Act One
Scene Seven: Seward Begins to Study Renfield
Seward’s (early 30s, British, Doctor) study at his asylum. He is speaking into a phonograph and is sitting in an armchair. He might start to pace around his office, depending on how the actor wishes to perform this monologue.
Seward: 25th of May. Ebb tide in appetite to-day. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth doing … As I knew the only cure for this sort of thing was work, I went down amongst the patients. I picked out one who has afforded me much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well as I am. To-day I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.
I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness – a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.
He gets up to look at his notes from the meeting.
R. M. Renfield, aged 59- sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidly excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally accomplished finish; a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think on this point is, when self is the fixed point, the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when a duty, a cause etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only an accident or a series of accidents can balance it.
A knock comes at the door to the study and Quincey (Texan, cowboy, mid 30s but seemingly has more experience of the world than his age would imply) enters through the door, holding his hat in his hands.
Quincey: Jack!
Seward: Quincey. Good to see you.
They greet each other like old friends.
Quincey: (gesturing to the phonograph) What’re you doing with that?
Seward: Oh, I’m taking notes on a patient. I’ve already finished, no need to worry that you’re interrupting.
Quincey: Okay, I won’t. I came here to ask you to come to drinks tomorrow night.
Seward: I’m afraid I can’t, I’m really stuck into my work right now.
Seward goes about tidying his desk. Quincey notices he’s trying to avoid eye contact.
Quincey: I hear that you paid a visit to a mutual friend yesterday.
Seward: I see.
Quincey: I made a similar journey.
Seward: (a hint of recognition) Ah.
Quincey: I think, while your efforts to throw yourself into work are admirable, that you should still enjoy yourself.
Seward: I don’t know.
Quincey: I plan to spend tomorrow night at the old Korea weeping over a wine cup while I toast to my dear Art, who’s recently become the happiest man in the world.
Seward stops and pauses. (He passes through many emotions instantaneously: the rejection from his proposal to Lucy, his genuine love for her and his friend Arthur who is now her fiancé, and the understanding that Quincey is also in the exact same situation as him.) He displays this in as much verboseness and as reasonably healthy as a well-adjusted man of the Victorian age could with someone he has known through war; which is to say, probably not that much, but enough to those that know him well.
Seward: There’s no one who deserves more than to be the happiest man in the world.
Quincey: My thoughts precisely, old pal. So, I’ll send off a letter to Art and I’ll see you at the Old Korea tomorrow, right?
Seward: You’ll see me there. And now I will see you out, my friend.
Quincey: Why thank you kindly.
They both leave the room, arms around the other in brotherly comradery. Seward closes the door behind him. The lights go to blackout and we are transported to Dracula’s castle.
– Rachel Di Nucci
Rachel is an MA Publishing student at York St John University and currently resides in York. Her interests of books and amateur dramatics inspired her to write her own script of Dracula when she realised that there seem to be nowhere that depicted the original story Stoker wrote and that other adaptations seemed to mistreat the women in the piece.