Many of the tragedies also exhibit the influence of the school of terror. The Radcliffian romances, the early German drama, and the spectral melodrama of the theatres all encouraged castles, dungeons, titans like Karl Moor, hallucinations, and ghosts. There is something of this in Beddoes's churchyards; "Bertram" is a full-fledged drama of terror by one of the masters of the school; Byron's "Werner," itself a dramatization of a tale of terror, conforms to all the stage requirements of the species. After the tales of terror had gone out of fashion, the romanticists still found it easy on the stage to revert to haunted castles, inveterate villains, and in-dungeoned heroes. But in addition to the continuing influence of "The Robbers" and the plays of "Monk" Lewis, there was arising the influence of "Faust" and of Schiller's later plays. "Faust," which furnished hints for "Manfred" and "The Deformed Transformed," seems to have been regarded as a "tale of wonder," the story of the sale of a soul to the devil being a favorite with that class of fiction; but its philosophy perhaps also had its suggestions for both Byron and Shelley. Schiller's "Wallenstein," translated by Coleridge, and "Mary Stuart" at least encouraged the prevailing fondness for historical themes and the study of passion.
Medievalism continued its sway but with some new developments. The Waverley novels, the growing cosmopolitanism of literature, the Italian residences of Byron and Shelley, in fact innumerable causes led to an expansion of the interest in the Middle Ages into an interest in the past. Literature, whether in Scott or Keats, was carrying its search for story and ideals, for picturesqueness and beauty, into past ages and remote climes. The treatment of history, which had formed no part of the plans of Miss Baillie, Wordsworth, or Coleridge, now became essential to tragedy; and we find Byron keeping carefully to the historical sources of his tragedies of the doges, and Shelley adhering to a narrative of the Cenci murder, which he deemed authentic, though since proved legendary. Italian history seems to have exercised a general fascination. Miss Mitford wrote a tragedy on the Foscari independently of Byron's, as well as her "Rienzi"; and "Fazio" and "Mirandola" dealt with Italian stories. The choice, however, was mainly for grandiose historical events, as "Sardanapalus," "Virginius," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Richelieu," and Milman's "Fall of Jerusalem." Some of these attracted by the opportunity to praise liberty, meaning Catholic emancipation and electoral reform, and the denunciation of tyranny; but they seem to have been especially welcomed because of their opportunities for rhetorical fervors.