How Did Bram Stoker Dream Up Dracula? A Novel Offers …

SHADOWPLAYBy Joseph OConnor

In 1897, a handful of spectators at the Lyceum Theater in London witnessed the improbable birth of Dracula, which was presented as a one-off stage reading before the novel was published some days later. The author, Bram Stoker, was the devoted and long-suffering business assistant to the Lyceums capricious actor-manager, Sir Henry Irving, who angrily refused to read the part of the saber-toothed count.

Joseph OConnor explores the likely source of Irvings fury his temper was notorious in his novel Shadowplay, a vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition set in the garish heyday of a theater presided over by a tyrannical Irving and an exquisitely vulgar Ellen Terry, Britains answer to Sarah Bernhardt.

Shadowplay opens in Dublin in the winter of 1876, with OConnor painting that ravishing city with a soft lyricism that Stoker himself might have envied: Smacks heading down the estuary, trailing petticoats of nets, out towards the expanse of the sea. Stoker, a government clerk who moonlights as a theater critic, is reeling from the visceral intensity of Irvings performance in Dublin as Hamlet. Eyes glowing red in the gaslight, Irving terrifies the audience, slinking towards the lip of the stage, left hand on hip, wiping his wet mouth with the back of his sleeve. Sneering, he regarded them. Then he spat.

[ Read an excerpt from Shadowplay. ]

Its Irvings now legendary performance as the brooding Dane, hamming it up for a screaming, stampeding crowd as only Irving could, that promises to transform the pedestrian trajectory of Stokers life. Gratified by Stokers adulatory review, Irving summons the younger man to dine with him at the Shelbourne, Dublins grandest hotel. OConnor delights in cameos: En route to the hotel, we catch a glimpse of Yeats, a silverback gorilla in a monocle, while a skittish Oscar Wilde invites Stoker, his pal from university, to join him for a constitutional stroll of questionable intent.

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How Did Bram Stoker Dream Up Dracula? A Novel Offers ...

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero