Editor’s note: Every weekday in October, former Mystery House blogger Stephen will post an excerpt from his in-progress guide to the Winchester Mystery House. Previous entries can be found here.

As you move from Guest Reception Hall to the Grand Ballroom, you’ll pass a large room with unfinished timber walls. I’m not sure of the intended use for this room, but if you look inside, you’ll find a second room in the right-hand corner. This room is an unfinished bathroom, and was only accessible from outdoors.

The ballroom is my favorite room in the mansion, not for its elaborate architecture (the most expensive in the house), but because it contains the only true message we have from Sarah Winchester.

In the picture of the ball room above, you’ll notice two stained-glass windows. Each contains a different quote from the works of Shakespeare. The tour script states that we know nothing of the meaning behind these quotes, but I disagree. Knowing the story of Mrs. Winchester’s life, and the context of the quotes, their meaning to Mrs. Winchester becomes more clear.

“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
O! these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give a coasting welcome ere it comes,
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
To every tickling reader, set them down
For sluttish spoils of opportunity
And daughters of the game.”

These lines from the play Troilus and Cressida offer a cynical description of the character Cressida. The Greek Ulysses speaks them after she denies him a kiss, and his scorn for her physical beauty and flirting manner. The excerpt on the window, “wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts” may mirror Mrs. Winchester’s own feelings about her younger self.

However, when the production history of Troilus and Cressida is studied, a second possibility emerges. As written by Shakespeare, Cressida is unfaithful to Troilus, but in the Victorian era, the play was revised to accommodate the stricter sexual mores of the era. Mrs. Winchester may have been more familiar with this depiction, in which Cressida becomes a heroine for her faithfulness, and Ulysses cynical assessment becomes slander. Perhaps Mrs. Winchester chose the quote out to express her feelings that she was misunderstood.

One other note about Troilus and Cressida, the structure of the play itself mirrors Mrs. Winchester’s life. The opening acts depict a romantic view of love and war, followed by a final act filled with scenes of brutal violence and death. The shift in tone is sudden and bitter, and I believe it reflects Mrs. Winchester’s own experiences of grief and loss.

The quote in the second window comes from Richard II, and is spoken by Richard himself. The excerpt in the window reads “These same thoughts people this little world,” but the lines spoken prior give much needed context. They read:

“I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out.
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world”

In this soliloquy, King Richard II, imprisoned and deposed as ruler of England, muses that in isolation he can create a world unto himself, populated only by thoughts, and that these thoughts will be the children of his own mind and soul.

The image of Mrs. Winchester that emerges from this quote, taken with the other line from Troilus and Cressida, is that of a woman isolated and broken down by grief. She blames herself for the deaths, making her grief a punishment, but she is determined to create a new life through her own will. This life she is creating will not be vulnerable to the loss of loved ones. It will exist only in her mind and soul.

It’s fitting that, just a few feet away from the only message she left to the world, Mrs. Winchester hid away her most valued possessions. On the right-hand side of the room, behind a large wooden door, there is a hidden vault so heavy that it required its own foundation. After Mrs. Winchester’s death, her servants gathered around as the vault was opened. Rumors of a solid gold dinner service had circulated for years, but according to legend they found nothing of conventional value. Instead, the safe contained to a few locks of hair, newspaper clippings, and other sad reminders of the thoughts that peopled her little world.