The Immortal Vampire of Stratford-upon-Avon

Abstract

On December 11, 1876, Bram Stoker met Henry Irving for the first time after seeing him in Hamlet, which Stoker had ‘reviewed favorably’ (Stoker, 2008, p. 8). Stoker subsequently became Irving’s manager in 1878. The novel for which Stoker would become famous, Dracula, is suffused not only with Irving (indeed, the character of Dracula is based in part on him), but also with Irving’s Shakespeare. Stoker’s entire literary output before his meeting with Irving consisted of a four-part serialized hort story called ‘Jack Hammon’s Vote’ and a civil service policy manual entitled The Duties of Clerks in Petty Sessions in Ireland (Nuzum, 2007, p. 128). After meeting Irving, Stoker became prolific, and Shakespeare (Irving’s Shakespeare, that is) echoed through Stoker’s work.

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

Hamlet, 1.4.27–37