The Birth of Frankenstein

A Tanti-lizing whimsy

The Birth of Frankenstein  ( a “tanti”- lising theory)

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley once had a gardener

Called Francis Constyne, who explained

That his employer was a writer of "pottery"

(He was deaf and illiterate, it was claimed.)

But Shelley's wife Mary was also a writer

Who preferred to pen macabre-like fiction.

And was intrigued by this auditory impaired gardener                    

 Whom she saw as a source of  some literary depiction.

 

Then, one  stormy day there was thunder and lightning

And his wheelbarrow was struck, ….and expired.

Well, it melted in places and it's shape re-arranged

But the resourceful gardener they'd hired

Had the mechanical  skill and propensity

To add bits of a defunct machine

And create a  new functioning entity

 But like nothing that gardeners had ever seen.

 

Now Mary, (who hadn't written for weeks)

Saw Francis  had rebuilt from scrap

A functioning, but odd-shaped contraption

And immortalized this chap.

With a new name of Frankenstein

And cured the lassitude that  had blocked her

So, as a reward, she upgraded his status

From "Gardener" to "Doctor".

  

 Then this machine , hybridised by an artisan

Became a grotesque inarticulate man

And Frank and his semi- human creation

Became a literary spur to imagination

But of course, what Mary hadn’t forseen

 Was the advent of the silver screen

With Hammer Films changing her sad lonely creature

 To a killer , epitomized  by his trademark feature

Of Boris Karloff, with a bolt through his neck

 With “spin-offs” enhanced by special effects.

 

For unlike Shelley, Hollywood had made sure

Frankenstein was a password for mayhem and gore

Reviews

[Solar]

The creativity of the gardener recreated into a masterpiece through the creativity of an author - made monstrous by an unimaginative movie industry!

[Tom]

An innovative idea turned into gruesome idealogy, only Hollywood movie makers could do that !

A splendid piece of radical thinking Norman on how Mary Shelley's classic creation came to be ! 🤖

[Norman T]

Thank you Tom. My 7 year old grand daughter had just constructed a robot from the Christmas packaging , which prompted this. Muses are becoming younger, these days.