Shadowplay is based on real events but is a work of fiction. Many liberties have been taken with facts, characterisations and chronologies, even with the publication dates of Stoker’s lesser-known works. All sequences presenting themselves as authentic documents are fictitious. Readers in search of reliable material are directed to the following works and to the bibliographies they contain:
Edward Gordon Craig, Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self; Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History: the Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families; Jay Melville, Ellen Terry; David J. Skal, Something in the Blood: the Untold Story of Bram Stoker, and Stoker’s own Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.
The text of Shadowplay contains many references to Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, as well as allusions to some of his other writings. The reference in the closing pages to the birds speaking Greek is borrowed from a letter written by Virginia Woolf.
In 1922, ten years after Stoker’s death, a German company, Prana Film, produced Nosferatu, a pirated screen version of Dracula, which, like Stoker’s other books, had been almost forgotten. Unfortunately for Prana, not by everyone. The redoubtable Florence Stoker sued and won, establishing her rights of ownership and important principles of copyright. All authors owe her a debt of gratitude.
Since then, Dracula has sold tens of millions of copies, been translated into more than a hundred languages and been filmed 200 times. Bram Stoker would be astounded by the immortality of his character. The Count’s afterlife is proving long and unique.
Sir Henry Irving’s ashes are interred in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, near the Shakespeare memorial. Forty thousand Londoners watched his funeral procession. In 1963, an admirer who for sixty years had placed roses on Irving’s tombstone on the anniversary of his death made a gift to the Abbey: Irving’s crucifix.
Ellen Terry’s unparalleled career lasted seven decades. In 1911, she recorded five scenes from Shakespeare for the Victor Recording Company. She later appeared in a number of films. In 1922 she received an honorary doctorate from St Andrew’s University and in 1925 she was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. Her grand-nephew, John Gielgud, performed Hamlet at the Lyceum in 1939. The surnames of Terry, Stoker and Irving are engraved on the Burleigh Street exterior wall of the Lyceum, in commemoration of three remarkable artists.
I thank my editor, Geoff Mulligan, everyone at Secker and at Vintage, Isobel Dixon, Conrad Williams and the team at Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency, Paul McGuigan of BBC Northern Ireland for suggesting the Henry–Bram relationship to me as a screenplay and Stephen Wright who directed my adaptation of that screenplay for BBC Radio 3. I thank my friends and University of Limerick colleagues, the fine writers Donal Ryan and Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, for enabling me to write this book, and I thank the University for granting me leave.
One of the reasons why I would like life after death to be more than a story is that I would like to see the dedicatee of this novel again. Carole Blake was my friend and literary agent for twenty-five years. If the otherworld does exist, I know she will have found a very good restaurant there, with an excellent wine list, and, on a neighbouring cloud, a designer shoe shop. The medieval choral music she loved will be playing. And she will be arguing with a publisher on behalf of her latest client, God, who is not receiving sufficient royalties for the Bible.
As ever, my greatest debt is to Anne-Marie Casey and our sons, James and Marcus, for their love, kindness and support.
JO’C, 2018