The Prisoner of Zenda

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This article is about the 1894 novel by Anthony Hope. For other uses, see The Prisoner of Zenda
(disambiguation).
The Prisoner of Zenda

Cover to 2nd edition

Author Anthony Hope
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Historical, Novel
Penguin Classics; New Ed edition
Publisher
(January 1, 2000)
Publication date 1894
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 400 p. (paperback edition)
ISBN 0-14-043755-X (paperback
ISBN
edition)
Preceded by The Heart of Princess Osra
Followed by Rupert of Hentzau
Frontispiece to the 1898 Macmillan Publishers edition, illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson.

The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, published in 1894. The king of
the fictional country of Ruritania is abducted on the eve of his coronation, and the protagonist, an
English gentleman on holiday who fortuitously resembles the monarch, is persuaded to act as his
political decoy in an attempt to save the situation. The villainous Rupert of Hentzau gave his
name to the sequel published in 1898, which is included in some editions of this novel. The
books were extremely popular and inspired a new genre of Ruritanian romance, including the
Graustark novels by George Barr McCutcheon.

Contents

• 1 Plot summary
• 2 Adaptations
• 3 Homages
• 4 Legacy
• 5 See also

• 6 External links

Plot summary
The narrator is twenty-nine year old the Hon. Rudolf Rassendyll, younger brother of the Earl of
Burlesdon and (through an ancestor's sexual indiscretion) a distant cousin and look alike of
Rudolf V, the soon-to-be-crowned King of Ruritania, a "highly interesting and important" [1]
Germanic kingdom somewhere imprecisely between the German and Austrian Empires.
Ruritania is, like Germany and Austria-Hungary at that time, an absolute monarchy. Rudolf
Elphberg, the crown prince, is a hard-drinking playboy, unpopular with the common people, but
supported by the aristocracy, the Catholic Church, the army, and the rich classes in general. The
political rival to this absolute monarch is his younger half-brother Michael, Duke and Governor
of Strelsau, the capital. Michael has no legitimate claim to the throne, because he is the son of
their father's second, morganatic marriage: there are hints, from his swarthy appearance (he is
nicknamed Black Michael) and Rassendyll's elliptically referring to him as a "mongrel", that he
may be partly Jewish. Michael is regarded as champion of Strelsau's working classes, both the
proletariat and the peasants, and of what Hope refers to as the criminal classes. The novel seems
sympathetic, however, with those who would support the dissolute despot, King Rudolf.

When Michael has Rudolf drugged, abducted and imprisoned in the castle in the small town of
Zenda, Rassendyll must impersonate the King at the coronation. There are complications, plots,
and counter-plots, among them the schemes of Michael's mistress Antoinette de Mauban, and
those of his villainous henchman Rupert of Hentzau, and Rassendyll falling in love with Princess
Flavia, the King's betrothed. In the end, the King is restored to his throne — but the lovers must
part.

Adaptations
The novel has been adapted many times, mainly for film but also stage, musical, operetta, radio,
and television. Probably the best-known version is the 1937 Hollywood movie. The dashingly
villainous Rupert of Hentzau has been played by such matinee idols as Ramon Novarro (1922),
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1937), and James Mason (1952).

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1895-96) opened as a play in New Yorkin 1895 starring E. H.
Sothern and the next year on the West End, co-written by Hope and Edward Rose.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1913) - Starring James K. Hackett, Beatrice Beckley, David
Torrence, Fraser Coalter, William R. Randall and Walter Hale. Adapted by Hugh Ford
and directed by Ford and Edwin S. Porter, it was produced by Adolph Zukor and was the
first production of the Famous Players Film Company.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1915) - Starring Henry Ainley, Gerald Ames, George Bellamy,
Marie Anita Bozzi, Jane Gail, Arthur Holmes-Gore, Charles Rock and Norman Yates. It
was adapted by W. Courtney Rowden and directed by George Loane Tucker.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) - Starring Ramon Novarro, Lewis Stone, Alice Terry,
Robert Edeson, Stuart Holmes, Malcolm McGregor and Barbara La Marr. It was adapted
by Mary O'Hara and directed by Rex Ingram.

• Princess Flavia (1925), an operetta with the score by Sigmund Romberg.

 • The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) - Starring Ronald Colman as Rassendyll and Rudolph,
Madeleine Carroll as Princess Flavia, Raymond Massey as Michael, Douglas Fairbanks
Jr. as Rupert of Hentzau, and C. Aubrey Smith as Colonel Zapt. David O. Selznick
decided to produce the film, partly as a comment on the Edward VIII abdication crisis[2],
and it was directed by John Cromwell. Of the many film adaptations, this is considered
by many to be the definitive version.[3] Leslie Halliwell puts it at #590 of all the films
ever made, saying that the "splendid schoolboy adventure story" of the late Victorian
novel is "perfectly transferred to the screen",[4] and quotes a 1971 comment by John Cutts
that the film becomes more "fascinating and beguiling" as time goes by. Halliwell's Film
Guide 2008 calls it "one of the most entertaining films to come out of Hollywood".[5]

• Colman, Smith and Fairbanks reprised their roles for a 1939 episode of Lux Radio
Theatre, with Colman's wife Benita Hume playing Princess Flavia.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) - Starring Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Louis Calhern,
Jane Greer, Lewis Stone, Robert Douglas, James Mason and Robert Coote. Stone, who
played the lead in the 1922 version, had a minor role in this remake. It was adapted by
Edward E. Rose, (dramatization) Wells Root, John L. Balderston, Noel Langley and
Donald Ogden Stewart (additional dialogue, originally uncredited). It was directed by
Richard Thorpe. It is a shot-for-shot copy of the 1937 film, the only difference being that
it was made in Technicolor. Halliwell judges it "no match for the happy inspiration of the
original".[5]

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1961) U.S. television adaptation (DuPont Show of the Month),
starring Christopher Plummer and Inger Stevens.

• Zenda (1963), a musical that closed on the road prior to a scheduled opening on
Broadway. Adapted from the 1925 Princess Flavia.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) - A comic version, starring Peter Sellers, Lynne Frederick,
Lionel Jeffries, Elke Sommer, Gregory Sierra, Jeremy Kemp, Catherine Schell, Simon
Williams and Stuart Wilson. It was adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and
directed by Richard Quine.

• The Prisoner of Zenda (1984) - BBC adaptation starring Malcolm Sinclair.

Homages
Many fictional works that feature a political decoy can be linked to The Prisoner of Zenda;
indeed, this novel spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance. What follows is a short list
of those homages with a clear debt to Anthony Hope's book.
• The 1902 short story "Rupert the Resembler" is one of the so-called New Burlesques, a
comedy parody by Bret Harte, full text [1].

• The Magnificent Fraud (1939)) - Starring Akim Tamiroff.

• The 1965 comedy film The Great Race included an extended Zenda-like subplot,
including a climactic fencing scene between Tony Curtis and Ross Martin. Curtis swims
the moat, scales the wall, and despatches the guards, activities that Ronald Colman
performs in the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda.

• Two episodes of the spoof spy television series Get Smart, "The King Lives?" and "To
*Sire With Love, Parts 1 and 2", parodied the 1937 movie version, with Don Adams
affecting a Ronald Coleman-esque voice.

• The 1970 Flashman novel Royal Flash, by George MacDonald Fraser, purports to explain
the real story behind The Prisoner of Zenda, and indeed, in an extended literary conceit,
claims to be the inspiration for Hope's novel -- the narrator of the memoirs, in the framing
story, tells his adventures to his lawyer, Hawkins, who can be assumed to be Anthony
Hope (Hawkins). Otto von Bismarck and other real people such as Lola Montez are
involved in the plot. It was released as a film of the same title in 1975, directed by
Richard Lester, starring Malcolm McDowell as Flashman and Oliver Reed as Otto von
Bismarck.

• The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) by Nicholas Meyer is a non-canonical addition to

the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes meets Rassendyll on a train.

• Doctor Who episode "The Androids of Tara" (1978) had as a working title "The Androids
of Zenda" and used a similar plot and setting. It featured Tom Baker as the Doctor and
Mary Tamm in four roles: Romana and Princess Strella, and android doubles of each. The
1980 novelisation was by Terrance Dicks, who was script-editor on the 1984 BBC
serialisation of Zenda.

• The 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street references The Prisoner of Zenda when Glen
Lantz (Johnny Depp) tells Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) she looks like The
Prisoner of Zenda behind the newly installed bars on the windows of her home.

• The Zenda Vendetta (TimeWars Book 4) by Simon Hawke (1985) is a science fiction
version, part of a series which pits 27th century terrorists the Timekeepers against the
Time Commandos of the US Army Temporal Corps. A Commando is the hero, and
Antoinette's rôle is adapted as a Timekeeper dominatrix.

• Moon over Parador (1988), adapted by Leon Capetanos and directed by Paul Mazursky.
More directly a remake of The Magnificent Fraud, the story is set in Latin America with
Richard Dreyfus as the President and his actor Jack Noah, Raúl Juliá as Roberto
Strausmann (the "Black Michael" character), and Sonia Braga as Madonna Mendez (the
Flavia character). It is a romantic comedy.
 • Dave, a 1993 film version adapted by Gary Ross and directed by Ivan Reitman that resets
the story (with very minor changes) to contemporary Washington, DC, with Kevin Kline
as the President and his double, Frank Langella in the "Black Michael" role, and
Sigourney Weaver as the modern American Flavia. Like Moon Over Parador, it is a
romantic comedy.

• John Spurling's novel After Zenda (1995) is a tongue-in-cheek modern adventure in

which Karl, the secret great-grandson of Rudolf Rassendyll and Queen Flavia, goes to
post-Communist Ruritania, where he gets mixed up with various rebels and religious
sects before ending up as constitutional monarch. The use of DNA fingerprinting comes
into play, as it had recently done for the Romanovs.

• The Prisoner of Zenda, Inc., a 1996 made-for-television version, is set in the

contemporary United States and revolves around a high school boy who is the heir to a
large corporation. The writer, Rodman Gregg, was inspired by the 1937 film version. It
stars Jonathan Jackson, Richard Lee Jackson, William Shatner, Don S. Davis, Jay
Brazeau and Katharine Isabelle.

• Emma, a manga series released from 2002 -2007, references The Prisoner of Zenda in
chapter 37, which gives an overview of the plot as one character reads the novel.

Legacy
In a popular, but very questionable account, a German circus acrobat named Otto Witte claimed
he had been briefly mistaken for the new King of Albania at the time of that country's separation
from the Ottoman Empire, and that he was crowned and reigned a few days. However, the date
of this claim (1913), and the lack of any evidence to back it up, suggests that Witte made up his
story after seeing the first film version of the novel.

Author Salman Rushdie cited The Prisoner of Zenda in the epigraph to Haroun and the Sea of
Stories, the novel he wrote while living in hiding in the late 1980s.

The 1956 novel Double Star, by Robert A. Heinlein, shares plot elements with The Prisoner of
Zenda.