Dickens, Nelly, and The Frozen Deep

David Decker

《小說與戲劇》 18卷1期 (2007/12) Pp. 13-27

並列摘要

Charles Dickens was born to follow a stage career. This paper reveals how he went through his mid-life crisis soon after David Copperfield, and came out on the other side in the 1850's as a dramatist, protagonist, antagonist, lover, and victim in his own novels, for the rest of his life. It further shows how he literally ”took to the stage” after 1857, in his frenzied and greatly successful attempt to prove himself a superb and unforgettable actor for the woman he loved. This brilliant and sustained dramatic career killed him, and it began with his performance as Richard Wardour in his and Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep, a popular historical melodrama.
Dickens and Collins collaborated on The Frozen Deep, based on the fatal Franklin Expedition to discover the Northwest Passage to Asia. Dickens's own pen can be seen in several characters, notably that of John Want, a mid-century transformation of Pickwick's Sam Weller.
During this project Charles Dickens fell deeply in love with actress Ellen ”Nelly” Ternan, 27 years younger, and in doing so, re-became a stage dramatist himself. His previous dramatic work as both playwright and actor had delighted early-Victorian audiences. The mature Dickens's moving interpretation of Richard Wardour in The Frozen Deep, brought tears to the eyes of mid-Victorian audiences, and Queen Victoria herself and her entourage of 50 persons enjoyed a royal command performance.
Dickens transformed Wardour into Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities shortly thereafter, taking up the drama's theme of self-sacrifice for an impossible, or in Dickens's own case, improbable tormented passion, and he created Lucie Manette, whom Carton dies for, out of Ellen Ternan. Indeed sketches and hues of Ellen's personality, and echoes of her name, appear in Dickens's novels for the rest of his life, e.g. Estella in Great Expectations, and Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend.
Dickens went on the road soon after the 1857 performances of The Deep in his acclaimed one-man public performances from his work, powerfully bringing to life the char acters in his novels, and confirming himself as the thespian he had always wanted to be, an actor grand and moving enough to sustain Ellen's admiration, love, and constancy. These public performances in Britain, in America, and again in Britain, eventually killed him, at the early age of 58. Ellen remained faithful to him, in her own way, to his death, and was with him at the end.
This paper takes into account handwritten material available on microfilm at the British Library in London, and shows Dickens's mind at work in (nominally) Collins's dramatic script.

並列關鍵字

Northwest Passage ； Victorian Exploration ； the Ternan family ； Wilkie Collins ； one-man performances

參考文獻

Ackroyd, Peter(1990).Dickens.NY:HarperCollins.

Bentley, Nicolas (eds.),Michael Slater (eds.),Nina Burgis, (eds.)(1990).The Dickens Index.Oxford:OUP.

Bronte, Charlotte.(2000).Jane Eyre.Oxford:OUP.

Callow, Simon,Peter Ackroyd.(2005).Broadcast.BBC Four.

Collins, Philip.(1983).Charles Dickens: Sikes and Nancy, and Other Public Readings.Oxford:OUP.