DGR began but abandoned this story, according to WMR, in 1851. WMR's note on the tale is so interesting that one regrets DGR never finished it. Apparently it would have featured the devil acting the part of a devil in a play in which the story's narrator, the actor, also played a part.
DGR's gothic imagination was strong, and he had a distinct taste for its comic possibilities, as we see perhaps most clearly in his ballad “Jan Van Hunks”. See also the set of comic verses composed around 1848 (“The devil has gone right”).
Printing History
First published by WMR in “Some Scraps of Verse and Prose by Dante Gabriel Rossetti”
Pall Mall Magazine and later collected by WMR in his edition of 1911.
Literary
WMR notes that DGR's “incitement towards writing a story about an Actor and the Devil arose partly from his reading some years previously, in Hood's Magazine, a very effective tale about the Devil acting his own part in some piece of diablerie such as Der Freischütz”.
This collection contains 2 texts and images, including:
The text from the Pall Mall Magazine
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
DGR began but abandoned this story, according to WMR, in 1851. WMR's note on the tale is so interesting that one regrets DGR never finished it. Apparently it would have featured the devil acting the part of a devil in a play in which the story's narrator, the actor, also played a part.
DGR's gothic imagination was strong, and he had a distinct taste for its comic possibilities, as we see perhaps most clearly in his ballad “Jan Van Hunks”. See also the set of comic verses composed around 1848 (“The devil has gone right”).
Printing History
First published by WMR in “Some Scraps of Verse and Prose by Dante Gabriel Rossetti” Pall Mall Magazine and later collected by WMR in his edition of 1911.
Literary
WMR notes that DGR's “incitement towards writing a story about an Actor and the Devil arose partly from his reading some years previously, in Hood's Magazine, a very effective tale about the Devil acting his own part in some piece of diablerie such as Der Freischütz”.