- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
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- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
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- Much Ado About Nothing
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- The Winter's Tale
This scene, a mix of horror and comedy, exemplifies Hawthorne’s approach to the Gothic genre. For one thing, it occurs in the context of a short story Holgrave has written about the Pyncheons’ history. Hawthorne often uses a distancing effect—in this case, a story-within-a-story—to create ambiguity as to whether supernatural events really occurred. Hawthorne also tends to temper alarming supernatural events with an intentional element of lightness or hilarity. The overall effect allows Hawthorne to reinforce his thesis about horror versus innocence—that, regardless of the truth of the supernatural elements, the bigger horror is what human beings inflict on one…