SHADOWPLAY BY JOSEPH O'CONNOR ...

Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor is a tenderly observed account of the – sometimes surprising – inspirations that led to the creation of an undisputed masterpiece of Victorian gothic literature.

Bram Stoker

Dracula, or The Undead, written by Bram Stoker is an epistolary novel in which imagined documents form the development of narrative. Echoing this style, O’Connor shows how Stoker’s work was influenced by certain people, by the places and events observed during the years the author spent working as the business manager at London’s Lyceum theatre.

The building as we see it first is decaying, damp, and full of cats. Haunted by a ghost called Mina, it provides a fine allusion to the castle of Count Dracula. With the scaffolding and riggings of the stage the reader cannot help but think about the ship on which The Vampire sailed to England. The music from the orchestra, the squeaking clarinets and violins, provides the perfect soundtrack for this tormented dark production. But Stoker also would have read the Penny Dreadful magazines, such as Varney the Vampire. He would have seen the shocking photograph in which the actress Sarah Bernhardt lay as dead inside her coffin. We know he was affected by the mummified remains of a Crusader in an Irish church. And then, there was his own demise, most probably from Syphilis – though O’Connor does not dwell on this. Still, it is a fact that this infection of the blood was a great scourge for the Victorians. Acquired during sex or childbirth, it then led on to cruel disfigurement, insanity, and even death.

Desire and predation dominate this novel. At the time the Ripper’s crimes led to a fevered atmosphere of dread. Never cliched or too obvious, O’Connor draws upon the blood lust and the spirit of depravity, showing how it influenced the horror found in Dracula. 

When the atrocities were going on, females employed at the Lyceum were instructed to share cabs at night, rather than risk walking out alone through London’s foggy streets – a consequence that leads to the great actress, Ellen Terry, sleeping inside the theatre, along with Bram, and Henry Irving; the three members of the trinity on which this story has been based.

Ellen Terry

Ellen Terry is a sheer delight, witty, angelic and alluring, almost seeming supernatural when she glides through London’s streets in veils. Irving is the actor manager whose dangerously dark good looks and cruelly sardonic wit is charismatic and yet troubling. He is certainly the model for the ‘exquisitely corrupt earl”, providing words and actions later echoed by The Vampire. Very early in the novel, when Stoker waits to be invited into Henry Irving's dressing room, the actor tells him, “I don’t bite.” Later, Irving mentions how the two old friends have known each other going on for 700 years.

Henry Irving

There is amusement here, and poignancy because, of course, they’re not immortal. In this novel age, decline, and death are constant and disturbing themes, as is the torment of the writer who lives in fear of never being known. How ironic that, long after they all made their bows to leave this mortal stage, the three live on in memories today – their names and work still proving as eternal as The Vampire.

A thrilling construct of a novel, exquisitely contrived to show the settings and the characters whose loves and lives inspired the evil decadence and dark despair contained in Stoker’s Dracula. A great tribute, and a work of art. Deeply affecting.

ADDENDUM: As an addition to this post, I've just seen this wonderful article from The Shakespeare Blog by Sylvia Morris. The post gives more background detail to the historical facts in Shadowplay and is even more fascinating for the inclusion of this photograph of Henry Irving and Bram Stoker leaving the Lyceum theatre, about to head off who knows where?  

How wonderfully alive they look.