Much in this episode of dramatic history can be designated by the word “Gothic,” and when one bears in mind that by 1800 the Gothic novels were in high favor with the reading public, it will be seen that native as well as foreign influences may have operated to produce it. Furthermore, many of these Gothic novels had reached the stage. But an examination of these dramatized versions discloses the curious fact that their authors seem to have taken pains to minimize the horrors of their originals rather than to utilize them for dramatic effect. Nor were they content with even this. They frequently perverted the terrors into comedy, by the way of a concession to a public which was not yet willing to suffer a romanticized theater.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 647