long, desired so earnestly? That will I not, by
Heaven! Mine she is, and mine she shall be, though Reginald's bleeding
ghost flit before me and thunder in my ear 'Hold! Hold!'--Peace, stormy
heart, she comes." Reginald's ghost does not flit, because Reginald is
still in the flesh, though not in very much flesh. He is Osmond's
brother and Angela's father, and the wicked Earl thought that he had
murdered him. It turns out, however, that, though left for dead, he had
recovered of his hurts and has been kept unbeknown in solitary
confinement, in a dungeon vault under the castle, for the somewhat long
period of sixteen years. He is discovered in Act V., "emaciated, in
coarse garments, his hair hanging wildly about his face, and a chain
bound round his body."

Reginald's ghost does not flit, but Evelina's does. Evelina is
Reginald's murdered wife, and her specter in "white and flowing garments,
spotted with blood," appears to Angela in the oratory communicating with
the cedar room, which is furnished with an antique bedstead and the
portrait of a lady on a sliding panel. In truth, the castle is
uncommonly well supplied with apparitions. Earl Herbert rides around it
every night on a white horse; Lady Bertha haunts the west pinnacle of the
chapel tower; and Lord Hildebrand may be seen any midnight in the great
hall, playing football with his own head. So says Motley the jester, who
affords the comedy element of the play, with the help of a fat friar who
guzzles sack and stuffs venison pasties, and a soubrette after the
"Otranto" pattern.

A few poems were scattered through the pages of "The Monk," including a
ballad from the Danish, and another from the Spanish. But the most
famous of these was "Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene," original
with Lewis, though evidently suggested by "Lenore." It tells how a lover
who had gone to Palestine presented himself at the bridal feast of his
faithless fair one, just as the clock struck one and the lights burned
blue. At the request of the company, the strange knight raises his visor
and discloses a skeleton head:

"All present then uttered a terrified shout;
All turned with disgust from the scene;
The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out,
And sported his eyes and his temples about
While the spectre addressed Imogene."

He winds his arms about her and sinks with his prey through the yawning
ground; and

"At midnight four times