Shakespeare and vampires at the fin de siecle

What is it about?

In 1896, Britain's most famous actors, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, staged Shakespeare's late romance, Cymbeline. Henry Irving's business manager, Bram Stoker, was busy writing Dracula. This article argues that Cymbeline, and especially Ellen Terry's performance as Imogen, helped inspire Dracula, the world's most famous Gothic novel.

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Why is it important?

This article offers a wholly new reading of Dracula as inspired by Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and Cymbeline, and shows how productions of Shakespeare intervened in contemporary Gothic culture. It also shows how the sleeping woman was eroticised by late Victorian culture, and how - surprisingly - Ellen Terry's performance as an ideal Shakespearean heroine became inflected with the dark sexuality of the 1890s Gothic.