The Ghosts of Shakespeare’s <i>Richard III</i> and Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i>

William Shakespeare’s works had a profound influence on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and one play that has been infrequently discussed in relation to her novel is Richard III. Shelley was familiar with Shakespeare’s canon, and Robert Sawyer indicates that her ‘engagement with Shakespeare intensified during the year she published Frankenstein, for her journal shows that in August she read Richard III’ among other plays.1 Connections between the two texts have been observed before. In a previous Notes and Queries piece, Mark Loveridge remarks upon the similarities between Victor’s descriptions of humanity’s grotesque state and Richard’s comments on his own body while also associating the creation’s monstrousness with that of Richard.2 However, he also notes ‘a series of coincidences between the names of characters in Frankenstein and those of the cast-list of Richard III’.3 There is then arguably a more sustained pattern of inspiration drawn from Richard III, and further comparisons between the ‘monster’ and Richard have been established. Antonio Ballesteros González adds to Chris Baldrick’s catalogue of Shakespearean appropriations in Shelley’s novel by including Richard in his list.4 Although the critical conversation has already established Richard’s influence on Shelley’s novel, the focus has been on the theme of monstrousness—that of Victor’s creation and Shakespeare’s Richard—and has left other intertextual connections unnoticed. By considering Eileen Hunt Botting’s conception of Victor’s creation as a stateless orphan who functions as a ‘specter’ that haunts him,5 I argue that Shelley saw the ghosts of Richard III as further inspiration for this supernatural framing of Victor and his creation. This additional layer of appropriation highlights Shelley’s sophisticated nuance in her allusion to Richard III that does not merely use Richard as another means to draw monstrous associations. Shelley’s reference to Shakespeare’s ghost scene—prior to the Battle of Bosworth Field—ultimately denies Victor the justice he seeks; Victor anticipates a Shakespearean moral cleansing, only for Walton never to enact it. Shelley thus leaves her reader wondering if Victor’s creation was truly equivalent to Shakespeare’s monstrous Richard.

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