Lewis is best known as author of the Gothic novel The Monk, but he also wrote numerous dramas, including The Castle Spectre.
The play premiered in 1797, the year after Lewis published The Monk. While the novel featured numerous supernatural events, ghosts and spirits were frowned upon for the stage at the time. Consequently, most audience members probably didn't expect any spectre to appear, in spite of the play's title.
When the first playbills were issued, they neglected to mention any ghost in the cast. This no doubt encouraged audiences to take a more rationalistic approach to the drama. The play's fool Motley relates that there are numerous stories related to ghosts in the castle, commenting, "Had I minded all the strange things related of this Castle, I should have died of fright in the first half hour."
Toward the beginning of Act IV of the play, the conscious-stricken villain Osmond claims to have seen the ghost of Evelina, the woman he murdered many years ago. Since he is wracked with guilt, this might merely be his own hallucination, much like Lady Macbeth seeing her fair hands covered in blood. Osmond is also reminded of Evelina since her daughter Angela has now grown into a woman who much resembles her deceased mother, and Osmond in fact says he initially mistook the ghost for Angela.
Audiences had every reason to be shocked, then, when the spectre of Evelina did in fact appear on stage at the end of the act. Lewis's stage directions indicate an elaborate effect:
The folding-doors unclose, and the Oratory is seen illuminated. In its center stands a tall female figure, her white and flowing garments spotted with blood; her veil is thrown back, and discovers a pale and melancholy countenance; her eyes are lifted upwards, her arms extended towards heaven, and a large wound appears upon her bosom.
Evelina's ghost comes onstage again in the final act, coming between Osmond and her former husband who is about to be slain by him. It is then that Angela stabs Osmond, preventing the villain from committing any further murders.
Lewis's play was performed over and over again throughout the decades to come, both on real stages and in toy-theatre versions, like the one below, printed by the publisher Dyer. The drama's spooky effects apparently worked on multiple scales.
Incidentally, if you're interested in toy theatres, I recently wrote an article about them that ran in the most recent issue of Theatre Notebook.
