Frankenstein vs The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Read online

  Frankenstein

  Meets

  The Hunchback

  of Notre-Dame

  by

  Charles Nodier,

  Antoine Nicolas Béraud

  & Jean Toussaint Merle

  and

  Victor Hugo,

  Paul Foucher & Paul Meurice

  adapted in English

  by

  Frank J. Morlock

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Table of Contents

  The Monster and the Magician, 5

  or Frankenstein Revisited 5

  Introduction 6

  Act I 14

  Scene I 14

  Scene II 23

  Act II 33

  Scene III 33

  Scene IV 41

  Act III 54

  Scene V 54

  Scene VI 65

  Scene VII 66

  The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 68

  Introduction 69

  Act I 79

  Scene I 79

  Scene II 91

  Scene III 104

  Scene IV 112

  Act II 119

  Scene V 119

  Scene VI 126

  Act III 136

  Scene VII 136

  Scene VIII 146

  Scene IX 154

  Act IV 159

  Scene X 159

  Act V 172

  Scene XI 172

  Scene XII 185

  The Passion of Frankenstein 189

  Afterword 204

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR 206

  FRENCH HORROR COLLECTION 207

  The Monster and the Magician,

  or Frankenstein Revisited

  A Fantastic Melodrama in Three Acts

  by

  Charles Nodier, Antoine Nicolas Béraud

  & Jean Toussaint Merle

  inspired by the novel of

  Mary Shelley

  translated and adapted by

  Frank J. Morlock

  Introduction

  On that fabled stormy night of 1816 at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, George Gordon, Lord Byron and John William Polidori created the handsome vampire Lord Ruthven,1 and Mary Shelley created the dread Frankenstein and his immortal Monster.

  After Shelley’s novel was published in 1818, it was quickly dramatized in England in 1823 by Richard Brinsley Peake. The French play entitled Le Monstre et le Magicien (The Monster and the Magician, or Frankenstein Revisited), translated here, however, did not appear until 1826. It was credited, in various combinations, to the trio of Charles Nodier, Antoine Nicolas Béraud and Jean Toussaint Merle.

  Charles Nodier and Antoine Nicolas Béraud:

  Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was born in Besançon in Eastern France, also Victor Hugo’s birthplace. He witnessed first hand the bloody events of the French Revolution as a teenager in Strasbourg in 1794, where his father had sent him to learn Greek from Euloge Schneider, the leading Jacobin of that town, a man noted for both his cruelty and his corruption. When Alexandre Dumas wrote Les Blancs et les Bleus (The Whites and the Blues, 1867), he drew from Nodier’s personal experience of that ghastly period of French history known as the Terror.

  Nodier became an opponent of Napoleon and fell foul of the authorities for having written a skit on the Emperor, but after his fall, Nodier emerged as an early Romantic writer. He began his career by penning popular Gothic novels such as Les Proscrits (The Proscribed, 1802) and Le Peintre de Salzbourg (The Painter of Salzburg, 1803). In 1820, he wrote the play Lord Ruthven le Vampire based on the Polidori story.2 In 1821, he wrote the classic Smarra ou les Démons de la Nuit (Smarra, or The Demons of the Night), a collection of terrifying dream-based tales.

  In 1824, Nodier became Head Librarian of the Arsenal Library in Paris, where, with his daughter as hostess, he held very influential dinners for the young Romantics: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Alfred de Vigny, etc.

  Antoine Nicolas Béraud was one of Nodier’s protégés and an occasional collaborator. The Monster and the Magician was, in fact, first credited to Jean Toussaint Merle (see below) and “Antony,” a pseudonym commonly used by Nodier and Béraud to sign their collaborations.

  Nodier is also reputed to have been the head of the Priory of Sion from about 1800 until his death, when Victor Hugo allegedly became the head of this shadowy organization.

  At the present time, Nodier’s work is enjoying a revival in France, although mostly confined to his tales of supernatural events. Whether he was actually involved in the Priory of Sion is open to question, but it is interesting to note that he wrote a history of secret organizations in the French Army.

  Jean Toussaint Merle:

  Jean Toussaint Merle (1785-1852) was born in Montpellier. After a tour in Napoleon’s army in Spain, he arrived in Paris in 1808 and delivered himself to literature. He worked for a large number of famous newspapers such as Le Mercure de France and La Gazette de France. As a critic, he was witty and moderate and did not make many enemies.

  In 1822, Merle became director of the Theater of the Porte Saint-Martin. During this period, he made several trips to England to study the traditions and resources of the English Theater. He was the first to invite a troupe of British players to France. There is little doubt that he co-wrote, or more likely, rewrote and possibly commissioned Nodier and Béraud’s The Monster and the Magician, in which the renowned English mime Thomas Potter Cooke was invited to play the role of the Monster.

  Merle routinely claimed part of the writing credit for his productions, presumably for alterations made in the course of his work as producer and director. Given that the plays he staged tended to be taken from pre-existing novels, he probably regarded the whole adaptation process as serial improvisation.

  Dumas, in his autobiography, wrote that he went to the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on his first night in Paris to see Nodier’s Lord Ruthven le Vampire and found himself sitting next to an irascible old man who kept making rude comments about the play. That man turned out to be Nodier himself, presumably disapproving of Merle’s amendments to his version of the script. Dumas, of course, later got to do his own version of the same play.3

  In the end, Merle did not have the administrative talent to run a theater and, in 1826, he resigned and resumed his career as a writer. He married the actress Marie Dorval, who had starred in The Monster and the Magician. He was supposedly of a likable indolence, which was the main trait of his character. He wrote several historical works about French military operations in Africa and about 120 plays, mostly rewrites and/or collaborations with others.

  The Monster and the Magician:

  The Monster and the Magician was first performed on June 10, 1826, at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris and ran for 96 performances. It featured music by M. Alexandre, a ballet by M. Coraly and sets by Mrrs. Lefebvre & Tomkins. The Monster was played by British actor Thomas Potter Cooke and Cecilia by Marie Dorval, the then-perfect incarnation of the passionate and deeply tragic Romantic heroine.

  Nodier had already dramatized Polidori’s Lord Ruthven in 1821 before turning his hand to Shelley’s Frankenstein. Yet, he appears much less at ease in this work than he was with the Byronesque vampire. Strangely, Thomas Potter Cooke who played Ruthven on the London stage, played the part of the Monster in Nodier’s version.

  The play itself seems rather tame by modern standards, or even when compared with Nodier’s own vampire play. But it must be recognized as an innovation when it occurred. The Monster has no name and the period and place of the action has been transferred from the Swiss Alps of the 1770s to Venice in the 16th century. The cr
eator is no longer Victor Frankenstein, a scientist, but Zametti, a celebrated alchemist. So it is magic, proto-science, not modern science, that creates the Monster with no name. Also, in The Monster and the Magician, unlike in Shelley’s original work, the Creature never speaks.

  Curiously, both of these changes anticipate the appearance of Dr. Pretorius in the 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein and the widely popular Boris Karloff interpretation. One wonders whether these changes were made to avoid charges of plagiarism, or to better fit the tastes and preconceptions of the French public? Was alchemy intrinsically more believable than electricity when it came to creating life? Where the English audience was embracing the future and the wonders it promised, while the French felt more comfortable with the well-worn traditions of the past? And the pantomime Monster may well have been tailored by Merle to entice and better fit Cooke’s mime talent. However, one also notes that Nodier later wrote a short work intended simply for pantomime alone.

  Frankenstein in France:

  Although the French have had lots of “sacred monsters” in their past, and there are plenty of French-language works dealing with vampires, werewolves and other monsters, the character of Frankenstein does not seems to have received more than a flickering attention.

  Compared to the abundant use and reuse of Mary Shelley’s immortal creature in the English and American media, the French adaptations or spin-offs of Frankenstein are relatively few.

  The most notable is a series of six novels penned by renowned film writer Jean-Claude Carrière under the nom-de-plume of “Benoît Becker” and published by Fleuve Noir in their “Angoisse” horror imprint in 1957 and 1958. These six pastiches continue the adventures of Mary Shelley’s Monster after the end of her novel. They are: La Tour de Frankenstein (The Tower of Frankenstein), Le Pas de Frankenstein (The Step of Frankenstein), La Nuit de Frankenstein (The Night of Frankenstein), Le Sceau de Frankenstein (The Seal of Frankenstein), Frankenstein Rôde (Frankenstein Prowls) and La Cave de Frankenstein (The Cellar of Frankenstein).4

  Carrière’s approach to the character was startingly different from both the Universal and Hammer versions. In his novels, he christened the Monster “Gouroull” and followed his footsteps, as he made his way back from the Arctic to Scotland, and then to Germany and Switzerland, from the late 1800s to the 1920s. Unlike its predecessors, Carrière’s Monster was a ruthless, demoniacal thing, the very incarnation of evil. His yellow, unblinking eyes hid a cunning, inhuman intelligence. The Monster barely spoke, but used his razor-sharp teeth to slit his victims’ throats.

  Carrière emphasized the physical inhumanity of the creature: the Monster did not breathe, its skin was white as chalk but strangely impervious to flames, its strength and speed were prodigious, what ran in its veins was not blood but ichor, and it had no normal heartbeat; even its thought process was shown to be alien.

  As far as film and television are concerned, other than a few comical shorter features, such as the classic 1952 Torticola contre Frankensberg, a surreal parody of Gothic horror films, there are really only two major French adaptations of Mary Shelley’s classic, neither of which is very convincing.

  A 1974 Frankenstein made-for-television feature, directed by Bob Thénault and written by François Chevallier, cast Gérard Berner as the hapless Victor Frankenstein and Gérard Boucaron as the Monster, now christened Frobelius. In it, after having been expelled from the university and repudiated by his family, Victor conducts his experiments on Frobelius, a retarded man. After the latter dies in a mountain accident, Victor brings him back to life.

  Worse was Frankenstein ’90, an 1984 feature film comedy by otherwise serious director Alain Jessua, co-written with Paul Gégauff, which cast the noted French comedian Jean Rochefort as Victor Frankenstein and French pop singer Eddy Mitchell as his Creature. Here, Shelley’s myth is the pretextv for a lame romantic comedy in which the Creature falls in love with his creator’s fiancée and vice-versa.

  If popular psychology is correct, Frankenstein evokes a fear of rationality and science running amok. To judge by its enduring popularity, that terror still troubles the Anglo-Saxon psyche to this day. Perhaps the French are just less inclined towards fear of science and rationality than the English? Why that would be the case is not clear, since the English blame excessive rationalism for the Terror under the French Revolution, not to mention Marxism and Stalinism. For reasons best known to themselves, the French have not been very moved by such arguments, which may account for the relative short popularity of Frankenstein in France.

  Characters

  The Monster

  Zametti, a celebrated Venetian alchemist

  Olben, a blind old man, father of Janskin and Cecilia

  Janskin, the leader of a band of Gypsies

  Cecilia, Olben’s daughter and Zametti’s fiancée

  Pietro, Zametti’s servant

  Antonio, Zametti’s son, age eight

  Petrusco, a Gypsy

  The Genie of the Black Rock

  Gypsies, Villagers, Zametti’s servants, etc.

  The action takes place in the 16th century on the shores of the Adriatic, near Venice.

  Act I

  Scene I

  The stage represents a somber forest. To the right, midway back in the midst of a thicket of trees, near a cavern, is an ancient, half-destroyed sarcophagus made of jet-black stone, surrounded by thick bushes. To the left, close to the audience, is an oddly-shaped piece of stone upon which one can sit.

  The end of the Overture has depicted a storm. AT RISE, thunder grumbles and one sees light flashing, shining through the thick foliage of the dark forest. The stage is in the deepest obscurity. Janskin advances slowly, furtively, at the head of his band of Gypsies, Petrusco right behind him. He seems to be seeking his way.

  PETRUSCO: What a frightful storm!

  JANSKIN: Yes, it caught us quite unprepared. But should poor devils of Gypsies such as we complain of the weather? We’re used to such rain and storm.

  (The Gypsies stop for a moment; some of them go and sit on the sarcophagus at the right.)

  PETRUSCO: Where are we?

  JANSKIN (looking around): I’m not sure yet...

  (A lightning bolt shines. In its light, Janskin notices the ancient sarcophagus; he rushes towards those who are seated on it.)

  JANSKIN: Get away from there, you fools!

  PETRUSCO: Why?

  JANSKIN: Why? Why? Because this place is cursed!

  (All the Gypsies react with terror. Those surrounding the sarcophagus quickly distance themselves from it.)

  PETRUSCO (emotionally): Tell us, Janskin... Are we going to stop here?

  JANSKIN: No. I’m the only one who’ll be staying. You all–leave! You’ll wait for me by the big rock near Olben’s thatched cottage.

  PETRUSCO: Ah! The old blind man–Understood–but what about you? Why aren’t you coming with us?

  JANSKIN: Questions again! (abruptly) I’m waiting for someone here. (to the Gypsies) Get going and be careful not to be caught by the Police–you know they’re not our friends. Go!

  (On Janskin’s order, the Gypsies make off and disappear.)

  JANSKIN: How strange fate is! I was once the son of wealthy Tyrolians, yet now I’m only the leader of a miserable band of Gypsies. That’s the result of my many sins. After having reduced my father to misery, I ran wildly through the world–and caroused everywhere, I robbed, I stole and I enjoyed playing with the fate of men. But now I’m weary of this life. I repent it. I want nothing more than to reconcile with my old father. I returned to Tyrol, looking for him, but there, I learned that he had left over a year ago. I sought the help of Zametti, an old friend of my youth. He told me that my father and my sister, Cecilia, had come to live in this county, not far from the shores of the Adriatic. I’ve seen Zametti again recently. I found out that he secretly loves Cecilia. He wants to marry her. That wedding will serve my cause. In the midst of all the rejoicing, I will show myself to my father. He won’t be able to refus
e to forgive me. Then, I can say goodbye forever to the Gypsies whom I command. I want to end my life as an honest man. Still, I’m uneasy... Zametti has now dedicated himself to the studies of the works of Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus and Doctor Faustus–cursed works–he has sacrilegious designs. I can say no more. I know he plans to come today to this dark place... I must stop him before he succumbs to Evil. Hark! Someone’s coming. Could it be him?

  (Pietro, a box under his arm, enters. He seems seized by some vivid terror.)

  PIETRO: What evil forest! How sinister everything looks. I haven’t got one drop of warm blood left in my veins. (to his master) Ah, sir, why have we come here?

  (Enter Zametti, somber and preoccupied.)

  ZAMETTI: Shut up!

  PIETRO: Some great evil is going to happen to us, I feel it.

  ZAMETTI: Quiet, I tell you. (going to the front of the stone sarcophagus) Place the box here.

  PIETRO (trembling): Yes, sir.

  JANSKIN (aside): It’s him!

  (He emerges from the corner where he was hidden.)

  ZAMETTI (hearing the noise of Janskin’s feet): Someone’s here! (aloud in a threatening voice) Who goes there?

  JANSKIN (approaching): A friend.

  ZAMETTI (upset): Janskin! What brings you here?

  JANSKIN: The desire to see and speak to you.

  ZAMETTI: The moment is ill-chosen. Go away!

  JANSKIN: No. I choose to stay.

  ZAMETTI: What for?

  JANSKIN: You’ll soon find out. (gesturing to Pietro to get away)