FRANKENSTEIN

An opera in three acts

music by Greg Sandow
libretto by Thomas M. Disch

CAST
Victor Frankenstein, a rash young Swiss scientist Baritone
Elizabeth Lavenza, his fiance Soprano
Henry Clerval, Victor's friend, also in love with Elizabeth Tenor
The Creature, created and then abandoned by Victor Frankenstein Bass-baritone
Victors Father Bass
Charlotte, Elizabeths friend and confidante Mezzo
Philip, a mad friar Bass
Lars, a sea-captain Tenor
Villagers; Elizabeths friends; Victors friends; Larss crew.
The roles of Philip and Victors Father may be sung by the same singer.
Act 2, scene 1 was performed at the Lake George Opera Festival in 1979. That scene,
and Act 1 up to the end of Elizabeths aria was performed at the opera workshop at C.
W. Post College in 1980; the entire opera was premiered there in 1981.
ACT 1 -- The Open Grave
Scene 1
(A room in an inn. Papers scattered everywhere; books on a shelf. Victor Frankenstein
lies in bed, unconscious. Henry sits near him.)
HENRY
You are the cause, Elizabeth:
For you I have put by
My study of the law.
For you I've journeyed
To this mountain waste
To find your false betrothed,
Your Frankenstein!
For you, through months
Of snowbound silence
I have nursed him --
Frankenstein,
Friend of my childhood,
Rival of my youth,
The man you love, Elizabeth,
As faithfully as I've loved you.
See where he lies, inert,
Unconscious, infantine;
Only alive at all
Because I spoon
Into his drooling mouth
The slops
He cannot feed himself.
Look at the limbs I daily bathe,
How like the rotted flesh
His learned knives
Would once dissect.
See how his breath barely stirs
The bedclothes
His incontinence defiles.
And what is most obscene --
When he awakes
I must listen to
Ravings inconceivably vile
(Victor stirs, then speaks.)
VICTOR (raving)
I will not look at it.
I will not touch
And yet, see there,
The muscles
Contract,
Relax, contract
No more!
In daylight,
With you, Elizabeth,
In Italy, as I have vowed --
But stop, regard:
To these sorry scraps of death
I shall impart
A rhythmicaldilation.
Observe it well.
See how the plasma's sucked
Into the artery and then expelled.
Quite dead, you see, but then
Infused with air, it's red, alive.
HENRY (approaching the bed)
He seems half-rational today.
Some stench yet of the charnel house
In all this speech, but his manner
Has become so much more calm.
VICTOR (recoiling when Henry tries to touch him)
Away from me!
There is no pact,
No bond between us. None!
You have no right to look at me
Nor yet to live.
(A distant horn call is heard offstage)
HENRY
The coachman's horn!
At lastthe pass is clear.
There will be letters from Elizabeth.
(joyfully)
Elizabeth!
See what a treasure I bring.
I've kept my pledge to you;
Now take my wounded heart.
(Henry leaves. Villagers pass by outside singing a Lenten hymn. While they sing,
Victor slowly and painfully gets up from bed and dresses.)
VILLAGERS (offstage)
There was an apple on a tree
That grew in God's eternity.
That apple eaten, we must die.
Our sins are written in the sky.
No innocence on earth is found.
Closer, closer comes the sound
Of Death within his crimson coach.
Our hearts invite. Approach! Approach!
He makes the bridal gown a shroud.
He smites the wise, the brave, the proud.
Into his cup our blood is poured;
Our flesh is bread upon his board.
O Lord of Heaven, hear our cry!
Lead us to life, and let death die.
Crush his bones, his name, his face,
And ever shall we praise thy grace.
(The Villagers' hymn fades away in the distance. Henry returns, a letter in his hand.)
HENRY (surprised)
You are awake!
VICTOR (grimly)
I am alive.
How long have I lain here,
How many days?
HENRY
It was November when I came.
Today Lent begins.
Have you not heard the penitents?
Four months you lay
In thrall to your delirium.
Now you arise again -- and look,
A letter from Elizabeth.
VICTOR (taking the letter)
There is no need to open it.
Return to me, she writes.
Fulfill your vow.
Make me your bride.
(with determination)
Henry, I must again
Command your strength.
Collect these papers from my desk,
And from the shelf above,
Those books.
See they are packed.
(with great feeling)
Elizabeth!
Destroy my memories,
And fill my emptiness with light.
(Curtain)

Scene 2

(An unhallowed graveyard at the top of a rugged hill. A few crude graves shadowed by
cypresses, and one open grave. Elizabeth, Charlotte, and a chorus of Elizabeth's friends
stand near it.)
FRIENDS
Just as, my dear, each day at dawn
The bright stars disappear,
So must at last we die, my love,
Into the brightness of the sky above.
ELIZABETH
So must we die, so must we die.
FRIENDS
How swift the rose
Doth wilt and decompose.
How harsh the terms of death
ELIZABETH
How harsh the terms of death.
FRIENDS
As living bodies yield
Their flesh
ELIZABETH
to worms!
FRIENDS
How harsh of death,
How harsh the terms.
ELIZABETH, FRIENDS
How deep the grave,
How dark the earth
FRIENDS
Wherein we crave
Our second birth.
ELIZABETH
How deep, how dark,
How dark the earth.

FRIENDS
O Lord of light,
Instruct our sight.
Reveal the stars
That blossom always
In the meadows of the night.
ELIZABETH
That blossom
In the meadows of the night.
FRIENDS
Reveal, O Lord, the night.
(A brief silence.)
ELIZABETH
Dear friends, I thank you
That you share my grief.
Left to myself I would grieve
Wordlessly, and tears unshed
Would turn my heart to stone.
FRIENDS
Elizabeth,
Poor lamb,
Sweet child.
CHARLOTTE
To be alone,
And to have felt such woe!
ELIZABETH
William is dead!
A child not ten years old,
Slain
For mere possessing
Of a golden chain.
I cannot bear
Remembering.
And worse, to think
That Victor must return
To such a horror.
His dearest brother
Dismembered brutally.
FRIENDS
Elizabeth,
Be calm, no more.
ELIZABETH
And mine the hand that hung
The chain about his neck
As invitation to the deed.
CHARLOTTE
Your hand, Elizabeth
Is guiltless as your heart.
ELIZABETH
Guiltless!
Dare you accuse Justine?
She loved that child
As I loved her.
A murderess -- Justine?
Because, her false accusers claim,
The locket I let poor William wear
Was found on her
And she could not explain?
And yet she swore -- and I believe --
That she was innocent.
If there is guilt, it's mine!
I hung that chain on William's neck
And by it my beloved Justine
Was hanged.
See where her poor dishonored corpse
Rots in a grave unhallowed.
CHARLOTTE
Elizabeth,
Justine confessed.
ELIZABETH
Yes,
When her confessor threatened to withhold
The sacrament,
Under that torture
She confessed.
But at the moment of her death,
In sacred confidence she swore
That she was innocent.
If you had held her hand,
If you had seen her tears,
You could not doubt her innocence.
Poor wretched girl, Justine!
And now, in honor of her innocence,
I place this flower in her grave.
(From a large bouquet, she takes a single flower and drops it into the open grave.)
As you hold yourselves my friends,
Place by this flower
Flowers of your own.
(Elizabeth's friends, led by Charlotte, advance one by one to take a flower from the
bouquet. Each kneels to place it in Justine's grave, then slowly exits through the
graveyard's iron gate. As the last member of the chorus departs, Charlotte returns
excitedly.)
CHARLOTTE
Elizabeth, he's here!
ELIZABETH (faintly)
Victor?
CHARLOTTE
With Henry,
In his father's coach.
And oh, prepare yourself,
For he is changed!
ELIZABETH (defiantly)
Victor -- changed?
Love cannot change.
Together, apart,
Love lives in the heart
And cannot change.
The constant heart
Is beating always --
Awake, asleep,
In sorrow, in pleasure,
In anger, in pain,
The heart is ever the same.
CHARLOTTE
How short his breath,
How slow his steps.
Scarce has he strength
To lift his feet.
ELIZABETH
How long I've prayed for his return,
But now I feel a piercing fear.
The constant heart
Is beating always.
In sorrow, in pleasure,
In anger, in pain,
The heart is ever the same.
(Victor enters, with his father, supported by Henry. He takes a few weak steps toward
Elizabeth.)
VICTOR (weakly)
Elizabeth, I have been near to death.
Elizabeth --
(He breaks off, overcome by weakness and emotion.)
ELIZABETH (aside)
Love swells through my heart
Like the tides of the sea
That spill on endless sands,
For see, he stands
Beside me.
VICTOR (aside)
Like the dove to its nest
My heart has come home
To the home it knows best,
And my love lies at rest
Beside me.
ELIZABETH (aside)
Love swells through my heart
For see he stands beside me.
CHARLOTTE (aside)
Like a moth to a flame
She is drawn to the doom
Of a misplighted troth,
And she can do naught
But fly to the light.
HENRY (aside)
Love swells through my heart
Like the tides
As they surge on shore,
Love swells through my heart,
And I can do naught
But hear its roar
Inside me.
VICTOR'S FATHER (aside)
Like the prodigal son
Of parables' fame,
My boy has come home
And my heart swells with pride,
With a terrible pride.
ELIZABETH
Ah!
Like the light of the moon
At the noontide of night,
When it stands at its height
Love shines in my soul,
For I know you'll be soon
And forever beside me.
VICTOR
My heart has come home;
My love lies at rest
Beside me.
Like the dove to its nest, etc.
CHARLOTTE
Like a moth to a flame
She is drawn to her doom, etc.
HENRY
Love swells through my heart, etc.
Like a moth to a flame
I am drawn to my doom.
My heart swells with love, etc.
VICTOR'S FATHER
My boy has come home.
My heart swells with pride, etc.
(At the end of the quintet, Elizabeth faints. Victor, hardly strong enough to move, stands
still; Charlotte goes to help Elizabeth.)
CHARLOTTE
Henry, I need your help.
(Scoldingly, as Henry and Victor's father take Elizabeth and act as Charlotte directs
them.)
Why did not you wait below?
We must take her to the coach.
Gently, gently.
VICTOR'S FATHER (turning back to address his son)
Are you not coming with us?
VICTOR
I must be alone awhile
CHARLOTTE (as she leaves)
Do not be long.
A storm will be upon us momently.
(Charlotte follows the others offstage. Night begins to fall.)
VICTOR (alone)
Oh, that I might cease to think
Or that my will were stronger
And I could say,
I will not think on it again
I cannot see a cripple in the street,
Or mourn this innocent dead girl,
But straight I see the limbs
My hands and knives have knit,
And fear and prophecy become
A single pulse in artery and vein.
(A voice is heard behind Victor. It is the Creature, invisible in the darkness.)
CREATURE (implacable)
And even in the air you breathe
The scent of that prophetic fear
Will hang,
I'll cling to you,
And drink your strength and make it mine.
Believe it, Frankenstein, as you'd believe
The digits on this hand
That killed your brother and purloined the chain
By which this innocent was hung
Are five. And what these five
Have done they'll do again.
No crime so gross but it shall be the dug
At which these carrion lips shall suck revenge --
Until the shadow rules the man,
Until I've drained your soul
And made it mine.
VICTOR (as if in a dream)
I will not think on it again
And it will go away!
(Throughout all this, the Creature has come closer and closer; now it stands directly
before Victor.)
CREATURE
I am beside you now.
And when you crept into the cave
Of your delirium
1 always was nearby.
Through the window of the inn
I saw you being fed
And knew from that
The use of bread.
And when your friend
Addressed long monologues
To your unheeding ears
I listened close and aped
The motions of his mouth
To satisfy
The hunger of my lips
For speech.
Eat, he would insist,
And you would eat.
But to be aware of him --
That you would not, and so
He thought himself alone,
And spoke in perfect confidence --
To me!
Somehow I understood
His talk of love,
Of loyalty, of sacrifice --
And I'd go out onto the frozen lake
And howl the words I'd picked
Like thorns from his divided heart:
"You are the cause, Elizabeth!"
(Distant thunder. During the following, the storm begins, and grows more violent.)
From your ravings, Frankenstein,
I learned a darker lore:
That all hearts are divided so,
Mere pumps that cause the blood to flow.
VICTOR
Craven it was
In me to flee
As your flesh convulsed to life.
Long had I gazed on death's abyss:
Why then should sight of life
Awaken horror?
A climber, at the peak he's strained
To reach, can think of nothing
But the vastness opened to his view.
So was it as I moved from height to height
And held the key of life.
Enraptured so, how could I think
The gift of life could be bestowed
Except to bless?
Until I saw
Your gaze, until I heard
Your --
CREATURE (angrily)
You fled!
VICTOR (weakly, offering his hand)
All I can do
To spare you further pain, I shall.
CREATURE (grasping Victor's hand violently)
All you can you shall indeed!
This hand, which I could crush
Like bundled sticks, shall once again take up
Its knife!
VICTOR (frightened)
What do you ask?
CREATURE (with great intensity)
Keener than hunger, endless
As the circling of my blood --
VICTOR (frightened; beginning to guess the Creature's meaning)
Desire!
CREATURE (looking at Victor, as if to acknowledge that he's right)
I cannot sleep
Until I'm given
All I need.
VICTOR (helplessly)
Desire is keenest
When it cannot be appeased.
Resign yourself --
(The storm rages furiously.)
CREATURE (furious)
You lie! For I, I, I
Am myself the proof
That what I ask
Is yours to give.
Create -- create -- as you created me --
My female counterpart.
(The storm is now at its height.)
VICTOR (terrified)
Never!
By all that's human, never!

CREATURE (scornfully)
Weakling! Philosopher!
(indicating its own body)
You will create a woman limbed
With limbs like these,
Her face deformed.
For I've a right to live
And lust and breed like you.
Deny me, and I'll work at your destruction
Till I desolate your heart.
(Loud thunder. The Creature pulls Justine's body from the grave, scattering the flowers
placed on it. It stands leering, holding the body, silhouetted in a great flash of
lightning.)
We will wait, my ladylove and I,
Where, at my birth, I was left to die.
(It disappears with the body into the raging storm.)
VICTOR (desperately)
If I comply,
It's for your sake,
Elizabeth!
(Curtain)


Act 2 -- The Bridal Bed
Scene 1
(An antechamber to the laboratory of Victor Frankenstein, which has been furnished as
a parlor. Stage left a door to the outside; stage right double doors, now closed but
offering a view, when open, to the laboratory. Elizabeth and Victor are talking.)
ELIZABETH
Am I forgiven, then, for having come
Here where my visits were forbidden?
VICTOR (indicating the doors to the laboratory)
This is the sanctum to which I may admit
No visitors.
ELIZABETH (teasingly)
Such advice Bluebeard would give
His latest bride: "To every room but one
My dear, the keys are yours."
VICTOR
Elizabeth, I know you do but jest,
But lack of sleep has parched the fount
Where laughter has its source.
ELIZABETH
In short, I am not welcome here.
VICTOR
You are as welcome as the spring
ELIZABETH
It was in spring, a year ago,
You asked if I would be your wife.
VICTOR
Indeed. How quick the time has flown.
ELIZABETH
That day I sang a song for you
(prompting him)
To the South!
To the South
VICTOR (unable to remember)
To the
ELIZABETH
To the blossoming, sun-dappled South!
VICTOR (joining in, as he begins to remember)
sun-dappled South!
ELIZABETH (prompting him)
There
VICTOR (trying to remember more)
There
ELIZABETH
There, where the ancient
VICTOR (joining in)
where the ancient, ageless truths
Of
(Victor hesitates)
ELIZABETH
Life's geometry
VICTOR (joining in)
Life's geometry are writ
Upon, upon
(Victor hesitates )
ELIZABETH
Upon the oleander's boughs.
VICTOR
the oleander's boughs.
There, there,
There be my spouse
ELIZABETH
There be my spouse
VICTOR
As I am yours,
As I am
(breaks off, helplessly)
ELIZABETH
My answer then was yes.
A year's gone by,
And still my bridal gown
Lies folded in its lavender.
VICTOR (reassuringly)
A very little longer while,
I swear, Elizabeth.
My work needs but one missing element
To be complete.
ELIZABETH (close to tears)
But at the latest, Victor, when?
A date, a date!
(Any answer Victor might give is cut off by the sound of Victor's friends at the door,
beginning to sing.)
VICTOR'S FRIENDS (offstage)
Dark was the night
And dim beyond recall
When down from heaven's awful height
Our God allowed the fire to fall.
ELIZABETH (reassuring victor, who has given a little start of surprise)
It's Henry and Charlotte.
They have prepared a small surprise.
(Victor's friends now enter, accompanied by Henry and Charlotte. They are carrying
unlighted candles, which they light one by one as they sing, each member of the chorus
after the first taking his light from his neighbor's. Thus the level of illumination grows
as the music becomes more fervent, both reaching their full intensity only at the end of
the hymn, when Elizabeth and Victor -- following the directions in the text -- light the
two candles with which they have been supplied. Charlotte sings the hymn with the
male chorus of Victor's friends. Henry, rather downcast, comes downstage and stands
apart. Victor listens quietly, troubled at first but by the end deeply moved.)
CHARLOTTE
Joy fills our hearts;
The fire flows
From lamp to lamp, from friend to friend,
A gift that, being given, grows
VICTORS FRIENDS
From lamp to lamp, from friend to friend,
A gift that, being given, grows;
A sun eternally reborn
From torch to torch and morn to morn.
CHARLOTTE
Thus leaps the love of all mankind --
From spouse to spouse, from child to dam.
ELIZABETH (going over to Henry)
Dear Henry, I see your hand in this.
HENRY (dejected)
All that is beautiful and true
Is Charlotte's work.
CHARLOTTE
As one flame dies, another flares;
All of one primal fire the heirs.
VICTORS FRIENDS
All of one primal fire the heirs.
Light now thy torch, Elizabeth, from ours,
And now from flame of hers take thine --
And love her, Victor Frankenstein.
HENRY (aside, bitterly)
All that is beautiful and true
Is Charlotte's work.
CHARLOTTE AND VICTORS FRIENDS
Be life engendered from the light
When, flame to flame, two lovers plight
Undying love
VICTORS FRIENDS
Undying love.
VICTOR (deeply moved)
Oh, God -- that I might share
That life, and join my
Hand with theirs.
(surprised, seeing his father who has entered during the hymn)
Father!
VICTORS FATHER (taking Victor aside)
As trapped steam turns my factories' wheels,
So Science fuels our progress.
We must have Science.
But, son, in your devotion
Do not neglect
The name of Frankenstein.
We live not for ourselves alone.
Naught can be reaped if naught be sown.
VICTOR
Father !
VICTORS FATHER
Let me not hear that word "postpone."
It's time you made Elizabeth your own.
HENRY (going up to Victor)
Victor, a word.
VICTOR
Another time!
FRIENDS
What did his father say to him?
HENRY (masking his bitterness)
One word, good friend -- Elizabeth.
FRIENDS
See how he's pale!
What did his father say to him?
HENRY
Can you love her and not see
The pain delay
Engraves in her flesh?
FRIENDS
He's pale!
HENRY
You were away
A year, while she
Unremembered --
VICTOR
You do me wrong!
FRIENDS
He's pale!
What did his father say to him?
HENRY
Our friendship, Victor, is too strong
That ever I could do you wrong.
If I seem cruel, you surely know
It is your own heart speaking so.
FRIENDS
His father, fiance, and friends
Plead to be told what he intends.
HENRY
Go to her and tell her now
You will at last fulfill your vow.
Either marriage or release:
If love is lacking, offer peace.
FRIENDS
How can one man against such weight
Know his own mind or form his fate?
Hes pale!
CHARLOTTE (watching Henry)
No need to hear the sad words spoken:
He pleads to have his true heart broken.
If love would grow where it is sown,
Henry nor I would love alone.
FRIENDS
He's pale!
What did his father say to him?
VICTORS FATHER
Make her your own!
VICTOR (to himself)
Speak may I not, although she's dear.
I would but add to sorrow fear.
There was a thread of love that led
Me through the labyrinth of my dread,
But then it snapped and I am trapped
In darkness love has never mapped.
FRIENDS
He's pale!
How can he know his mind?
What did his father say to him?
HENRY (to Victor)
If love is lacking, offer peace.
CHARLOTTE (aside, still watching Henry)
He pleads to have his poor heart broken.
VICTORS FATHER (to Victor)
It's time you made Elizabeth your own.
ELIZABETH (aside, heartbroken)
I can remember when we were in love.
I can remember how he smiled.
Our speech was free, our hearts at ease;
All that we did, we did to please.
But now a shadow lies between.
Words die unspoken
Smiles unseen.
So little left of what has been;
So little left of what has been.
FRIENDS
His father, fiance, and friends
Must be told what he intends.
How can one man against such weight
Know his mind or form his fate?
VICTOR (aside)
Speak may I not.
Oh, she's dear.
Speak may I not, or I am trapped.
I am trapped in darkness love never mapped.
ELIZABETH (heartbroken)
So little left of what has been,
Of what has been
VICTOR (to Elizabeth, in a tone of surrender)
You'd have me fix a date. Well then,
Let it be from Saturday a week.
ELIZABETH
You're absolute? I may invite
My cousins from Lucerne
And never be disgraced?
VICTOR (grimly)
Put this building to the torch
If I ask for more delay.
ELIZABETH (nearly overcome)
A week from Saturday!
VICTORS FATHER
And if your work should once again
Resist completion?
VICTOR
My work -- is through.
What's left
Can all be done tonight.
VICTORS FATHER
Why then --
(He raises his arms.)
Your attention, please!
I am happy to announce
That my son Victor Frankenstein
And my dear ward Elizabeth
Are to be married on the Fifth of May,
One week from this coming Saturday.
May I now, although the wine
Lies still uncorked within my cellar,
Propose this toast: The happy pair!
VICTORS FRIENDS
The pair!
VICTORS FATHER
Come who would our pledge redeem
With wine my cellars now shall stream.
(The chorus begins to leave. Victors father follows them, but turns in the doorway.)
Victor? Elizabeth?
VICTOR
Momentarily.
(Victors father exits after the chorus. Henry and Charlotte are the last to depart. Each in
turn offers imaginary glasses in toast.)
CHARLOTTE
And once again, when wine there is:
My ever dearest, lovely Liz!
(Charlotte exits.)
HENRY (magnaminity overcoming his disappointment)
And yet another draught of wine
For my friend, Victor Frankenstein!
(When Henry exits, Victor and Elizabeth kiss; he rather dutifully, she clingingly.)
ELIZABETH
Victor, I feel
Happychiefly that
And yetI can't explain.
VICTOR
In my heart too mere happiness
Is mixed with sentiments
I cannot name. Let us explore
These deeper water of our love
When I am home tonight. But now --
ELIZABETH
You must work, I know. And I must join
Our friends below. Until tonight!
(She exits, looking at him longingly.)
VICTORS FRIENDS (offstage)
Be life engendered from the light
When, flame to flame, two lovers plight
Undying love.
VICTOR (grimly)
An hour since
My creation's bride took breath.
Now she must breathe her last.
I am resolved;
Its for your sake, Elizabeth!
(He opens the locked doors and enters his laboratory.)
VICTORS FRIENDS (offstage, further away)
Light now thy torch,
Elizabeth, from ours,
And now from flame of hers take thine --
And love her, Victor Frankenstein!
(A terrible scream comes from the laboratory as Victor kills the female Creature.
Curtain.)

Scene 2

(A bridal chamber in a rustic northern style, with a carved bed decked with flowers.
Candles burning near the bed are the only source of illumination. The back of the room
is deeply shadowed.
(The curtain rises toward the end of an instrumental prelude. Elizabeth is discovered
just within the candles effective range of illumination, wearing her bridal gown and
veil. She has been married that day to Victor Frankenstein. Lost in her thoughts, she
runs her hands nervously down her body from her face to below her heart. The touch of
the bridal veil is her cue to sing.)
ELIZABETH
A bride,
And not Lavenza now,
But Frankenstein.
Through how many nights alone
Have I longed for his plighted word
To be fulfilled?
And now, in a moment, it will.
Not Lavenza now, but Frankenstein
And yet, alas,
Within the chambers of my heart
All is darkness absolute.
No tapers burn of joy,
Or bridal blytheness,
And I must feel my way alone,
As down a lightless corridor,
Guided only by the touch
Of fingertips on sweating stone.
An hour more, and then we
(She laughs uncomfortably.)
Doubtless -- doubtless all brides
Have known such fear.
Each time a woman's joined
In wedlock to a man
An ancient sacrifice
Is reenacted,
Fearful to think of
But in the act
Harmless as the sacrifice of Isaac.
No more than Isaac
Have I cause to fear.
(She pauses, lost in thought.)
These repinings are unworthy
Of the bride of Victor Frankenstein.
(She continues, first with determination, and then with awe.)
School your heart, Elizabeth,
To its conjugal duty,
Be a wife true and welcoming.
Tonight, in darkness,
Let Victor discover
That reason to rejoice
You have heard whispered of.
Receive the amazement
Of a man's love.
Through you, by his kiss,
New life shall enter the world.
(Elizabeth sits quietly, lost in thought. From the deep shadows at the back of the stage
the Creature enters -- or rather emerges. With a knife in its hand it advances confusedly
towards Elizabeth, who turns toward him, putting her back to the audience, at the first
utterance of' her name. By the third repetition it has come next to her.)
CREATURE
Elizabeth Lavenza? Elizabeth Lavenza? Elizabeth Lavenza?
ELIZABETH (frightened)
My name is Frankenstein!
CREATURE (stabbing her as she says the name)
That name is your death.
(A pause. Elizabeth is shocked, hurt, weak, bleeding; she cannot react. The Creature is
angry, upset, and confused; it watches her, nearly panting with dismayed emotion.
Finally it gains some measure of composure and speaks.
CREATURE
This, Elizabeth, I bring
From your bridegroom,
The man whose fatal name you bear,
Victor Frankenstein.
This to my bride
He brought as dower gift.
He sends it with a love
In which there is no pity.
Such a love he taught to me.
(He stabs her again.)
ELIZABETH
Whoare you?
CREATURE
I was born without a name,
A being begotten
By man alone.
I am his son
Whose wife you would have been.
(Elizabeth regains a measure of strength. She turns away from the Creature to face the
audience, revealing bloodstains covering the front of her clothing.)
ELIZABETH (defiantly)
While there is blood
To stain this gown,
Still can I be his wife.
But you, monstrous miscreant,
Can be no son of his.
Even dying, I can deride
A claim so false.
Those vacant eyes,
Those twisted lips,
'That cankered and discolored flesh --
(She musters all of her waning strength to hurl these next words at the Creature with
one supreme effort.)
Never could such
Have sprung from a root
Healthy and whole.
The son of Frankenstein?
Before a glass
You could not tell such lies.
CREATURE (with bitter derision)
A glass? A glass?
My creator had no use
For mirrors, Madam.
He made me with this knife!
(It stabs her again, and then continues gloomily.)
From parts of men
Exumed from paupers' graves,
From organs cut from guts
Of malefactors left to rot
On gallows, from meat gone bad
And blood grown cold --
These materials
He made reanimate in me.
In me you see a man
God had no share in making.
I am the product
Of the mind of Victor Frankenstein.
Has he never spoken
Of his great work?
I am that work.
I am his high ambition.
I am his high ambition realized.
ELIZABETH (as if to herself)
He whispered once, he hinted of
Some secret.
I did not wish to hear.
His work, his ambition
Were not concerns of mine.
I was to be his wife,
To bear his children,
To shape for him a human happiness,
To sing as evening
Draws its draperies of shadow
About us close,
A favorite song.
To trust implicitly,
To answer love for love.
CREATURE (still derisive, but with growing tenderness)
Yes, yes -- those were your crimes.
I'm glad you can confess them
As you die.
Tell me, Elizabeth,
Was there, room within
That human happiness
For such as I?
(He stabs her again.)
Look at me, Elizabeth.
The despair in your eyes --
How it feasts,
How it nourishes my soul.
ELIZABETH (almost light-headed with weakness, but still with determination)
There's no despair
When love can be
Remembered.
Nor can you, though you rend
My heart, still living, from my breast,
Rob me of love's sublimity.
(The Creature, furious, stabs her again.)
I have loved. You have no soul
For love to enter,
It is you who should despair,
And I, even now,
As I part this life,
Who have reason to rejoice.
For still, as it leaves my veins
My blood is warm,
And still my lips
Remembering his kiss
Have strength to insist
That I have loved
And you can only hate.
(These next lines are sung simultaneously.)
CREATURE (sadly, almost to himself)
Oh, I could have loved,
Elizabeth Lavenza.
I could have loved
A woman
Formed like myself
By the knife of Victor Frankenstein.
I longed for that with all the soul
You tell me I don't have.
I would have lived
With such a one
Happy as beasts
That graze and forage
On the mountainsides.
I woulld have gone with her
To forests men have never reached
And lived as happily as you,
If you had been allowed to live.
ELIZABETH (becoming weaker and weaker)
Perhaps. Perhaps.
What might have been
Will never be.
We cannot even guess
What might have been.
If I had lived
We might have gone
To Italy. He promised
That we would.
There is nowhere in the world
So beautiful. So full
Of our humanity.
I would have loved
To live in Italy.
I would have loved
I would have loved
(She dies. During the last part of the duet, she has been supported in the Creature's
arms. Her death is scarcely perceptible at first. After she dies there is a pause as the
Creature looks at her.)
CREATURE (very softly)
I could have loved
(The Creature lifts her in his arms solemnly and carries her slowly toward the bed. It
places her on the bed, composes her limbs with grave deliberation, and spends a long
while looking down at her. Its features should suggest some degree of tender regard.
Then, without warning, and very quickly, it lifts the knife above his head and plunges it
violently into her corpse. Without haste it turns to the back of the stage and merges, in a
few strides, into the shadows, as the curtain falls.)