‘I am very, very pleased,’ murmured Queen Victoria in 1895, when she dubbed Henry Irving, Britain’s first theatrical knight. He and Ellen Terry, who so often played opposite him, were international celebrities.
Bram Stoker was their intimate friend and associate. He managed Irving’s Lyceum Theatre for 27 years and spent much of his career in their shadow. More than 100 years after his death, however, Stoker’s name is almost certainly more widely known than theirs, solely because of his most famous creation, Dracula (who is believed to have been partly modelled on his employer).
In Shadowplay, Joseph O’Connor focuses on the three-cornered relationship between Stoker and the two actors. In terms of structure, the novel purports to be a collection of diary entries, notes, transcripts and fictionalised fragments put together by Stoker near the end of his life.
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