The Mysterious Mother: A Tragedy

The Mysterious Mother, a tragedy too horrible for representation on any stage, was never intended for performance in public, and only fifty copies of it were printed at Strawberry Hill. By Byron, who, like Horace Walpole, affected extreme liberalism, and like him never forgot that he was born within the purple, this tragedy was pronounced "of the highest order." Walpole's brooding and intense drama, The Mysterious Mother, focuses on the protagonist's angst over an act of incest with his mother, and includes the appearance of Father Benedict, Gothic literature's first evil monk.