Another Frankenstein...

Another Frankenstein...

Open Ended

What do you know about John Polidori?

John Polidori (1795-1821) was born in Soho, the eldest son of an English mother and an Italian writer, translator, and literary jack-of-all-trades.

Open Ended

What do you think he studied?

Medical education in the early nineteenth century was largely based around the study of “antiphlogistics”– learning how to master the various ways of ridding the body of noxious substances in the quickest way possible – and so John became skilled in blood-letting, vomiting, enemas, blistering, and plunge-baths.

Multiple Choice

Do you think he liked studying medecin?

• Yes, of course.

• No, he hated it.

 John was offered the job of physician to Lord Byron.

John’s father ordered him not to take the position.

Byron's friend John Cam Hobhouse counseled the poet against employing the vain young man with the funny name.

Multiple Choice

Guess, did Polidori accept the job?

• Yes

• No

In Europe, John had invited Byron to read a play he had written, and Byron found it impossible to resist the urge to laugh at him.

Polidori, an outsider, an employee, was forced to sit and listen as Byron lampooned his sophomoric efforts and reduced the table to fits of giggles.

Multiple Select

Was Byron a good human being?

• Yes

• No

• I don't know

Multiple Choice

Did they like each other?

• Yes

• No

Polidori's feelings of resentment only grew, as John felt increasingly overshadowed in the famous man’s company: “like a star in the halo of the moon, invisible.”

At the same time, the doctor’s petulance provoked Byron, whose wit was often cruel and rarely let an opportunity pass to mock his employee or put him in his place.

It was no great leap for Polidori to believe that Byron was sucking the life from him, just as others had accused Byron of possessing a charismatic power that eclipsed their own identities.

Poll

Do you know someone with this kind of personality?

• Yes

• No

But the most overt example of Byron as the devourer of souls was a novel John read over the course of the summer – Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron and Lamb had enjoyed a brief and transgressive affair until he had called it off.

Polidori publishes a tale "The vampyre".

Knowing the context of Polidori’s story, it is hard not to read “The Vampyre” as an allegory of the doctor’s relationship with Byron, a text that is seamed with the mocking laughter of a man possessed of the power to debilitate through the force of personality alone.

With the shadow of Byron making everything he did seem paltry and derivative, and the weight of rejection impressing itself on him like a judgment on his being, John Polidori took his own life at the age of twenty five by drinking a beaker of cyanide.

Poll

Who is the other Frankenstein?

• The vampyre

• John Polidori

• Lord Byron

With the shadow of Byron making everything he did seem paltry and derivative, and the weight of rejection impressing itself on him like a judgment on his being, John Polidori took his own life at the age of twenty five by drinking a beaker of cyanide.

“Poor Polidori,” wrote Byron when he heard the news, “it seems that disappointment was the cause of this rash act. He had entertained too sanguine hopes of literary fame.”