![[US
Commemorative Postage Stamp of Boris Karloff]](img_creature_stamp.jpg)
| Frankenstein's creature was very articulate. Actor Boris Karloff (William Henry Pratt, 1887-1969) created the definitive motion picture rendering of Frankenstein's creature. Unlike the creature in the novel, Karloff's character only grunted and growled in the original Frankenstein (1931), although he began to speak a few words in the sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). |
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FRANKENSTEIN (1818 edition) "My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken. "While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters, as it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight. ". . . I obtained a cursory knowledge of history, and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics; of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians; of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans -- of their subsequent degeneration -- of the decline of that mighty empire; of chivalry, christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants." |