ABSTRACT
There comes a moment in Universal’s 1931 production of Dracula, a film which is now seen as a founding text in horror cinema, when Renfield, an insane acolyte of Dracula, quotes from Hamlet. The scene takes place in a sanatorium to which Renfield has been confined since his return from Transylvania (a journey made by Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel). Van Helsing is explaining to Doctor Seward, the head of the sanatorium, and Jonathan Harker his method for destroying Dracula – a method which, unsurprisingly, involves driving a stake through the vampire’s heart. Enter Renfield, commenting, for once not unreasonably, ‘Isn’t this a strange conversation for men who aren’t crazy.’ When challenged by Van Helsing, he answers dismissively, ‘Words, words, words’. Why Renfield feels the need to quote one of Hamlet’s retorts to
Polonius in Act 2, Scene 2 is not entirely clear. Hamlet might pretend to be mad, but Renfield really is insane and generally seems aware of this. The scene’s relativization of sanity – with apparently sane men subscribing to irrational and supernatural beliefs while in the company of a certified madman – is striking enough but does not seem to relate, in any obvious way at least, to the situation in which Hamlet finds himself, and Van Helsing, while capable of a certain amount of pomposity, is no Polonius. Renfield’s earlier Hamletesque reference to ‘bad dreams’, when he worries that his nocturnal howling might disturb Mina’s sleep, is not as obtrusive as ‘Words, words, words’ but arguably makes more sense, if only as a statement of literal fact. If not a remark arising from a particular dramatic context, then,
‘Words, words, words’ might well be a gesture to a world outside the drama. It could be seen as part of the film’s own bid for a kind of cultural reputability, for a horror genre characterized by its low cultural status might in certain circumstances seek a higher standing through attaching
itself to a more prestigious area of culture: Shakespearean drama. If this were the case, however, a better-known quotation than the one deployed by Renfield might have been more suitable and effective. After all, ‘words, words, words’ is hardly the most memorable or resonant line to be found in Shakespeare’s work. In any event, Dracula was far from being a low-budget project of insig-
nificant status. On the contrary, it was an ambitious undertaking that represented a significant investment for Universal Pictures. Moreover, at the time of its production it was not thought of nor marketed as a horror film, for this generic category or label would not begin to circulate widely until later in the 1930s. Instead, Dracula was presented by its makers to the prospective audience as a macabre thriller. Its retrospective designation as a horror film, and all the assumptions about cultural value that go with that designation, has sometimes distorted or obscured its position within the American entertainment market of the early 1930s.1
