The Past is Prologue; Dracula 9/16 Airs 10/12 3106

Hello, welcome to the past is Prologue. The theme of this year's show is great villains. We're talking not only about the evil deeds of villains, but why the evil deeds of some people have been remembered, while the evil deeds of other individuals have been forgotten. Today we will talk about a legendary figure, the subject of several Hollywood movies, Vlad the Impaler, better known by his nickname Dracula. My guest is the department's popular ancient historian David McDonald. David has admittedly wandered a bit far afield in talking about a 15th century relation, Prince. But David is a man of many talents, and I might say some rather strange ones as well. Welcome to the show, Mack. Thank you very much. I suspect, Mack, that most members of the audience are rather surprised that we should be talking about a Hollywood character rather than a real historical figure. Was there a real Dracula? Oh, indeed there was. He was known to friends and foes alike by his nickname Dracula. But when he was born, he'd been christened Vlad

and earned a somewhat more disgusting nickname, Vlad the Impaler. He was a relation, with a relation prince, a Romanian princeling, who was born in 1431 and assassinated in 1476. He was really a fairly obscure character. He reigned for two months when he was a young man, 17. When he was about 25, he came to the throne of Walletia again and ruled for six years. Maybe you ought to say where on earth the Lacia is. I mean, it's not exactly a household term, I mean. It's part of the modern area of the country of Romania. The Romanians are a distinct group descended from the ancient Romans. They speak a Roman's language. Romania was not a country yet in the 15th century. It was a group of territories with such names as Walletia, Moldavia, and of course the one out behind the forest, Transylvania. So he's the rule of

Walletia? Yes, although occasionally he had some related territories such as Transylvania under his under his thumb, too. Well, so he was the ruler then, when did he become the permanent ruler of Walletia? Well, he never really became permanent. He was in for six years starting in 1456 and then thrown out again in 1462. There were many claimants to the throne and this time he was deposed by his overlords the Turks and head to flee to the Hungarians. After about 14 years in Hungary, he made another try, got back in and was assassinated after about a month. All in all, he was one of several dozen obscure little Eastern European rulers. Was his father and father been the ruler before? Yes, and his father's reign was his unstable as his own. He was in and out several times also. Maybe you ought to clarify precisely what is the political situation in Walletia in the second half of the 15th century. I mean, this is not an area that I know very much

about either. Well, frankly, if I clarified it, I'd be lying. It was anything but clear. It was a complex situation. Due to many historical forces, the area had not developed firm and well -shaped political institutions. The Romanians as a people were divided up into a number of little principalities and were crushed between on the one hand the expanding Ottoman Turks and on the other hand between the powerful Kingdom of Hungary. Which itself was about to be knocked out by the Hungarians by the beginning of the 16th century? Eventually, yes. Moreover, the area was divided in many other ways. Orthodox Christians found themselves at daggers drawn with Catholics. The peasant class hated and was hated by the boyars, the nobles, who were a source of constant danger to the princes. There were numerous different houses claiming the Prince ship, and there were

homicidal, incestuous murders and conspiracies going on within each of these various households. All in all, it was a very dangerous place and in a very dangerous age. Well, let me ask you then something. Okay, he's the Prince of this area. Why is he called Dracula? Well, his father belonged to a typical late medieval order of chivalry called the Order of the Dragon. Is that a Western order? No, it's a central European order. I believe the Hungarian king started it. The symbol was the dragon, which is the devil's beast, crucified upon Christ's cross, signifying that Christ had overcome evil through his crucifixion and resurrection. And this leds father war, virtually all the time. He was one of the striking men, a great

warrior, and he dressed in black with this flamboyant symbol on his chest. And so he was called Dracula, the dragon, or the member of the Order of the Dragon. And his son was naturally called Dracula, literally the son of the dragon. He too also was a member of this Order of the Dragon. But I was going to say because of Lad's personal exploits, the nickname Dracula took on a second and much more ominous meaning. By extension, he was not only the member of the Order of the Dragon and the son of the Dragon, but because the dragon was the devil's animal, he was in the sense the son of the devil. And that distinction he earned. Let me ask you before we get into his sort of say things he's famous for. Was he himself a brave soldier or is he just a singularly brave soldier? At one time during one of his wars with the Turks, he led an incursion into the camp

of the Turkish Sultan in disguise. And they're slaughtered somewhere between five and six thousand Turks in a very, very daring, knight attack. But not by himself. Oh, not by himself, but he led a very small group in the midst of it. No one has ever questioned his bravery under any circumstances. He was many things, but he was not a coward. Well, let me ask you, what did the real Vlad do after all his real name or nickname is Vlad the Impaler? Now, I mean, what an earth is he doing? I mean, let's make him sonotorious even in the 15th century. Well, the 15th century was a time of general cruelties and impalement was something very popular to do to your enemies in Eastern Europe. Essentially, you are spitting them on a long pole. It's done with great delicacy so that the person so impaled dies a

lingering, horrible death. This was done with some frequency, even a ruler known as Stephen the Good in a fit of peak one day, impaled 2300 war prisoners. But Vlad did it with a certain gusto and joy and at the drop of a hat and to virtually anyone in his long career, he impaled walletians, moldavians, translvanians, Hungarians, Germans, Turks, Greeks, and visiting firemen that he came across of any sort. He did it in great numbers around his capital at one time, where 20 ,000 stakes with the decaying corpses of his enemies spitted upon them. What's the capital of Malaysia? Oh, Lord help us. Yes, it moved several times. Okay, so he likes to impale people. What else does he do? Well, he's also known for having employed wholesale

decapitation, mutilation, blinding, strangling, hanging, burning, boiling, skinning, roasting, hacking, stabbing, kneeling, burning alive, as well as the usual repertoire of medieval tortures, the wheel, hot irons, the rack. And a number of personally devised cruelties, so incredibly disgusting, I don't even want to begin to go into them here. Any estimates as to how many people he does away with one way or the other? There are a number of estimates, and the most flattering are not all that good. For instance, a modern Romanian nationalist historian who would like to say something good about Vlad, because he did fight for the Romanian people and did keep a certain level of independence. You knew when he killed them. Well, the only way I guess he could kill them was if he kept them under his own thumb. But this nationalist historian who was trying to say good things estimated that in six years he killed around 40 ,000. Which would have been

more than 8 ,000 a year? Yes, and out of a population of about half a million. More than 7 ,000 a year, okay? The papal nuncio who lived in his court and knew him and was a man in a position to know very well, estimated that he killed perhaps 100 ,000. Now not all of them were his countrymen, he certainly in one occasion we know did in 28 ,000 Turks. All by impaling? Mostly, mostly. I think they'd be able to run out of wood towards the end of it. It was the most popular way, but certainly he did not limit his imagination. Let me ask you why? Why does he do it? I mean, I mean, just terror? Part of it is terror. Certainly part of it is a conscious attempt to control a difficult and dangerous land by terror. By intimidating his enemies.

But Vlad goes far beyond any necessity. He seems to enjoy it and to answer why you need someone other than a historian, perhaps a psychiatrist, perhaps a sociologist, perhaps a theologian. The Turks, who were generally regarded as great torturers by the Europeans, thought he was a horrible and disgusting man and found him a totally reprehensible and gross being. Do we have any evidence that he, does he watch these things? Does he get any sexual pleasure out of this? Do we have any sense in the knowledge of that sort? We don't know whether he got any sexual pleasure out of it. It would fit the psychopathy of this sort of behavior. But we do know that not only did he watch these things, but do them personally by his own hand. He seems to have had luxuriously appointed dungeons, where he was continually doing in

some poor wayfarer. And he also had a very gruesome sense of humor. For instance, one anecdote told about him was that when Turkish ambassadors came and refused to remove their turbines to him, something that they did in honor only to the salt in himself, he pined that that was a right and good custom and to make sure they wouldn't slip up had their turbines nailed to their heads. Another anecdote, he seems strangely enough to have been a very self -righteous man. A man who was quite sure of his own moral integrity. And so has Robespierre. True. He was the gullotine, I mean. True. Well, one story. Supposedly a German merchant was visiting and wanted to deposit his goods and monies at Vlad's cork to protect them. And

Vlad bragged that in his principality no one would dare steal anything and made the merchant leave his goods in the middle of the city square overnight. The next morning the merchant counted his monies and discovered himself a 160 -ducket short and told Vlad. Vlad called the town counsellors in and told them that they would find the thief and turn them over to him by noon or he would have the entire town of 5 ,000 people impaled. He then ordered a servant to put back in the merchant's treasury 161 -duckets. Sure enough by 10 the town counsellors had ferreted out the thief and given him to Vlad by 11 he was impaled. He asked the merchant to count his monies again. He did and said, my money is all back and there is an extra ducket. And Vlad said yes and if you had not told me about it you would have

been impaled alongside the merchant, not alongside the thief. An odd personality at the very best and sometimes much worse. Well, let me ask you. He's obviously not a very nice guy. But the 15th century as you said is an age of great cruelty. But why do we remember him in particular? For a very odd reason and one that I think has some implications for our own time. Dracula was the first to offend the power of the popular press. What an Arthur you're talking about. Well, by the late 15th century mechanical printing was beginning to develop. It was new, it was rapidly growing and printing made writing cheap and readily available for the first time. Daily newspapers were yet a thing of the future but cheap mass produced pamphlets. Focusing on contemporary issues where we're raising people's consciousness about the world. And we're influencing their opinions

and in no place was this new printing revolution taking place more fully than in Germany where the first printing with movable type was about to be developed. And one of Vlad's atrocities was against German communities in Romania. The word of these terrible goings on made their way back to Germany. And a number of pamphlets filled with anecdotes of his cruelty were printed and distributed widely. So he became a byword for cruelty and sadistic behavior. And many of the things that he did were even blown up to extravagant proportions or misunderstood in these pamphlets. Well, these Europeans had for instance adopted an old Turkish custom that when you win a battle you have a huge feast on the battlefield surrounded by the

corpses of the fallen enemy. One of the woodcuts in one of these pamphlets shows him doing just this. But it was taken by many people to show Vlad at a cannibal feast as if he were eating the fallen enemies. And as soon as you bring up cannibalism, you begin to associate him with other devilish connotations that his name Dracula also brings to mind, particularly with werewolves and vampires, those creatures of Eastern European folklore, that were very quickly associated with his name and have clung to him ever since. Well, that raises the question, how do you get really from all of this to the vampires and the werewolves? I mean, what's the connection? What is a werewolf and how do you get make this connection? Where does that come from? Is that come in the pamphlets or any? It is beginning there. It

is beginning there werewolves and vampires are creatures largely of Eastern European mythology. They are creatures of the devil. Dracula was viewed as a creature of the devil and thus they were associated. But the association, the mere association, grew slowly over the centuries and then was given tremendous impetus just about a century ago, when an Irishman named Bram Stoker wrote a great novel Dracula. Well, great in the sense of popular, not a very good piece of literature, but one of unending popularity. And really, the Dracula that we have seen in Hollywood was born along with Bram Stoker in Dublin in 1847. Let me ask you something, will you talk about Bram Stoker? I mean, what happens to the story in between? Obviously, it must reach Ireland. It must fit in a story that must have spread. I mean, we're talking about something that from the 15th century onward must be

spreading and being added to. It didn't reach so much Ireland. Stoker was from Ireland, but he was a student of East European affairs and mythology and worked upon a number of earlier elaborations of the story to produce his great Gothic horror novel. In many ways, Stoker added into his novel many things that had nothing to do with the historical Vlad at all, morbid Victorian fascination with disease and epidemics. He worked into it such things as the penetrating gaze and aristocratic mannerisms of the great 19th century actor Henry Irving for whom he worked. He worked into it what he knew of Sir Richard Burton and other students of the occult with whom Stoker personally associated not the actor, obviously. No, no. The great orientalist and explorer and student of the occult in general 19th

century advocate of strangeness. Perhaps a character you should add to your list, one of the outrageous Victorians, which you want to do a show in Sir Richard Burton sometime? Well, quite possibly, quite possibly. He was both a scholar and something of a horror. Okay, well, I'll keep that in mind. Stoker was also fascinated by something that was going on in Europe or other in London just about 100 years ago. Actually, 98 years ago, Jack the Ripper, who terrified London in 1888. Another character we can do. Yes. And you might even add in there Oscar Wilde, because Wilde, like Stoker's Dracula, was the outsider par excellence. The man who could mimic membership in the highest orders of society, yet was never really a part of it. A man of exotic backgrounds and

unsavory and scandalous sexual orientation. And the novel Dracula is laced with sexual innuendo. It's published. Oh, Lord, I'm trying to remember now. I've forgotten the exact year. It's published sometime in the 90s. Okay, so it's Oscar Wilde is around. Yes, it's published. It was published just about the time of Wilde's trial. And I can't quite remember, although that was the late 90s or just of the turn. So what you're saying is that the Dracula figure there isn't somehow modeled after Wilde? There's an element of it, just as there's an element of Burton and an element of Irving and an element of many other things. Does the novel suggest the Dracula is a homosexual? No, but it does suggest that his sexuality is not normal. It is not the Victorian ideal. I mean, is it our ideal? Is his sexuality? No, I mean all the time for someone who goes around biting people on the throat. Okay.

Then Stoker's novel was translated into Hollywood lore by, I can't call it a great actor, but a great character. Bella Legosi, the Hungarian actor. I think about Legosi, he's remembered for these sort of Hollywood horror pot boilers. What is that? 20s? 30s. I think 33, 34 or something like that. Legosi was in Europe very good and even a great legitimate actor. He was part of the Hungarian stage and part of the Jewish theater. He was known for his Shakespearean work. And although he always had sort of a comic opera, Hungarian accent when speaking in English normally, when he played Shakespeare, he had flawless Shakespearean diction. But still there wasn't a lot of work for a

Shakespearean, Hungarian actor in the United States. So he ended up in Hollywood making basically a movie adaptation of Stoker's novel. It was melodramatic and a pot boiler and in many ways sort of laughable. But the character he created was very memorable. The great lines out of it just kind of live in one's memory. A good example I think is where he's offered a drink, a glass of wine. He looks at it obviously entranced at the red color but then waves it off and says, I do not drink wine. Well despite the fact it's really a very bad movie and the sequels to it were not very good either. He goes on and on in this part there's Abbott and Costello meet Dracula and everything else.

Despite the fact that on the movies were very good, the character has caught on in people's minds. It's part of the 20th century iconography. And of course it continues on George Hamilton, in a very popular movie. And one that has an interesting theme. It begins with Dracula thrown out of his ancestral castle by the communist government of his homeland in the ends of migrating to New York and comes upon the romanceless disco singles bar scene. And he is basically a 19th century romantic. And ultimately in the last scene in that movie, the woman lead knows he is a vampire, knows that she will be converted to a vampire if she goes with him and goes with him willingly. Dracula gets the girl in the most recent of the Dracula movies I know and not through forest but through her own

decision. A return to romanticism. You know where she also appears in Sesame Street. Oh yes, the Count. Of course the Count is obviously Dracula. I love to count. Yes, he's always counting his little pet bats. Bats, I mean it's to the level that Dracula has become a child's character. Yes, yeah. Well that's one way of diffusing his horror. So you mean you have this obviously monster, I mean whatever, the real Dracula, I mean the real glad the Emperor was, who ends up as a comical character once was a mystery. Very odd, very odd, but if you know, I mean in some peculiar and cultural tradition. But it is odd this transition really from a 15th century petty tyrant to a 19th century

Victorian monster to as you said sort of a 20th century icon, not all that dissimilar to Santa Claus. I mean it's an incredible story of what has happened. I wonder whether that doesn't have something to say about the growing horror of our own age. When I was thinking about this, I thought I would make some nice cracks about what an awful time the 15th century was. After all, I know how enthused you are about the Middle Ages. I'm confused about, that's the Renaissance, the 15th century, mind you. That's Kyle Opt in Wall H. Not in Wall H. That's the ancient history in the 15th century. But you're talking about it. But as I put together a list of 15th century horrors, the war, the roses, the Borges and all, it seemed to me that they paled beside the ultimate century of horrors our own. That the 40 ,000

or the 100 ,000 that the Vlad murdered fall into insignificance beside the Holocaust, beside the casualties of the Second World War, beside the dead in the streets from the partition of India in 1948, beside those dying of famine in Africa as we don't know where we're going to put our grain this year, that maybe ultimately it's the 20th century that is the age of horrors, and Vlad becomes a hand puppet in the face of our own world. Will Hitler in six centuries become a comical figure? I think not. Well, it's like the real Vlad. Dracula, Bram Stoker's Dracula is the one that's become the comic icon. The real Vlad still horrifies us, and Hitler

can never do otherwise. I hope and pray to God that Hitler can never do otherwise to right -thinking people. You know, I'm wondering about this transformation to what extent is it due to the fact that after all, he is the ruler of Malaysia. I mean, if this had been the king of Germany, or the king of France, etc. But it's so far away and so exotic that it's hard to make it real. It's hard to make it real. That is, after all, the Germans pick it up in the 15th century. There must have been a German prince in the late 15th century, not on the scale of Dracula. I mean, Vlad. But certainly there were German princes of the 15th century who killed a person or two in their dungeons. Oh, sorry. The fact that this is set, after all, already in what is called Transylvania. It was even bigger. I was on plays in the remote boondocks of the Balkans. Okay? And that all of this catches on to this

image. But somehow it doesn't seem real and thus easier to deal with. That's right. It's almost a fairy tale. I mean, it's a fairy tale monster, just as you don't take seriously horror stories and fairy tales. I think there may be something to that. For instance, let's take from Renaissance, the greatest most civilized period of the 15th century, a couple of the people who actually were running around. Forante of Naples not only slaughtered his enemies in ways as barbarous as anything that Vlad ever considered, but he then mummified them and put them on display in a museum. And yet he's virtually unknown. The massacres in Rome between the Orcini's and the Colonus, whereas Vile was anything recorded in history. And yet only dusty historians like ourselves remember them. That perhaps they were too close to Western

consciousness for them to take on this mythic quality that Dracula did. And you know, this is a fascinating tale of how this kind of a historical character in a sense is lessened. And of course, that carries other implications, for I would hate to see the barbarities of the 20th century of Hitler, for instance, consigned to the obscurity of the massacres in Rome between the Orcini's and the Colonus. And yet I'm not so sure. That isn't happening. There certainly have been some and continue to be some attempts. Ridiculous attempts to claim that, oh, it never really happened. There was only a smallness of this standing. Yeah, I mean, this is what makes it so horrifying. It makes you wonder that it may not be heading in that direction. Well, we can sign off with one last thing. Vlad did finally get his comeuppance. He returned in 1476 and was assassinated. And when he was murdered,

frankly, no one very much checked to see who did it. Okay, universal happiness. Well, thank you, David, for being on the show. It was a real treat. Next week, we'll be shifting from vampires to witches. I guess Professor Roger Champagne will talk about Cotton Mather, who has been linked, wrongly it turns out, with the Salem Witch Trials. Goodbye.