Frankenstein

It is a curious circumstance that a play is just announced, to be performed at the English Opera House in the Strand next Monday, entitled, Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein. I know not whether it will succeed. If it does, it will be some sort of feather in the cap of the author of the novel, a recommendation in your future negociacions with booksellers.

To a large degree three early gothic melodramas, Peake Presumption ( 1823), Jean-Toussaint Merle and Beraud Antony Le Monstre et le magicien ( 1826), and Henry Milner The Man and the Monster ( 1826), share the responsibility for shaping the destiny not only of subsequent dramatizations, but of popular conceptions of the novel. Indeed in the three years that succeeded the first performance of the melodrama by Peake, dramatizations of Shelley's novel effectively transformed for the general public the author's original conception of the Frankenstein myth.

In 1823 Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein enjoyed enormous popularity, being performed thirty-seven times in its first season, despite-or perhaps because of-complaints in Gentleman's Magazine ( 93 [ 1823]: 174) that it "was replete with too many horrors." While lauding the performance of T. P. Cooke as the Creature, London newspapers were of mixed opinion on the merits of the play. For example, of Cooke's performance the Examiner (3 August) remarked that he "exhibited the preternatural with much imagination, and the natural with truth"; however, it also lamented: "The dialogue, except for the part of Frankenstein, and probably his servant, is miserable prattle, and so divested of a judicious connexion with the main incident . . . nobody cares a tittle about hearing it."

On the other hand, the Times (29 July) found the whole situation a bit contemptible: "Mr. Cooke threw some energetic pantomimic acting into the character of the Monster, but Frankenstein had little opportunity. . . . The piece upon the whole has little to recommend it; but that, as times go, will be no great obstacle to its success."

Do not go to the Lyceum to see the monstrous Drama, founded on the improper work called "Frankenstein."-Do not take your wives and families-The novel itself is of a decidedly immoral tendency; it treats of a subject which in nature cannot occur. This subject is pregnant with mischief; and to prevent the ill-consequences which may result from the promulgation of such dangerous doctrines, a few zealous friends of morality, and promoters of this Posting-bill, (and who are ready to meet the consequences thereof) are using their strongest endeavours.

Whereas scurrilous Posting-bill has been industriously circulated throughout the Metropolis, intended to injure the interests of The English Opera-House, by gross misrepresentations respecting the new Romantic Drama, entitled "Presumption! or, the Fate of Frankenstein." The Public is respectfully requested not to suffer their judgments to be influenced by this malignant and unjust attack.

In truth, Bunn's production was doomed from the outset. Not only were costumes lacking for the cast ( O. Smith, who played the Creature, was forced to wear a dress shirt with a plaid coat pinned to his shoulders), but the theatre did not have enough white canvas to stage the elaborate avalanche in which, at the play's conclusion, Frankenstein and his "unhallowed abortion" are destroyed. Rather, a large canvas elephant, which earlier that year had been commissioned for a performance of Thalaba the Destroyer, was white-washed and shaved over the flies followed by a quick curtain. In 1825 the New York Evening Post (5 January) reported that at the Park Theatre a performance of the "grand melodrama Presumption, or Frankenstein" was "received with the most unbounded applause."