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Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline is a play by Canadian playwright George F. Walker, first produced at Toronto Free Theatre in 1977. [1] It is loosely based upon the 1810 novel Zastrozzi: A Romance by Percy Bysshe Shelley. [2]
The major characters and the plot of the play are nearly identical to the 1810 novel Zastrozzi by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The play is set in 1893. Zastrozzi, the master criminal in all of Europe and an atheist, like the character in the 1810 novel and Shelley himself, has focused for nearly three years on the pursuit of revenge against his mother's murderer: the whimsical, inconstant, and delusively God-obsessed artiste Verezzi. In the Shelley novel, Zastrozzi's mother Olivia was seduced and impregnated by Verezzi's father when she was fifteen. Zastrozzi is the illegitimate son and Verezzi is his half-brother. Olivia dies at thirty in poverty and abandoned, demanding that Zastrozzi avenge her. In both the novel and the play, Zastrozzi, with the help of his heartless protégé Bernardo and his sometime lover, the seductress Matilda, chases Verezzi to a small town in the Italian countryside and engineers an elaborate plot to destroy his enemy. While Verezzi may be an easy target, his tutor Victor, a former priest, presents a much more difficult challenge for Zastrozzi.
The play retains all the major characters of the Shelley novel: Zastrozzi, Verezzi, Julia, Matilda, Bernardo, and the Priest (Victor). The plot is the same in both works, and Matilda serves the same role. The novel and play take place in Italy. The same themes are addressed in both works: Atheism, revenge, the ethical and moral debates, and issues relating to retribution.
Zastrozzi, a criminal, seeks to avenge the death of his mother for which he blames Verezzi, a quixotic, eccentric, and delusional artist. He pursued his Verezzi for three years before finally locating him. Verezzi is protected by a tutor, Victor, who made a promise to Verezzi's father that he would look after him. Zastrozzi's partner and protégé Bernardo is assigned to murder Victor, while Zastrozzi saves Verezzi for himself.
Zastrozzi, however, is not content to kill Verezzi. Zastrozzi, instead, seeks to force Verezzi to commit suicide. Verezzi is devoutly religious while Zastrozzi is a strident atheist. By killing himself, Verezzi would achieve eternal damnation based on the Christian religious precepts he upholds. Zastrozzi sees this as a supreme form of revenge. Zastrozzi wants to torture and punish Verezzi.
To manipulate Verezzi to commit suicide, Zastrozzi employs Matilda to seduce him. "Entrap him, then destroy him," he says. Verezzi, meanwhile, has met Julia. He proposes marriage to her, but she declines. Julia is the opposite of Matilda in temperament and character. Matilda is to be the third person in this triangle.
Verezzi has assumed a messianic mission, advocating love and human kindness. He regards himself as a saint. He is awaiting his 454 followers, which include swans and caterpillars. It is not clear whether he is pretending to be insane to throw off his pursuer. He is oblivious to the threat that Zastrozzi poses, regarding him as a "phantom" who does not exist.
Walker retains the major characters and key themes of the Shelley novel. He changes the setting to 1893 Italy and adds the new character, Victor. The themes are good versus evil, atheism and religiosity, obsession and pursuit, revenge and murder, and man overreaching the boundaries of morality to become a new Prometheus - a Miltonian Satan. Zastrozzi, Bernardo, Matilda, and Victor are also adept at swordplay which is a key element of the action. The sets are a combination of a "Piranesi prison drawing" and the ruins of an ancient city. He retains the Gothic elements of lightning and thunderstorms and swords and daggers as weapons.
Another theme is the nature of art. Who should be the judge of its merit or worth? Should there be accountability? Zastrozzi has an artist killed because of his alleged mediocrity "To prove that even artists must answer to somebody."
Zastrozzi attacks the Belle Epoque or the Beautiful Age in European history. Zastrozzi explains his symbolic mission: "I am what I am. The force of darkness. The sane, clear voice of negative spirituality." He seeks to destroy mankind and the world because they are "weak" and "ugly".
Victor tells him that a new century is approaching that will usher in a new world that is better, more humane and civilized. Zastrozzi replies that the new era will not be better and that understanding this fundamental truth is better: "Understanding the truth is understanding that the force of darkness is constant."
Zastrozzi describes his objective: "It is my responsibility to spread out like a disease and purge. And by destroying everything make everything safe. Alive. Untouched by expectation. Free of history. Free of religion. Free of everything."
The play has had several revivals, including one in the 2009 season of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival at the Studio Theatre. [3] It was directed by Jennifer Tarver and starred Rick Roberts as "Zastrozzi", Oliver Becker as "Bernardo", Sarah Orenstein as "Matilda", John Vickery as "Victor", Andrew Shaver as "Verazzi" and Amanda Lisman as "Julia". [4]
The play remains in continuous production throughout the world. [5]
A production is scheduled for the 2022–2023 season by the Kitchener-Waterloo Little Theatre in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. [6]
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1810.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley was a British writer who is considered as one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."
St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance is a Gothic horror novel written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1810 and published by John Joseph Stockdale in December of that year, dated 1811, in London anonymously as "by a Gentleman of the University of Oxford" while the author was an undergraduate. The main character is Wolfstein, a solitary wanderer, who encounters Ginotti, an alchemist of the Rosicrucian or Rose Cross Order who seeks to impart the secret of immortality. The book was reprinted in 1822 by Stockdale and in 1840 in The Romancist and the Novelist's Library: The Best Works of the Best Authors, Vol. III, edited by William Hazlitt. The novella was a follow-up to Shelley's first prose work, Zastrozzi, published earlier in 1810. St. Irvyne was republished in 1986 by Oxford University Press as part of the World's Classics series along with Zastrozzi and in 2002 by Broadview Press.
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Since the initial publication of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818, there has existed uncertainty about the extent to which Mary Shelley's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, contributed to the text. Whilst the novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary, Percy is known to have provided input in editing and publishing the manuscript. Some critics have alleged that Percy had a greater role—even the majority role—in the creation of the novel, though mainstream scholars have generally dismissed these claims as exaggerated or unsubstantiated. Based on a transcription of the original manuscript, it is currently believed that Percy contributed between 4,000 and 5,000 words to the 72,000 word novel.
