Bram StokerDraculaBram Stoker was born in 1847 in Dublin, the third son ofseven children. After having graduated with honors in mathematics from TrinityCollege, Dublin, he began to follow his interests in writing and the theater bytaking an unpaid job as drama critic for the Dublin Mail. The turning point inhis life came when he met the actor Henry Irving, at age twenty-nine. Stokerfollowed Irving to London and soon afterwards became Irving’s confidant and theactor-manager of his theater. He was to hold this job for twenty-eight yearsuntil Irving’s death.Dracula was published in 1897. The novel is essentially aGothic Romance, a type of writing that first appeared in England in themid-18th century and continued in popularity well into the 19th century.Dracula has, however, managed to transcend its Gothic roots. What liftsStoker’s work so much higher than that of other Gothic writers such as Walpole,Radcliffe or Maturin, is the way folk tale and history are used to create asense that the work somehow verges on “truth”. As the critic Leonard Woolf haspointed out, this sense of something that has actually happened this “textureof something long known” is achieved through the employment of three crucialdevices. The first of these was authentic vampire folklore. Stokerprobably got this from one of the many popular and sensational travel books ofhis day. The second major influence in the book is that of the career of thehistorical figure of Vlad Tepes orVlad, The Impaler. It was in the British Museum that Stoker came upon hisprototype. Vlad Tepes, known as Dracula, was the ruler of Wallachia between1456 and 1462, an area which borders the Ottoman Empire in the South, the BlackSea in the East, and Moldavia and Transylvania in the North. The Romaniansregarded Vlad Tepes as a good king, and still do — he lead the anti-Ottomancrusade and regained the country’s independence from Turkish influence — but heis thought of by most as one of Europe’s most brutal tyrants. On the occasionof his St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre he is said to have impaled over30,000 prisoners. “Dracul” meant “devil” (as it still does in Romaniantoday), and also“dragon”. When Vlad Tepes’ father was awarded the Order of the Dragon by theHoly Roman Empire, he acquired the nickname “Dracul”. His son therefore, VladTepes, became known as “Dracula”, i.e. “son of the dragon”, or “son of thedevil”. In many languages “devil” and “vampire” are interchangeable, and it isprobably due to this that Dracula became associated with vampirism. So thelegend was born. Taking his cue from this myth, that men with monstrous soulsbecome vampires, Stoker had found exactly the man on which to model his Princeof Darkness. Lastly, Stoker found a remote and mysterious location in which the man and the story, historyand fiction, could be combined. This of course was Transylvania or “The Land beyond theForest”. He also tapped straightinto the public morbidity of the time — when he started writing Dracula, Jackthe Ripper was, with the help of the press, slaughtering his way to immortalfame.On the occasion of Dracula’s publication, Charlotte Stokerwrote a letter to her son, whichbegan: “My dear, (Dracula) is splendid, a thousand miles beyond anything youhave written before, and I feel certain will place you very high in the writersof the day...No book since Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein or indeed any other atall has come near yours in originality, or terror — “. Such a view has beenechoed thousands of times over the last hundred years. Stoker created a work,which places the extraordinary in a careful historical and geographicalcontext; the distinctions between fact and fiction are disturbed as we enter a narrative, which reads like history, indeed a series ofseemingly reliable personal histories, and which we are unable to dismiss as“only a story”. Notes by Heather Godwin Dracula — Cast Dr. Van Helsing BrianCoxCount Dracula HeathcoteWilliamsJonathan Harker DermotKerriganMina Harker SiriO’NealDr. John Seward MichaelGouldLucy Westenra PollyHayesArthur Holmwood DanielPhilpottRenfield/Quincey Morris/Solicitor Matthew WarburtonOld Lady/Sister Agatha/Mrs. Westenra Elaine ClaxtonMr. Hawkins/Captain Donelson/Driver Peter YappCorrespondent/J. Smollett BenjaminSoamesGirl 2/Mother AnnaBrittenGirl 1 LauraPatonNarrator NevilleJason Special thanks to Andrew Jack, Nenad Vekic and HeathcoteWilliams fordialect coaching. About the Cast BRIAN COX is one of Britain’s leading actors and directors, having won two Olivier Awards for his roles with the RoyalShakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre. Histelevision and film work is equally varied, and includes RobRoy, Braveheart, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Hidden Agenda. He is nowincreasingly active as a director. HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS poet, playwright and actor, is bestknown for his extended poems on environmental subjects: Whale Nation, Falling for a Dolphin, Sacred Elephant andAutogeddon. His plays have also won acclaim, notably AC/DC and Hancock’s LastHalf Hour. As an actor he has been equally versatile — taking memorable rolesin Orlando, Wish You Were Here, The Odyssey and Derek Jarman’s The Tempest, inwhich he played Prospero. Whale Nation and Sacred Elephant are also availableon Naxos AudioBooks, read by Heathcote Williams. DERMOT KERRIGAN trained at LAMDA and has since appeared inmuch Shakespearean theater including: Richard II at the Royal Exchange,Manchester; Romeo and Juliet (television); with the Royal Shakespeare Company atStratford, as well as modern plays at The Royal Court and extensive touringwith Shared Experience. SIRI O’NEAL has appeared on stage across Britain in variousroles including Jean in The Entertainer, Hilde in The Master Builder, and Tessin Tess of the D’Urbervilles. She has been seen on television in Sharpe’sBattle, The Cloning of Joanna May and Masterclass and her film credits includeWaterland and The Rachel Papers. MICHAEL GOULD has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Companyin The Phoenician Women, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and also for theBirmingham Rep, the Manchester Royal Exchange and Salisbury Playhouse. His filmcredits include Suspicious and Frankenstein. POLLY HAYES trained at LAMDA. Since then she has been activein theater across Britain, and her parts have included Marianne in TheDramatist, Rosalind in As You Like It, Nina in The Seagull and Marianne inTartuffe. She has worked extensively on both radio and television in the UK. DANIEL PHILPOTT trained at LAMDA and, after success in theprestigious Carleton Hobbs Award for Radio Drama, has been prolific in BBCRadio and the Spoken Word industry. His theater work includes numerousproductions on the London fringe.