Children of The Monk

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Children of The Monk

The essay examines some of the dramatisations that had their source in

Matthew Gregory Lewis’s novel The Monk, with a particular focus on

Edward Fitzball’s libretto for Edward Loder’s opera Raymond and Agnes.

(Part of this essay was presented at the Oxford Brookes Postgraduate Research Conference, June 17, 2014)

R. Burdekin, August 2014

Introduction

Matthew Lewis was not twenty when he wrote his Gothic shocker, The Monk, published

anonymously in 17961. It records the fall from grace of the monk Ambrosio, a shining and

much adored example of moral rectitude. Having described the adulation, the book charts his

seduction by Matilda, who is apparently an evil spirit sent for the purpose. Having tasted the

joys of sin, he becomes ever more demanding and is unable to curb his lust for the innocent

Antonia, whom he rapes and then murders and who turns out to be his sister. Attempting to

thwart him is her and, unbeknown to him at the time, his mother, Elvira, whom he also

murders. Eventually, justice in the form of the Spanish Inquisition catches up with him and

leads to his death dropped by a daemon from a great height onto the rocks below where it takes

him six days to die. Running alongside this lurid tale and virtually independent of it was the

more sober, although still quite startling, account of Raymond and Agnes that saw constancy, if

not always virtue, rewarded.

The second edition of the book, later in 1796, named Lewis as the author, as well including that

he was now a Member of Parliament. The subsequent notoriety caused his family much

embarrassment leading, in 1798, to a fourth edition that watered down the descriptions. There

were also accusations of plagiarism some of which Lewis had admitted to in the advertisement

to the first edition, although which were wider than he noted there2.

In 1798, there also appeared The Castle of Lindenberg or The History of Raymond and Agnes3,

which, at this time of lax copyright, probably had nothing to do with Lewis. It took the relevant

sections on Raymond and Agnes in the novel and tied them together with a few linking

paragraphs and an introduction to make a novella (or chapbook) of close to 100 pages. One

might hazard that this was to sell to those who might be put off by the full novel. This novella

was republished a number of times, with some variation between editions4.

The Raymond and Agnes Subplot

The first part of the story is told by Raymond to Lorenzo, Agnes’s brother, to explain his

presence in Madrid and relationship with Agnes, who, at that point, is a nun in a convent there.

Raymond, Marquis de las Cisternas, has been sent on a tour of Europe by his father, Don Felix,

who insists on him taking an assumed name, Don Alphonso, so that he is valued for himself

and not for his title. Raymond and his servant are deliberately stranded by their coachman,

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Claude, in the forest on the way to Strasbourg. Claude suggests that they stay for the night at

the nearby cottage of Baptiste and his second wife Marguerite. Baptiste makes a living by

taking people in and murdering them for their money. As Baptiste waits for his sons to help

him with the murders, they are joined by the Baroness of Lindenberg and her entourage who

have got lost. Baptiste now has to wait for reinforcements so that he can properly dispose of

everyone and, during the delay, Marguerite, who has been very unwelcoming to this point

because she knows what is going to happen, is able to warn Raymond about his likely fate.

Baptiste offers them all wine laced with a sleeping potion to ease his task, but Raymond

discreetly throws his away and, as Baptiste is preparing to start his grisly work, Raymond

attacks him and Marguerite stabs him to death. Raymond scoops up the sleeping Baroness and,

together with Marguerite, escape pursued by the robbers. Just as they are about to be caught

they meet up with the Baron’s search party, who have been roused by Marguerite’s son,

Theodore. The robbers are pursued and captured or killed and Marguerite’s other son is

rescued from the cottage.

In gratitude for his services, Raymond (with Theodore, who has become his servant) is invited

to Lindenberg, where he meets the Baroness’s niece, Agnes, and they fall in love. However,

Agnes is destined for a convent and so he tries to persuade the Baroness to rescind that

decision. However, his efforts at ingratiation result in her getting the idea that she is the object

of his affection. Her subsequent disillusionment makes her an implacable enemy and leads her

to dismiss Raymond from the castle and to charge the governess, Cunegonda, to keep a tight

rein on Agnes prior to her departure for the convent. Raymond and Agnes decide to elope with

Agnes escaping by pretending to be the Bleeding Nun who appears on May 5 every five years

and when, even though she is a spirit, all the gates are opened to allow her to walk out of the

castle. Cunegonda overhears the plot and is kidnapped to prevent her warning the Baroness

and kept docile by liberal supplies of cherry brandy, to which she is very partial.

On the allotted day, at one in the morning, Raymond seeing whom he thinks is Agnes, bundles

her into a coach and they make off at breakneck speed and, eventually, crash. When Raymond

comes to, Agnes is nowhere to be found and, while recuperating, he is visited by the ghost of

the Bleeding Nun and realises that he had, in fact, eloped with her, and had sworn her undying

love. She continues to haunt him in consequence. Thanks to the intervention of The

Wandering Jew, he discovers that she is an ancestor who threw over her vows to become a

previous Baron Lindenberg’s mistress and a byword for debauchery. She had then plotted to

murder the Baron at the behest of his brother with a promise of marriage, something that the

Baron had always refused to do. However, once she had done the deed, she was then murdered

in turn to cover up the brother’s complicity and her ghost had stalked the castle ever since. By

giving her bones a proper burial, Raymond is released from the haunting.

In the meantime, Agnes, believing herself deserted by Raymond, had agreed to go into the

convent in Madrid. Free at last, Raymond follows and bribes the gardener to allow them to

meet in secret. Unfortunately, as Raymond admits, “in an unguarded moment, the honour of

Agnes was sacrificed to my passion”. As a result Agnes refuses to see him until, realising that

she is pregnant, she asks him to rescue her from the convent and marry her. Unfortunately, a

letter outlining the plan is found by Ambrosio (his one appearance in the subplot) and, ignoring

Agnes’s pleas, he gives it to the Prioress, who imprisons Agnes and gives out that she is dead,

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although she is, in fact, keeping Agnes in a secret dungeon with just sufficient food to keep her

alive. It is at this point that Raymond meets up with Lorenzo and they try to find out Agnes’s

fate. Through the good offices of another nun, Ursula, the Prioress is unmasked and hounded

to death by the mob incensed at what she has done5. They go on the rampage, killing nuns and

setting fire to the convent. However, by chance, Lorenzo finds the secret dungeon and Agnes

is rescued although the baby has died. She and Raymond are married and their remaining years

“were happy as can be those allotted to mortals, born to be the prey of grief and sport of

disappointment”.

Dramatisations

Unhampered at this time by considerations of copyright, successful novels were often followed

by dramatisations. In contrast to novels, plays were subject to censorship and required a

licence before performance6. Lewis never produced a dramatisation of The Monk, although he

did write the very successful play, The Castle Spectre (1797). At the time, there seems to have

been only one attempt, Aurelio and Miranda, by James Boaden7 in 1798, the rather odd title

being a result of the censor’s objection to using the novel’s title because of its reputation8. The

reasons for this lack of dramatisations are not hard to find. Not only was such an episodic novel

difficult to cover, necessitating a choice between many incidents, but stage censorship meant

that it would have been impossible to portray or even to suggest some of the incidents. Boaden

got round this by changing completely the characters of Aurelio (Ambrosio) and Miranda

(Matilda) so as to engineer a happy ending with the couple marrying along with Raymond and

Agnes. The play folded after six nights, any prospect of success probably compromised by his

boast of having removed all supernatural elements including the nun, who was to prove the

most durable aspect of the tale on the stage. There have been other attempts at adaptation both

on the stage, and, perhaps more obviously given the story, on film but without conspicuous

success9.

In contrast to this, the Raymond and Agnes subplot found an immediate and long lived

presence on the stage; its thread of boy meets girl, fall in love, are thwarted but overcome all

obstacles to live happily ever after being well fitted to the melodrama that was beginning to

take hold in the theatre and was unlikely to meet any objections from the censor. Also, the

Bleeding Nun added an opportunity for spectacle. Boaden included the end of the Raymond

and Agnes subplot with Agnes being rescued, with Aurelio’s assistance, and the child saved,

with Miranda’s assistance, but the other efforts all concentrated on the earlier part of the story.

The first to appear was Charles Farley and William Reeve’s Grand Ballet Pantomime of Action

Raymond and Agnes or The Castle of Lindenbergh at Covent Garden on March 20, 179710

.

“The Bleeding Nun” was a slightly later eye-catching alternative subtitle11

. A ballet pantomime

was a “dumb show to music, every bar of which had to be filled up by the actor with

appropriate action, than by dialogue”12

.

The ballet largely followed the novel’s outline of Raymond setting out on the tour, seeking

refuge in the bandits’ cottage, outwitting and killing Baptiste and escaping. However,

Theodore is with Raymond from the beginning and has his own love interest, Annette, and it is

Agnes on her way back from a convent in Madrid to Lindenberg, who takes refuge in the

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cottage rather than the Baroness. As in the novel, they all end up at Lindenberg, where Farley

added an opening scene in which the Baron is shown remorseful for having murdered his

brother and, in this case, blameless, sister-in-law, Agnes’s mother, also, confusingly, called

Agnes. However, it parts company with the novel after Raymond runs off after the ghostly

nun. She turns out to be the murdered sister-in-law, who exhorts him to “Protect the child of

the Murder’d Agnes”13

. Meanwhile, Agnes and Theodore are waylaid by the robbers. Agnes

is captured but Theodore escapes and joins Raymond and Marguerite, and, together, they

rescue Agnes, who is about to be stabbed, and kill the bandits. Back in Spain, Agnes is

presented to Raymond’s father, “who joins their hands”. The performance was then rounded

off with a Spanish fandango. Thus there was nothing of the events in the convent in Madrid. It

is interesting that Covent Garden, one of only three London theatres licenced to perform

spoken drama14

, should stage a version relying solely on mime, a form more associated with

the minor theatres.

The most significant dramatisation was that submitted for licence in November 1809, for

performance at the Theatre Royal, Norwich15

, which was essentially a dialogue version of

Farley’s ballet. Although there was no author shown, it has been attributed to Henry William

Grosette16

, who had a long career as a provincial actor, comedian and singer. According to the

Norfolk Chronicle (April 30 & May 7, 1808), the “admired pantomime” Raymond and Agnes

played at the Theatre Royal, Norwich, where Grosette was reported as acting in May 180917

.

Thus it seems plausible that Grosette saw the Farley ballet at Norwich in 1808, if not before

then, and decided or was paid to provide it with dialogue18

, which then played in various

theatres in the East of England over the next two years19

. Grosette added three scenes that

flesh out the drama further. Firstly, a scene, probably added for comic relief, where the

governess, here called Cunegonde, and servant Conrad collect Agnes from the convent during

which she is seen by Raymond, who immediately becomes enamoured. At the end of Act 1, he

added a final scene where Baptiste’s sons swear vengeance, presumably to ratchet up the

tension. Finally, Raymond and Agnes’s nuptials are blessed by the Bleeding Nun to provide a

more spectacular end. Grosette occasionally lifted dialogue and episodes directly from the

novel, even if he applied them in a different place in the narrative. Thus, Cunegonde’s liking

for cherry brandy is included in the scene where they take shelter in Baptiste’s cottage.

On September 30, 1811, “a new melodrame”, Travellers Benighted or The Forest of

Rosenwald20

, was advertised for performance at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. This was, in

fact, a minor reworking, possibly by George Colman21

, of the Norwich play with some of the

dialogue omitted and an extra scene showing Agnes, Cunegonde and Conrad getting lost in the

forest. The change in title may have been to avoid confusion with Farley’s Raymond and

Agnes that was running at Covent Garden at the same time22

, although, possibly, it was to

convince audiences that they were going to see something quite different.

These two versions formed the basis of a number of printed editions, including Hodgson’s

Juvenile Drama, Vol. 12 (1825?), Duncombe’s Edition, Vol. 7 (1825), Cumberland’s British

Theatre, Volume 38 (1829), Lacy’s Acting Edition, Vol. 43 (1850)23

and Dicks’ Standard

Plays, No. 268 (1877?). There were also at least two New York editions by E. Murden

(1821)24

and Samuel French (n.d.)25

. No doubt because it was aimed at juveniles, the

Hodgson’s dialogue and action is simpler than the other versions, although it clearly follows

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the same outline, and there looks more scope for funny business. It includes the scene with

Annette, as Theodore’s love interest, something the others omit, and severely reduces the first

two Lindenberg scenes in Act 2 to a few lines. The other editions omit completely the opening

two scenes in Lindenberg castle in Act 2 and the final scene at Don Felix’s castle, the Bleeding

Nun giving her blessing when Agnes is rescued. For the most part, they are word for word

transcriptions of the Norwich version. The Cumberland, Lacy and Dicks editions are identical

and include the scene where Agnes etc. get lost in the forest and add to a short scene where the

robbers discuss their likely booty. These changes reduced the number of actors and may reflect

agreement with The Times (October 2, 1811) opinion that heavy cuts were needed. However,

looking at the cast and synopses from the playbills26

of performances at the Theatre, Leeds

between 1823 and 1865, it is clear that some minor variations were made there with the

Countess (Baroness) sometimes appearing, although the Baron never seems to have.

The “splendid and interesting” Farley pantomime, in which, it was claimed, “The system of

terror, … which was once esteemed the acme of composition by the great tragic poets of

Greece, is, for the first time, introduced on our stage in a regular ballet”27

, played for 40

nights28

and reappeared regularly for more than 20 years both in London and elsewhere in

Britain and overseas29

. The remarks on terror, which Aristotle saw as part of the build up to

catharsis, suggest that the work drew its audiences strongly into the experience, although

Lewis, who saw the staging, was perhaps less convinced noting that “at Covent Garden the

Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes has been for many years in the habit of ascending to

heaven with great applause in a sort of postchaise made of pasteboard”30

.

No reviews have been found of the Norwich play but the fact that it was given in quite a few

towns suggests that it was popular. The performance at the Haymarket was not well received

by the Morning Chronicle (October 1, 1811): “The dialogue was bad and the music worse”;

“The scenery seemed as ill-natured as the music”; “attempts of this sort deserve no success at

any theatre”. The Morning Post (October 1, 1811) thought that it had never “seen a more

unsuccessful attempt at dramatic composition”. The European Magazine agreed up to point

“More insipid and commonplace language we have not heard for a long time from the stage”,

but thought that “the scenery was pretty”. The audience on its first night was also

unenthusiastic, which The Times (October 2, 1811) found puzzling for it said that the play was

not noticeably worse than the other, well received, work being offered that evening and,

although it found nothing to praise in either dialogue or music, “the performance is carried on

dextrously enough and the banditti scenes are interesting”. Perhaps the audience was

disgruntled at finding the play so close in action and plot to the familiar pantomime ballet.

However, whatever their initial reaction, audiences quickly took to it and it played for 13 nights

that season, 15 the following and then every season until, at least, 182031

. It was staged many

times in many places, including the U.S.32

and Australia33

, where it was mentioned in a mid-

1840’s Australian novel, James Tucker’s Ralph Rashleigh34

.

The Cumberland edition (1829) is prefaced by the remark that “Few pieces have been received

with more favour than The Bleeding Nun for few are capable of producing more intense

melodramatic interest” and that feeling comes through strongly in the Newcastle Courant

(February 19, 1825) report that “the outrageous melo-drame of Raymond and Agnes followed,

with all its subterranean passages, murderous designs and hair-breadth escapes, to the lively

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satisfaction of the audience”. By the second half of the century opinion was changing. “Dull,

dreary and incomprehensible” thought The Newcastle Guardian (December 5, 1863) but the

play kept being revived, appearing again at the Haymarket in 1873, where it ran for several

weeks despite the Morning Post (December 27, 1873) reckoning that “the strangely old-

flavoured incidents are not likely long to hold the public”. The play was still being advertised

as late as 1889 at the Avenue Theatre, London35

and 1891 in Middlesbrough36

.

The Leeds playbills, referred to above, catalogue a change in the description of the play from

“Grand Melodramatic Piece” or “Melodrama” in the 1820’s to “Legendary Tale of Terror” in

the 1830’s to “Romantic Drama” by the 1850’s. This may reflect a change in what audiences

expected from melodrama, as it moved away from Gothic to more domestic themes. We can

also see a change in audience attitudes from the naïve excitement in the early part of the

century, as reflected, for example, in the Newcastle Courant report above, to a rather

complacent sophistication in a paragraph in the 1873 Morning Post report: “As an

archaeological revival, Raymond and Agnes … is undoubtedly interesting. We have improved

our knowledge of stage effects during the last half century and have arrived at marvellous

results by employing realism as a means of depicting the unreal. Modern playgoers are

inclined to laugh accordingly at what once moved terror, and to pronounce ridiculous what

their fathers thought gruesome”.

There were also burlesques on the theme, such as The Raiment and Agonies of the Most

Amiable Pair Raymond and Agnes at the Britannia, July 1860, in which the Bleeding Nun turns

out to be a police inspector in disguise looking to arrest the robbers. Spectral companies, who

used the optical device of Pepper’s Ghost, which made people apparently appear and disappear,

also made use of the play and the nun in particular37

. Thus Raymond and Agnes had a long,

versatile and geographically dispersed presence on the stage.

The Bleeding Nun had a life of her own outside of Raymond and Agnes. On February 17, 1835,

A. Anicet Bourgeois and J. Mallian’s La Nonne Sanglante was produced at Le théâtre de la

Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris38

. The only point of resemblance to Lewis is the idea of the

Bleeding Nun, so it is unclear whether The Monk was the catalyst or whether the authors had

drawn on some of the folk tales that underpin it. Stella (Marie de Rudenz) is abandoned in the

Roman catacombs by her lover, Conrad, who suspects that she has been unfaithful. She escapes

and becomes an abbess. Notwithstanding her past treatment, she arranges to meet Conrad but it

ends up with them quarrelling and him stabbing her. She takes on the image of a Bleeding Nun

and is assumed to be a ghost. In this guise she foils Conrad’s possible death in a duel and

brings about the death of her rival, Mathilde, Conrad’s fiancée, at the hands of Conrad as he

lashes out at the Bleeding Nun in the darkness. She gives the signal for the castle to be set on

fire and then tells Conrad of a secret passage so that they can escape together. However, he

refuses to go or to let her go and they perish in the flames.

Operatic treatments

Reeve’s music for the ballet mentioned above included two airs for Agnes and some choruses

and glees and the various plays included considerable music but there does not seem to have

been any operatic treatment for many years. The first opera that used any of the above ideas

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was Donizetti’s Maria di Rudenz (1838), whose libretto by Salvadore Cammarano was based

on the Anicet Bourgeois and Mallian play. The plot was much simplified and ends with Maria,

mortally wounded, stabbing her rival and Corrado (Conrad) left to live with his conscience,

“Mi punisce con la vita”. The opera lasted two performances.

A closer operatic treatment came with Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne’s libretto, La

Nonne Sanglante. They had already written one opera steeped in Gothic elements in the highly

successful grand opera, Robert le Diable, which possibly drew on The Monk in its use of a

magic branch to seduce the innocent victim. In La Nonne Sanglante they attempted to draw

more directly on Lewis’s ideas adding a political background and throwing in plenty of pageant

and spectacle. There is a war between Count Luddorf and Baron Moldaw. A peace is brokered

by Peter the Hermit to be made permanent by the marriage of Agnes, Moldaw’s daughter, to

Theobold, Luddorf’s eldest son. Unfortunately, she is in love with Rodolphe, his younger son.

Agnes and Rodolphe plan to elope with Agnes escaping by pretending to be the Bleeding Nun

but here, after Rodolphe runs off with the ghostly nun, she can only be bought off by Rodolphe

killing the man who murdered her. Theobold dies and Rodolphe is free to marry Agnes but as

he is about to go through with the ceremony, the Bleeding Nun appears and tells him that her

murderer is his father. Unable to go through with his promise to kill the murderer, he calls off

the wedding to the rage of the Moldaws. They plan to kill Rodolphe in revenge but Count

Luddorf is seized by conscience and goes in his son’s place and is killed. The Nun now

appears and forgives the Count and they ascend to heaven, presumably leaving Rodolphe and

Agnes to marry and peace to reign. It is not altogether surprising that Scribe and Delavigne

found difficulty in getting a composer interested in taking it. Berlioz39

began but dropped out

after composing a few sections and it was not until Gounod took it on that it finally saw the

stage at the Paris Opéra on October 18, 1854, although it closed for unclear reasons after 11

performances even though it appears to have been reasonably successful40

.

The most thorough attempt at an operatic treatment was Edward Loder’s Raymond and Agnes

with a libretto by Edward Fitzball (1792-1873). The opera41

was premièred at the Theatre

Royal, Manchester on August 14, 1855 and revived at the St James’s Theatre, London on June

11, 1859. In both instances, it failed despite encouraging notices. Fitzball, nicknamed “the

Terrible Fitzball” for his sensational melodramas, was coming towards the end of a long career

that saw him write or adapt some 170 plays and librettos. The libretto appears to have been

originally written in 1848 for the Princess’s Theatre, where Loder was Musical Director and

which had already staged his The Night Dancers two years previously42

. However, only the

libretto published by Charles Jefferys for the 1859 London revival exists. Little is known of the

version used for the Manchester 1855 premiere but from press reports the main differences

seem to have been changes of name for some minor characters, some slight rearrangement of

numbers and a four act structure43

. Unusually there is no trace of either libretto having been

sent to the censor as they should have been44

. Fitzball took a selection of episodes and wove

them together in his own plot together with considerable chunks of standard melodrama

completely unconnected with the story, “an emanation from the unassisted genius of Mr

Fitzball”, was the verdict of the Daily News (June 13, 1859).

The opera opens with a scene for the chorus that introduces Raymond to the audience. The

setting is an inn where Raymond has just won a shooting contest, a similar opening to that of

8

Der Freischütz (1821) by Carl Maria von Weber, who, with his English opera Oberon (1826),

was to become one of the guiding lights of English opera in the first half of the Victorian era.

The Baron has arrived in Madrid to take Agnes, his ward, back to Lindenberg from the convent

in order to marry her and lay the curse that was imposed years before when a nun killed herself,

rather than submit to a previous Baron. Her ghost is said to walk out of the castle every 5

years. While at the convent, Agnes and Raymond have met and fallen in love. Raymond in

disguise manages to get into the convent to try to persuade Agnes to elope but their plan is

thwarted by the arrival of the Baron. The Baron is not only mindful of the curse but haunted

by his past deeds as the bandit leader, Inigo, who killed Raymond’s father and tried to abduct

his wife, Ravella, Raymond’s mother. The Baron and Agnes set off for Lindenberg and,

although only reported and not shown on stage, are saved from bandits by Raymond.

In Act 2, back at Lindenberg, Agnes shows Raymond round the castle and once again an

elopement is in the offing but they are interrupted by the Baron who wishes to reward

Raymond for his help. Naturally, he asks for the hand of Agnes. The Baron cannot grant that

and tells Raymond of the curse. In the ensuing argument the Baron draws a dagger which

Raymond wrests from him and sees that it carries the name of Inigo, his father’s murderer. The

Baron has Raymond imprisoned. The hour is approaching when the Bleeding Nun is said to

walk out of the castle. Agnes decides to impersonate her in order to rescue Raymond and

escape but they find that they do not have the key for the main gate. The Baron enters lost in

the memories of his crimes and, petrified by the appearance of the actual ghostly Nun who

walks out of her portrait hanging on the wall, orders the key to the main door to be given up

and they escape. The Baron quickly realises his mistake and takes off after them.

In the third act, we find that the leader of the bandits, Antoni, who took over when the Baron

(Inigo) left, had, in fact, spirited away Ravella, struck dumb by her ordeal, rather than letting

the Baron take her. Having escaped, Raymond and his group end up looking for shelter at

Antoni’s cottage and, as in novel and plays, the robbers prepare to murder them but they are

warned by Ravella. In the ensuing struggle, she discovers a miniature dropped by Raymond

and she and Antoni realise that he is her son. Peace has barely ensued when the Baron and his

forces enter. The bandits flee and Raymond and Agnes are captured. Raymond laments his

imprisonment while Agnes bemoans her loss until she falls asleep, when a spectre Nun appears

and blesses her while a chorus of them sing a soothing prayer for the pair.

The Baron has an apparent sudden change of heart and says that they may all leave.

Unbeknown to them, he has instructed Antoni, with whom he has now made up, to shoot the

first man who comes through the gate with a woman on his arm, assuming that that will be

Raymond with Agnes. In the event, as the Baron is about to walk through the gate he sees

Ravella, grabs her arm and so is shot by Antoni - “Caught in my own snare”. The final scene

points, once again, in the direction of Der Freischütz in which the villain, Caspar, is shot by

Max in place of the victim that Caspar intended, Agathe.

The idea of Raymond eloping with the ghostly Bleeding Nun is entirely omitted. In fact, he

does not even see her. Only the Baron does and that is the ghost walking out of her portrait

which provided much loved spectacle and could be used for a specific moment to upset the

Baron without interfering otherwise with the plot. In fact, the drama would have been more

9

coherent if Agnes’s impersonation, which is portrayed here more fully than in either the novel

or plays, had caused the Baron’s terror and giving up of the key.

Fitzball would have realised that neither novel nor plays were immediately suitable for an

opera because there were too many characters, which needed to be reduced to 5 or 6 main

singers and too many assorted villains when, by the mid-century, a melodrama villain was

usually a solitary upper-class male. His solution was to make the Baron the villain. The novel

only portrays him as a rather simple, good hearted chap under his wife’s thumb, while none of

the printed editions of the drama, except for a line or two in Hodgson’s, even mention him.

The only versions that include a wicked Baron are Farley’s ballet and Grosette’s original

Norwich version. However, in neither case was it mentioned further, which probably accounts

for its omission in later editions. As in those early plays, Fitzball’s Baron is also a remorseful

Baron. Having a guilt-stricken, villain was more typical of early Gothic rather than later

nautical or domestic melodrama45

.

Fitzball was a printer’s apprentice in Norwich from 1809-1812 and a keen theatre goer46

, so

almost certainly would have seen Grosette’s play there. Even though it was over 40 years

previously, one has to wonder whether that performance had stayed with him in some shape

and influenced his line of thinking in creating the Baron’s role, although he rather muddies the

waters by separating the historic crime to the nun, the origin of the curse, and the Baron’s

crime and thus overcomplicates the drama.

Reaction to the libretto was generally hostile, although the Morning Post, (June 13, 1859) was

quite positive remarking admiringly on Fitzball’s moral sentiment and lyrical gifts and that he

had “include[d] some excellent situations and suggestions for musical effect”. However, others

were less charitable. “[T]he piece … is a farrago of the merest conventionalities of the Opera

stage” thought the Daily News (June 13, 1859) and elsewhere described it as “crambe recocta

(reheated cabbage), without a single new idea”. The Standard (June 13, 1859) contrasted the

simplicity of Italian opera plots with those of English opera where the librettists “desire to cram

into their work all the points which are looked for in regular drama but which it is most

difficult to express musically” and concluded that “the worst feature of Raymond and Agnes is

its libretto”. A century later, Stanley Sadie called it “Weak, conventional and extravagant”47

.

In many ways, the libretto was typical of the problems that beset English librettos at this time:

the lack of a focussed plot, the demand for spectacle over dramatic sense, the seeming inability

to move forward from the examples of Weber or Italian bel canto of 30 years before and the

traditional dialogue and song model that worked against a coherent musical drama,

notwithstanding Loder’s efforts. These all contributed to a becalming of English opera at a time

when Verdi, Gounod and later Wagner were bringing a new creative energy to opera in Britain

and which led to English opera’s demise for a decade from the mid 1860’s.

Thus The Monk, ultimately, spawned no lusty offspring but, even so, their various fates are not

without interest and help increase our understanding of the Victorian stage.

10

1 It was published by Joseph Bell in London. Margaret Baron-Wilson, ed., The Life and Correspondence of M.G.

Lewis, (London: Henry Colbourn Ltd., 1839), p.151, claims that it was published in the summer of 1795. Louis

F. Peck, A life of Matthew G. Lewis. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961), p.23 favours 1796 but

leaves the date as an open question. David Lorne Macdonald, Monk Lewis: A Critical Biography. (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2000), p.128, says that the novel was completed by September 1794 but not

published until March 12, 1796 (p.129). 2 For example, see Louis F. Peck, A life of Matthew G. Lewis. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961),

pp.20-23. Available at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015046389089;view=1up;seq=43 [accessed

on January 27, 2014]. Peck (p.23) queries the idea that the Bleeding Nun idea was taken from Karl August

Musäus’s Die Entführung but Helga Hushahn, “Sturm und Drang in Radcliffe and Lewis” in Exhibited by

candlelight: sources and developments in the Gothic tradition. ed. Valeria Tinkler-Villani and Peter Davidson

(Amsterdam : Rodopi, 1995), pp. 89-98 supports it. See also Lauren Fitzgerald, “The sexuality of authorship in

The Monk”, Romanticism on the Net, No. 36-37 (November 2004, February 2005), Section 2, paragraphs 24 -

35. Available at http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2004/v/n36-37/011138ar.html?lang=en [accessed January 27,

2014]. Lewis himself acknowledged that the main plot was drawn from Richard Steele’s “The History of

Santon Barsisa”, The Guardian. No. 148 (August 31, 1713), pp. 296-299. 3 Published by S. Fisher, 10 St John’s Lane, London, 1798.

4 The 1841 edition is available at https://archive.org/details/raymondandagnes00lewigoog [accessed January 16,

2014]. Amalgro and Claude (London: Tegg and Castleman, 1803?) by an anonymous author thinly disguised

the story with some name changes while appending the main plot in a few pages at the end. Sarah Wilkinson’s

Castle of Lindenberg; or The history of Raymond and Agnes (London: J. Bailey, c.1820), related it in the third

person and made other changes so that it read more easily as an independent novel.

5 The description is quite a disturbing one as the forces of law and order are overwhelmed by the mob’s savagery

and is a reminder that the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror was in full spate when this was being written. 6 The Examiner of Plays, at this time John Larpent, held office under the Lord Chamberlain and was responsible

for licencing plays in the City of Westminster, including Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket, but

also licenced plays for royal theatres, such as Norwich and York. 7 There is a review of the play in The European Magazine (January, 1799), pp 41-42 and a wide ranging

discussion in David Christopher, “Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and James Boaden’s Aurelio and Miranda –

From Text to Stage”. Theatre Notebook. Vol. 65, No. 3, (October, 2011), pp. 152 – 170, available at http://

www.mendeley.com/profiles/david-christopher/ [accessed January 16, 2014]. Also Jacqueline Penich,

Conservative Propaganda in the Shakespearean Gothic of James Boaden. (University of Ottawa: MA thesis,

2012), p. 82, available at http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/en/handle/10393/23334 [accessed on March 24, 2014] 8 Louis F. Peck, Op, cit., p. 30. The name Miranda was a suggestion of John Kemble, the manager, and came from

Aphra Benn’s The Fait Jilt, which includes the seduction of a monk that Kemble thought was the source of

Lewis’s idea, Jacqueline Penich, Op.Cit., p.82. 9 Tarquin Productions (2012) http://www.tarquinproductions.co.uk/Monkpress.pdf is probably the most recent

stage attempt while there was a film made in 2011- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605769/ . 10

The Airs, Glees and Chorusses(sic) were published in London by T.N. Longman in 1797. 11

The first advertised use that has been found is in the Leeds Mercury (June 25, 1798). 12

H. Barton Baker. “Of Pantomimes and Pantomimists”, The Graphic, (December 23, 1893). 13

This idea of a ghostly mother was taken up by Lewis in his play, The Castle Spectre, performed later in 1797. 14

As a result of patents issued at the time of Charles II, only Covent Garden and Drury Lane, within Westminster

(although effectively within London), were licenced to perform spoken drama. Later the Haymarket was also

granted a licence to stage spoken drama in the summer when they were closed. Until 1843, other theatres in the

area had to use an array of mime and music alongside dialogue to avoid falling foul of the regulations. See

David Worrall, Theatric Revolution. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Chap.1, particularly pp.33-35. 15

Larpent Collection,The Huntington Library, San Marino, USA. Item 1597. The performance date in Norwich

has not been discovered. 16

For example, W. H. Grosette, Raymond and Agnes. (London: Thomas Hailes Lacy, 1850) 17

The Monthly Mirror, p. 317. 18

The Ipswich Journal (July 8, 1809) records Grosette as directing a production of Forty Thieves at the theatre

there while the Norfolk Chronicle (April 21, 1810) advertised a play by him at the Theatre Royal, Norwich

called The Buffo Carricatto or Dance in Wooden shoes. Thus he had the experience to write the adaptation. 19

Both on the East Anglian circuit, e.g. Ipswich (Ipswich Journal, August 11, 1810), Bury St. Edmunds (Bury and

Norwich Post, October 31, 1810) and Norwich (Norfolk Chronicle, March 10, 1811) and in other eastern

towns such as Lincoln (Stamford Mercury, November 2, 1810), Stamford (Stamford Mercury, December 28,

1810), Grantham (Stamford Mercury, January 4, 1811), Louth (Stamford Mercury, January 25, 1811) and

Wisbech (Stamford Mercury, May 24, 1811)

11

20

Larpent Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, USA. Item 1690. It was unusual to submit a play that

had already been licenced to the Examiner but, presumably, the changes made were thought significant enough

to warrant it or perhaps it was not realised that it had been licenced for Norwich. Rosenwald was the name of

the village where Raymond recuperated after his accident. The forest has no name in the book. 21

George Colman, a well-known playwright, was one of the partners in the Haymarket at this time. Jeremy F.

Bagster-Collins. George Colman the Younger. (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1946), pp. 230-231, suggests

his involvement on the basis of a letter Colman wrote to the actor and comedian Joseph Munden. Grosette

seems to have had no part in the London production. 22

The Morning Chronicle (September 30, 1811) carried advertisements for both. Leigh Hunt remarking on the

two productions was “sorry to see that the public taste for Mr Lewis’s horrors is not yet worn out”. (The

Examiner, October 6, 1811, p.645) 23

W. H. Grosette, Raymond and Agnes. (London: Thomas Hailes Lacy, 1850). The Lacy edition includes Taylor’s

The Fool’s Revenge (1859) so may well be 1859/60 rather than 1850 as it is dated in the British Library

catalogue. The Duncombe edition also refers to W.H. Grosette as the author. The Cumberland has M.G.Lewis

as author but, presumably, that is because his novel was the original source. 24

The Forest of Rosenwald, or The Travellers Benighted by John Stokes is almost identical to the Haymarket

1811 version. There are some slight changes in wording, which, as Susan Anthony has described in “Made in

America: Adaptations of British Gothic Plays for the American Stage 1790-1820, Journal of American Drama

and Theatre. Volume 8, No. 3 (Fall, 1996), pp 19-35, suggest a different view of women by American

audiences compared to that of British audiences. The play can be found on microfilm at the British Library,

MFR/3018/*1* reel 40:42 25

There was also an edition published by Samuel French in New York, which has not been examined. 26

Theatre, Leeds playbills available at http://www.leodis.net/playbills/ [accessed on March 21, 2014]. There are

10 for Raymond and Agnes and 2 for The Traveller’s Benighted. 27

Report from London in the Ipswich Journal (March 25, 1979) 28

Playbill for a performance on September 6, 1798 at the Theatre, Leeds, Loc.Cit.. 29

For example, the Morning Post (July 7, 1819) refers to a revival of the Grand Romantic Ballet of Raymond and

Agnes at the English Opera House. It seems a reasonable assumption that this was some variant of the Farley

and Reeve version. The Morning Post (October 24, 1854) talks of the pantomime finding its way “from

London into the remotest provinces and towns of the British Empire” although it may have included the later

melodrama in this assessment. It was performed in Philadelphia in 1804, Rees Davis James, Cradle of Culture

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania University, 1957), pp.62-63. 30

Matthew G. Lewis, Adelmorn, The Outlaw. (London: J.Bell, Oxford Street, 1801), Preface, page v. 31

William J. Burling, Summer Theatre in London, 1661-1820, and the Rise of the Haymarket Theatre. (Cranbury,

New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2000), p. 204 and pp. 248-271. The theatre was dark in 1813. The

Times (August 24, 1816) commented that it had been well received on its 1816 revival. 32

The Stokes play mentioned above was performed at the Park Theatre, New York in 1820. 33

It played at the Victoria Theatre, Adelaide according to The Oddfellow, November 14, 1840. 34

James Tucker. The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh: A Penal Exile in Australia, 1825-1844. Although not

formally published until 1919, the original manuscript dates from 1844-45, see

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301281.txt [accessed March 30, 2014] 35

The Era (June 29, 1889) . The Avenue Theatre is now a church, see http://www.theatrestrust.org.uk/resources/

theatres/show/1825-avenue-theatre-london [accessed March 30, 2014] 36

Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, (September 1, 1891) 37

For example, Taylor’s An Awful Rise in Spirits used Pepper’s Ghost to produce a parade of ghosts, including

“the bleeding nun”. It had musical accompaniment but there is no indication as to whether this might have

been from Loder’s Raymond and Agnes (Morning Post, September 8, 1863). The Southland Times (August

13, 1864) at the southern tip of New Zealand advertised a performance of Raymond and Agnes to include the

spectral illusion of the ghost. 38

Text at http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/La_nonne_sanglante.html?id=nEpSAAAAcAAJ&redir_esc=y.

[accessed March 30, 2014]. Extended commentaries on La Nonne Sanglante are sometimes included in articles

on Donizetti’s Maria di Rudenz. They include Jacques Joly, “La nonne sanglante tra Donizetti, Gounod e

Berlioz” in L’opera fra Venezia a Parigi Fiorenze: Olschi , 1988, Simona Brunetti, Una drammaturgia di

difficile integrazione nella penisola italiana: La nonne sanglante (1835) in the programme for the 2013

Bergamo production of Donizetti’s Maria di Rudenz, pp. 45-63. Available at http://

www.donizetti.org/media/1/20131221QF36MariadeRudenz.pdf [Accessed on February 15, 2014] and Patrick

Berthier, “Un (mélo)drame romantique Exemplaire: La Nonne Sanglante (1835) in Simone Bernard-Griffiths

and Jean Sgard (eds.). Mélodrames et romans noirs: 1750-1890. (Toulouse: Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail,

2000), pp. 365 – 379.

12

39

A. E. F. Dickinson. “Berlioz's 'Bleeding Nun'”. The Musical Times. (July, 1966), Volume 107, No. 1481, pp.

584-588 40

The opera and its history are discussed in Kerry Murphy. Charles Gounod, La nonne sanglante: dossier de

presse parisienne (1854) (Heilbronn: Musik-Edition L. Galland, 1999); Anne Williams. “Ghostly Voices:

'Gothic Opera' and the Failure of Gounod's La Nonne sanglante” in Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Downing

A. Thomas (eds.). Operatic Migrations: Transforming Works and Crossing Boundaries. (Aldershot, UK:

Ashgate Publishing, 2006), pp. 125 – 144; Anne Williams. Lewis/Gounod's Bleeding Nonne: An Introduction

and Translation of the Scribe/Delavigne libretto. Romantic Circles website (2005) at

http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/opera/williams/williams.html [accessed February 15, 2014]; Andrew Gann.

"Théophile Gautier, Charles Gounod and the Massacre of La Nonne sanglante.". Journal of Musicological

Research (1993), Volume 13, pp. 49-66 and Steven Huebner. The Operas of Charles Gounod. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990). 41

Information, contemporary critiques, synopsis and libretto of the opera can be found at http://

www.victorianenglishopera.org/operas/RaymondandAgnes.htm 42

The Observer (June 12, 1859) claimed that it was written for the Princess’s Theatre before Kean took over the

management in October 1848. Its existence had also been recorded in The Musical World (October 28, 1848),

p.697. 43

The advertisement for the opera in the Morning Post (June 6, 1859) described the 4 act Manchester version with

Bardetta so that the changes to a 3 act opera without Bardetta were probably very late. 44

It is quite possible that Augustus Braham, the St James’s manager, assumed that the opera had a licence because

of its Manchester staging, but, in fact, no evidence of a licence for Manchester has been found. 45

Michael Booth. English Melodrama, (London: Herbert Jenkins), p.80. 46

Edward Fitzball. Thirty Five Years of a Dramatic Author’s Life. Volume 1, (London: T.C. Newby, 1859), pp.

58-59 includes some of the actors that he saw there but he does not mention Grosette. 47

Stanley Sadie in a review of the vocal score in Music and Letters. Vol. XLVII, No. 4, (October 1966), pp. 373-

375