T.P. Cooke as the Creature, from a painting by Thomas Wageman, at New York Public Library Digital Collections
Source: Mary Shelley to Leigh Hunt, 9 September 1823, in Betty T. Bennett (ed.), Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), letter 1,378
Production: Richard Brinsley Peake, Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, English Opera House, London, 28 July 1823
Text: But lo and behold! I found myself famous. F[rankenstein] had prodigious success as a drama & was about to be repeated for the 23rd night at the English opera house. The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatis personæ came, ——— [i.e., the Creature] by Mr. T. Cooke: this nameless mode of naming the un[n]ameable is rather good.
On Friday Aug. 29th Jane[,] My father[,] William & I went to the theatre to see it. Wallack looked very well as F[rankenstein]—he is at the beginning full of hope & expectation—at the end of the 1st Act. the stage represents a room with a staircase leading to F[rankenstein]’s workshop—he goes to it and you see his light at a small window, through which a frightened servant peeps, who runs off in terror when F[rankenstein] exclaims “It lives!”—Presently F[rankenstein] himself rushes in horror & trepidation from the room and while still expressing his agony & terror ——— throws down the door of the laboratory, leaps the staircase & presents his unearthly & monstrous person on the stage. The story is not well managed—but Cooke played ———’s part extremely well—his seeking as it were for support—his trying to grasp at the sounds he heard—all indeed he does was well imagined & executed. I was much amused, & it appeared to excite a breathless eagerness in the audience. It was a third piece, a scanty pit filled at half-price, and all stayed till it was over. They continue to play it even now.
Comments: Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist, essayist and travel writer, and wife of the poet Percy Shelley. Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, by Richard Brinsley Peake, was the first dramatisation of her novel Frankenstein. It opened at the English Opera House (later the Lyceum Theatre) in London on 28 July 1823, and Shelley saw it with her father William Godwin on 29 August 1823. Victor Frankenstein was played by James William Wallack, and the Creature by Thomas Potter Cooke. Because only the patent theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Garden could perform ‘legitimate’ drama at this time, other theatres were obliged to put on spectacles, musical entertainments, pantomimes and the like, which affected the nature of the production of Presumption, which featured songs, dumbshow sequences and an avalanche for the finale.
Links: Copy at Romantic Circles (site on Romantic-period literature and culture)
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