This morning, I finished reading Zapolya: A Christmas Tale, S.T. Coleridge's holiday story of love, usurpation, and alleged lycanthropy.
Playbills for the Surrey gave the play the subtitle "The War Wolf" since its plot involves a mysterious cave supposed to be haunted by a supernatural creature of that name. In reality, there is no such creature in the play. Instead, the cave is inhabited by an Illyrian chieftain named Raab Kiuprili. (Like Twelfth Night, another Christmas entertainment, the play is set in Illyria.)
In a note in the published text, Coleridge stated: "For the best account of the War-wolf or Lycanthropus, see Drayton's Mooncalf, Chalmers' English Poets, Vol. IV, p. 133." According to the Jacobean poet Michael Drayton's The Mooncalf, a sorcerer used "an herb of such a wond'rous pow'r" and "thrice saying a strange magic spell" turned himself into "a war-wolf instantly" who would rob anyone who passed through a certain forest. He also "ravish'd" women, in some cases actually eating their flesh as well.
In Drayton's version of lycanthropy, the werewolf also steals children from a nearby town and carries off the fattest sheep of local shepherds. Eventually, the villagers decide to hunt the beast, but the werewolf (or "war-wolf" in Drayton's spelling) turns back into a man and pretends to join them on their hunt. At last, the werewolf is exposed and torn to pieces by the locals.
This depiction of lycanthropy is quite different from what's shown in the Hollywood film The Wolf Man, for which screenwriter Curt Siodmak created his own mythology. It's perhaps more similar to the werewolves in Boccaccio's Decameron or Le Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory.
An even closer parallel to Coleridge's drama might be found in The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. In that play, the character of Ferdinand believes himself to be a wolf, though he is not. Ferdinand's case is one of mental illness, though, not a mistake of those around him.
Far from being a werewolf, Kiuprili is a patriot and a hero who preserves the life of the true king and helps bring about the fall of a usurper. Even if Christmas werewolves aren't our thing today, we can still support the downfall of tyrants, I think.
