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I've known for some time that Bram Stoker secured the stage copyright for Dracula by putting on a reading of it at the Lyceum a week before the book itself was published. The script for this reading was basically constructed out of the dialogue from the novel, cut out from the editorial proofs, pasted onto sheets of paper, and supplemented by stage directions and occasional extra material in Stoker's own handwriting. A few pages from it were displayed as part of the British Library's exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination in 2014, and they also have an article about it here including images of the script.
What I didn't know until only a few months ago was that you can buy an edited version of this script, presented in ordinary print (i.e. not as a facsimile) but using typographic conventions to convey which parts of the text originated as cut-out proofs, which as Stoker's hand-written additions and which (occasionally) as additions by the editor to create a workable text out of something Stoker had obviously rushed in the first place. This was a very exciting discovery, as I had felt frustrated at being unable to read it before. I could tell from what I'd seen at the British Library exhibition that there were a few very minor differences between the text in the proofs and the final published novel, while the hand-written material joining them together was in some places entirely new - and yet from the hand of the same author, and thus potentially providing precious additional insights into Stoker's thinking and the story-world he had created. So I put it on my Christmas list, and as soon as I'd finished my DracSoc holiday homework reading, it was next in the queue on my to-read pile.
It does have to be said that it would clearly have been very bad as an actual play. Stoker wrote it as a novel, and evidently did not have time to convert it properly for stage action. So we end up with long passages where a character sits there on stage, writing in their diary about something they have seen, instead of us actually seeing it happening - as would be done and indeed is done in any proper stage adaptation. For example, when Harker is trapped inside the castle early on in the novel, he sees various things out of the windows, such as Szgany workers whom he tries to communicate with and get to post a letter for him, or the woman whose child Dracula has taken who comes and begs him to give it back. In the novel, it's perfectly natural for him to recount these events in retrospect in his diary - that is the format of the text after all. But in a stage adaptation you expect to see these sorts of things happening in direct action, and it could only have been tedious and painful to have to sit there listening to the character reading out a diary entry about it instead. Supposedly, Henry Irving, on witnessing the reading, opined that it was 'dreadful', and I can't disagree with him.
However, I wasn't reading it for its dramatic potential, but for the insights it could yield into Stoker's creative processes and his own wider conception of the text as we have it in the novel. ( These are some of the things I felt were worth noting down under that heading )
Then there were things which were always there in the novel, but which ( I only fully picked up on this time )
In short, this may be a terrible stage play, but if you're a big old Dracula geek it is essential reading, mainly for the additional insights into Stoker's work but also because it allows you to see new things in the existing text by reading it in a new format. I am so glad to have had the opportunity at last.
What I didn't know until only a few months ago was that you can buy an edited version of this script, presented in ordinary print (i.e. not as a facsimile) but using typographic conventions to convey which parts of the text originated as cut-out proofs, which as Stoker's hand-written additions and which (occasionally) as additions by the editor to create a workable text out of something Stoker had obviously rushed in the first place. This was a very exciting discovery, as I had felt frustrated at being unable to read it before. I could tell from what I'd seen at the British Library exhibition that there were a few very minor differences between the text in the proofs and the final published novel, while the hand-written material joining them together was in some places entirely new - and yet from the hand of the same author, and thus potentially providing precious additional insights into Stoker's thinking and the story-world he had created. So I put it on my Christmas list, and as soon as I'd finished my DracSoc holiday homework reading, it was next in the queue on my to-read pile.
It does have to be said that it would clearly have been very bad as an actual play. Stoker wrote it as a novel, and evidently did not have time to convert it properly for stage action. So we end up with long passages where a character sits there on stage, writing in their diary about something they have seen, instead of us actually seeing it happening - as would be done and indeed is done in any proper stage adaptation. For example, when Harker is trapped inside the castle early on in the novel, he sees various things out of the windows, such as Szgany workers whom he tries to communicate with and get to post a letter for him, or the woman whose child Dracula has taken who comes and begs him to give it back. In the novel, it's perfectly natural for him to recount these events in retrospect in his diary - that is the format of the text after all. But in a stage adaptation you expect to see these sorts of things happening in direct action, and it could only have been tedious and painful to have to sit there listening to the character reading out a diary entry about it instead. Supposedly, Henry Irving, on witnessing the reading, opined that it was 'dreadful', and I can't disagree with him.
However, I wasn't reading it for its dramatic potential, but for the insights it could yield into Stoker's creative processes and his own wider conception of the text as we have it in the novel. ( These are some of the things I felt were worth noting down under that heading )
Then there were things which were always there in the novel, but which ( I only fully picked up on this time )
In short, this may be a terrible stage play, but if you're a big old Dracula geek it is essential reading, mainly for the additional insights into Stoker's work but also because it allows you to see new things in the existing text by reading it in a new format. I am so glad to have had the opportunity at last.
