Jonathan Harker was acted by Terence Neil; Abraham Van Helsing by Edward Van Sloan; Renfield by Bernard Jukes; and Count Dracula by Bela Lugoni.
As I have before remarked, the striking fact that an indifferent play should prove so successful can, I think, only be attributed to the fascination of the theme. Consciously or unconsciously it is realized that the vampire tradition contains far more truth than the ordinary individual cares to appreciate and acknowledge. “La fable du vampire est peut-être la plus universelle de nos superstitions…. Elle a partout l’autorité de la tradition: elle ne manque ni de celle de la philosophie ni de celle de la médicine. La théologie même en a parlé.”
Notes to Chapter V.
- 1 Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (Second Impression), London, 1905, pp. 149–179.
- 2 Der Naturforscher. Achtundvierzigstes Stück, Leipzig, Sonnabend, den 25 des Mays, 1748.
- 3 Werke, Göschen, 1857, XI, 260.
- 4 Cf. also Schoch Lolo: Werke, Hempel, XII, 39.
Nicht Menschen mehr, Vampyre nur erblickt,
Die an ihm saugen und an ihm liegen.
- 5 The following but poorly expresses the original:
From my grave to wander I am forc’d,
Still to seek The Good’s long-sever’d link,
Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,
And the life-blood of his heart to drink;
When his race is run,
I must hasten on,
And the young must ’neath my vengance sink.
- 6 In Schmidt, Charakteristiken, Berlin, 1886, pp. 246–247.
- 7 In his Historic Survey of German Poetry, London, 1830, in a note upon his translation Ellenore (p. 51) Taylor says: “No German poem has been so repeatedly translated into English as Ellenore: Eight different versions are lying on my table, and I have read others. It becomes not me to appreciate them; suffice it to observe that this was the earliest of them all, having been communicated to my friends in the year 1790, and mentioned in the preface to Dr. Aikin’s poems which appeared in 1791. It was first printed in the second number of the Monthly Magazine for 1796. The German title is Lenore, which is the vernacular form of Eleonora, a name here represented by Ellenore.” Taylor compares Lenore with “an obscure English ballad called the Suffolk miracle,” and he reprints (p. 52) this ample poem in full; The Suffolk Miracle: Or a relation of a young man, who, a month after his death, appeared to his sweetheart, and carried her on horseback behind him for forty miles in two hours and was never seen after but in his grave.
- 8 Lockhart, Memoirs, vol. I, p. 204.
- 9 Captain Basil Hall’s Schloss Hainfeld: or, a Winter in Lower Styria. Edinburgh, 1836, p. 332.
