When the draw of a book is the origins of, well, a mythical being but the roots of the character are thoroughly human then the author has set himself a difficult task. This task is made more difficult when that character has been so comprehensively been reinvented by cinema, an art form not invented at the time of the source writings about them then the reader can multiply the complexites that the author has to grapple with. But with source material to draw on that is strong enough to tell the story the author can make play with the way that source material is used, particularly when said source material will be only mildly familiar to the casual reader. This lack of familiarity with source material improves the author's working chances for outlining the developments of the mythical character.
The character is Dracula, and to get to the outline of the character Josoeph O'Connor has to take the long way round via Victorian theatre: namely the relationships between actor Ellen Terry, actor Sir Henry Irving and stage manager and author Bram Stoker. So O'Connor starts with a rich palette of stories from which to fashion a figure who can never die and is never truly alive, who is a supreme exemple of a placeholder character who finds himself most at home in the shadows of given society.
It is the theatre and Henry Irving that most brings the Dracula story to life. Irving is pivotal because he has the detachment, the airs and graces, and an interest in the occult, Irving is the one to employ Bram Stoker to run his theatre for him so that Irving can reserve his energies for acting and need not be too drawn into the actual mechanics of the theatre. Irving is the one to disparage Stoker's writng, but also keep him in employment and feed him material for writing. Whilst all the time O'Connor has Irving behaving as if that is not quite the case, as if Irving had no insight into himself.
The mechanics of managing a theatre are detailed and complex to the point of exhausting. When the always wanna-be writer Bram Stoker starts writing he writes at night in a garret in the top of the theatre. It there finds the character of Dracula. As he sits in the still of night in the theatre Stoker writes and finds himelf caught up in an uneasy compulsion with the character, who even in the haziest of outlines clearly has some sort of life force that bids Stoker to write more.
In the meanwhile real life characters pass through the theatre, like Oscar Wilde before he is taken to court by the Marquis of Queensbury,. That is a minor side show and a bit of breathng space for the reader. But by the time that first draft of the Dracula story is complete, the reader has also absorbed the idea of the double life from Wilde's gothic novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. The reader is aware of Dracula being a presence even when he is not quite present on the page of Stoker's book, as conveyed in O'Connor's writing. But Dracula is becoming a much clearer presence in Stoker's mind, such that, at his wife's bidding (practical woman that she is) She makes Stoker write a play script of the manuscript of Dracula, so that when the play is read onstage, Stoker can claim copyright for 'Dracula - A Tale Of The Undead' from the British and Americam governments. This is done in Irving's theatre with the grudging blessing of Irving, for whom Shakspeare is king of the stage. No other writer in Irving's lifetime is going to compare.
Ellen Terry's role in 'Shadowplay' is one of firstly adding sex appeal, second being an encourager, as the different strands of O'Connor's plot set off at great distant from each other and gradually become more thickly bound, as art imitates life, which imitates art, which imitates.....
A mention here should be be made of the Jack The Ripper story who becomes an inciidental prop in the writing of the fictional Dracula. This is well aimed specuation on the part of O'Connor, in which ingeniously O'Connor also deflates the presence of Jack the Ripper in the book as other characters are horrified by the immediancy of the deaths of the seven women and the anonymity of The Ripper himself.
As long as the daily life in the O'Connor's book is tied to the rich historical sources it takes it's cues from, the fiction of 'Shadowplay' is a highwire act where the only disadvantage comes from how each step forward is one step nearer the end of the wire/end the book. For that reason I am perversely enjoying not reading it as much as reading it: each step forward or chapter I read means less of the highwire act still to come, and therefore less to enjoy in furure unless the next book is as well sourced and written as this one.
When pleasure deferred is pleasure that is to come then it is better not rushed. Whatever is worth waiting for is worth reading more slowly.
That said, the way this book winds down with it's different endings would be a test of many reader's patience. This reader felt quite strongly as if they have been served a wonderful main meal in a resaurant. But towards the end of the book/meal the author/waiter so wanted to serve me me sweetmeats, in spite of me being full. And the author/waiter did not know when to stop. I so wanted to say to Joseph O'Connor as I read on 'Thank you, no more. The bill please..... '.
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