On August 12, 1823, Mary and her son,
Percy, arrived in Paris, where Mary received a letter from her father that
brought some surprising news: Frankenstein
(sort of) had reached the stage. On August 14, she wrote a long letter to her
friends Leigh and Marianne Hunt, still in Italy, about the news—news she’d also
heard from a friend in Paris:
The playwright and producers, she said, vivified the Monster in such a manner as
caused the ladies to faint away & a hubbub to ensue […] and it is having a
run ….[1]
In another letter to Leigh Hunt a few days
later, she communicated some further news—and alterations of the “old
news”—about Presumption; or, The Fate of
Frankenstein:
I
found out,
she wrote, that it was not true that the
ladies were frightened at the first appearance of Frankenstein— [… but] that
the first appearance of the Monster from F.’s laboratory down a dark staircase
had a fine effect—but the piece fell off afterwards—though it is having a run.[2]
(An aside: It’s interesting to me to see
that Mary Shelley herself referred to the creature her as “Frankenstein”—something
that remains common to this day. In her novel, the creature has no name, but Victor Frankenstein was, in a scientific way at least, the
father—so the creature’s surname is,
in fact, Frankenstein.)
Yet another Frankenstein knock-off appeared on the London stage (the New Surrey
Theatre) on September 1—a parody (the sort of thing filmmaker Marlon Wayans has
been doing; as I type this, his Fifty
Shades of Black is in the theaters). Entitled Hungumption; or Dr Frankenstein and the Hobgoblin of Hoxton ran for
six performances only, and yet another one, Presumption
and the Blue Demon, had a two-performance run at Davis’ Royal Amphiteatre.[3]
And there was yet another surprise: Her
father had arranged for the publication of a new edition of Frankenstein, a decision most Shelley
scholars agree was motivated by the various stage versions beginning to appear
on London’s stages.
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