A Dancer in Darkness Read Free

brothers, the Cardinal and Duke Ferdinand, and their determination to thwart that love; of the perverted intrigues of Bosola, instrument of evil and ‘dancer in darkness’; and of the abysmal end to the whole depraved affair. What was newly minted and thrilling, of course, was the inimitable style that Stacton brought to bear upon his re-imagining of this material.
    Monteith, struck as ever by Stacton’s ambition and verve, wrote to him to say he thought Dancer was ‘tremendously long’ and that its ‘heavy, brooding, atmospheric qualities needed a bit of thinning out’. Monteith had another case that he wished to press, namely his persistent wish to steer Stacton towards contemporary subject matter and, specifically, into the more accessible genre of the thriller. A Dancer in Darkness even prompted Monteith to suggest to Stacton that, while he was assured of a continuity of publishing with Faber, he might consider undertaking an entirely different sort of a work in place of this one. Stacton, however, had set his course, and he replied to Monteith with just a touch of asperity: ‘Somewhere in A Dancer in Darkness, the Cardinal says to his sister: “I am the lesser of two evils. You may just as well make the best of me.” … At the moment I feel rather like that myself …’
    As with Remember Me, Monteith persuaded Stacton into a great deal of revision and elision of Dancer so as to arrive at what he considered a properly marketable work. Even when this was done, Monteith, while admiring the results, was not wholly endeared by them. In April 1957 he wrote to Stacton saying that he thought the novel’s dramatis personae were ‘puppets involved in an intricate, complicated but highly contrived web of artifice and intrigue’. In the end editor and author agreed that for the sake of coherence the publication of A Dancer in Darkness should be deferred for a while – at least until the ‘Invincible Questions’ trilogy begun by Remember Me was complete. It so happened that in the interim that followed the fine reception afforded to On a Balcony ( 1958 ) and Segaki ( 1959 ) did much to enhance Stacton’s profile and reputation, whereupon A Dancer in Darkness was finally put between Faber covers in 1960 .
    Monteith was quite right to find something of the night about this novel. But it is only the very same luxurious darkness in which readers and audiences, attracted to the particular violence of Renaissance Italy, have long been content to immerse themselves – and to which Stacton’s creative gifts were irresistibly drawn. As the novelist John Crowley says of A Dancer in Darkness on the occasion of this reissue in Faber Finds: ‘Black as stage velvet, Stacton’s version is as full of chilling insights and dreadful doings as Webster’s, but at bottom all his own.’
       
    Richard T. Kelly                   
Editor, Faber Finds                   
April 2012                    
       
    Sources and Acknowledgements
       
    This introduction was prepared with kind assistance from Robert Brown, archivist at Faber and Faber, from Robert Nedelkoff, who has done more than anyone to encourage a renewed appreciation of Stacton, and from David R. Slavitt. It was much aided by reference to a biographical article written about Stacton by Joy Martin, his first cousin.

For Madeline in small token
of a very long friendship;
and Harrison Ainsworth;
and Antony Hope; and Ouida;
with apologies

Antonio, Antonio, our lives are only other men’s means.
    Thus fall Emperors and Queens to grease the kindling of another’s fire with the rancid renders of their own desire.
    There is no song soothes its listeners for long, except, escape with me.

ONE
I
    Bosola was on his way to see his sister, a woman he had not seen for ten years. He had seen no woman for ten years. The reason for that was that he had lost his footing, his patron had disowned him, his presence had proved