The first and most obvious connection to William Shakespeare is presented by Horace Walpole himself, in the preface to the second edition of "Otranto", in which he "praises Shakespeare as a truly original genius and the exemplar of imaginative liberty, as a part of a defense of "Otranto"s design". Outside of the preface, Walpole uses several allusions to works by Shakespeare as further emphasis of the connection he wishes to be found between his own work and that of Shakespeare. For example, in "Hamlet", "Hamlet's encounter with the Ghost becomes for Walpole a template for terror".