How Dracula drew on Hamlet
A documented line of influence: Bram Stoker demonstrably engaged William Shakespeare’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Hamlet
William Shakespeare · c. 1600
ShakespeareThe influenced
Dracula
Bram Stoker · 1897
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On Dracula’s page
- Dracula quotes Hamlet outright — in his journal Harker reaches for the ghost of Hamlet's father, and admits he never understood what Shakespeare meant until the Count
- No coincidence: Stoker ran Irving's Lyceum, where Hamlet was a staple, and had reviewed the play himself
- A reader who knows the ghost on Elsinore's battlements hears the older haunting beneath Stoker's newer one
On Hamlet’s page
- Stoker knew this play in his bones — he managed Henry Irving's Lyceum, where Hamlet was a fixture, and reviewed Irving's Hamlet back in 1876
- He salts Dracula with it: Harker's journal invokes the ghost of Hamlet's father and confesses he never grasped a line of the play until he lived it at the Count's castle