Zapolya: Coleridge and the Werewolves

Abstract

In the Introduction to Zapolya in his edition of Coleridge’s Poetical Works, J. C. C. Mays reviewed the conflation of historical and literary sources, the former no less conflated than the latter. “The names of nine of the twelve characters,” Mays observed, “are drawn from separate periods of Hungarian history.”¹ Not just the names and incidents, but the very structure is an amalgam of genre, weaving together history, tragedy, and romance as it moves from “The Usurper’s Fortune” to the “The Usurper’s Fate.” The elements drawn from historical events (the Hungarian Civil War) and literary texts (Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Cymbeline; Schiller’s Wallenstein and Don Carlos) are not integrated into a cohesive plot, for Coleridge gives emphasis to character over action, or rather to action defined by the attributes of character: innocence preyed upon by cunning, pious belief attacked by atheism, sensibility refuted by reason, justice corrupted by ambition and greed. These oppositions create multiple levels of dramatic tension played out in an atmosphere charged with suspicion and superstition. When Thomas Dibdin adapted Zapolya for the stage, he gave emphasis to the supernatural elements certain to appeal to the prevailing predilection for Gothic melodrama.

A place that I will hollow for your rest,

Where no night-hag shall walk, nor ware-wolf tread,

Where Merlin’s mother shall be sepulcher’d. (V.i.104–6)

William Rowley, Birth of Merlin; or, The Childe Hath Found His Father (1622)