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There are in existence a few books that can cure the sickness of cynicism. These books remind men of the glory and grandeur of man and the glories and grandeurs that give meaning to mankind. The Prisoner of Zenda, written in 1894 by Anthony Hope, is one of these. This “spirited and gallant little book,” as Robert Louis Stevenson described it, is a remedy to the heavy seriousness of cynicism because it is lighthearted. It is a fairy tale infused with the optimism of escapism, the thrill of romance, and the charm of the dashing, debonair, gentleman hero. Even the gravest of cynics must smile, chuckle, and inch to the edge of his seat in appreciation of men bristling with weapons, women swooning in their lovers’ arms, guns firing and combatants laughing, swords flashing and soldiers of fortune. The Prisoner of Zenda is quite simply irresistible, making it a balm for this dour day and age, and worthy of its reputation for being the finest adventure story ever written, in which the struggle between good and evil is a great game and nothing seems so serious as keeping the serious at bay.
    -“The Prisoner of Zenda” by Anthony Hope: Escape From Cynicism (Sean Fitzpatrick, Catholic Education Resource Center)
Few plot devices are more familiar to us now than the old mistaken identity/body double trope. I assume the first novel to exploit it was Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, followed by Twain’s Prince and the Pauper, and then this classic by Anthony Hope. Herein, the dissolute Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll visits the Kingdom of Ruritania for the coronation of its new king, Rudolf the V. A prior king had fathered a bastard upon the Rassendyll’s, giving the two lines shared features including red hair. As it happens, the two Rudolfs are the spitting image of one another. When Michael, Duke of Strelsau, determines to prevent the coronation by kidnapping his half-brother, loyal courtiers substitute Rassendyll as a stand-in. While Rassendyll and company be able to pull off the hoax and save the real king or will the Black Duke’s nefarious scheme succeed?

Further complications arise because Michael is actually rather popular with the people, as opposed to Rudolf who has been off gallivanting for years. And they expect Rudolf to promptly marry his cousin, their beloved Princess Flavia. Rassendyll is thus forced to court her but lie to her about his true identity and avoid an actual marriage, which would be dishonorable. It’s all more fun than a bag of cats and a reminder of how much better the books we read when we kids are than the YA fiction you get nowadays.

SPOILER: As you’ll have guessed, the real King is eventually freed and Rassendyll has to disappear, so no one suspects what has gone on. And that means parting from Flavia, who has learned his identity and realized that she has fallen in love with him, as he with her. This gives us the impossibly, joyously noble final scenes;
“I must go tonight, before more people have seen me. And how would you have me stay, sweetheart, except--?”

“If I could come with you!” she whispered very low.

“My God!” said I roughly, “don’t talk about that!” and I thrust her a little back from me.

“Why not? I love you. You are as good a gentleman as the King!”

Then I was false to all that I should have held by. For I caught her in my arms and prayed her, in words that I will not write, to come with me, daring all Ruritania to take her from me. And for a while she listened, with wondering, dazzled eyes. But as her eyes looked on me, I grew ashamed, and my voice died away in broken murmurs and stammerings, and at last I was silent.

She drew herself away from me and stood against the wall, while I sat on the edge of the sofa, trembling in every limb, knowing what I had done--loathing it, obstinate not to undo it. So we rested a long time.

“I am mad!” I said sullenly.

“I love your madness, dear,” she answered.

Her face was away from me, but I caught the sparkle of a tear on her cheek. I clutched the sofa with my hand and held myself there.

“Is love the only thing?” she asked, in low, sweet tones that seemed to bring a calm even to my wrung heart. “If love were the only thing, I would follow you--in rags, if need be--to the world’s end; for you hold my heart in the hollow of your hand! But is love the only thing?”

I made no answer. It gives me shame now to think that I would not help her.

She came near me and laid her hand on my shoulder. I put my hand up and held hers.

“I know people write and talk as if it were. Perhaps, for some, Fate lets it be. Ah, if I were one of them! But if love had been the only thing, you would have let the King die in his cell.”

I kissed her hand.

“Honour binds a woman too, Rudolf. My honour lies in being true to my country and my House. I don’t know why God has let me love you; but I know that I must stay.”

Still I said nothing; and she, pausing a while, then went on:

“Your ring will always be on my finger, your heart in my heart, the touch of your lips on mine. But you must go and I must stay. Perhaps I must do what it kills me to think of doing.”

I knew what she meant, and a shiver ran through me. But I could not utterly fail her. I rose and took her hand.

“Do what you will, or what you must,” I said. “I think God shows His purposes to such as you. My part is lighter; for your ring shall be on my finger and your heart in mine, and no touch save of your lips will ever be on mine. So, may God comfort you, my darling!”

There struck on our ears the sound of singing. The priests in the chapel were singing masses for the souls of those who lay dead. They seemed to chant a requiem over our buried joy, to pray forgiveness for our love that would not die. The soft, sweet, pitiful music rose and fell as we stood opposite one another, her hands in mine.

“My queen and my beauty!” said I.

“My lover and true knight!” she said. “Perhaps we shall never see one another again. Kiss me, my dear, and go!”

I kissed her as she bade me; but at the last she clung to me, whispering nothing but my name, and that over and over again--and again--and again; and then I left her.

Rapidly I walked down to the bridge. Sapt and Fritz were waiting for me. Under their directions I changed my dress, and muffling my face, as I had done more than once before, I mounted with them at the door of the Castle, and we three rode through the night and on to the breaking day, and found ourselves at a little roadside station just over the border of Ruritania. The train was not quite due, and I walked with them in a meadow by a little brook while we waited for it. They promised to send me all news; they overwhelmed me with kindness--even old Sapt was touched to gentleness, while Fritz was half unmanned. I listened in a kind of dream to all they said. “Rudolf! Rudolf! Rudolf!” still rang in my ears--a burden of sorrow and of love. At last they saw that I could not heed them, and we walked up and down in silence, till Fritz touched me on the arm, and I saw, a mile or more away, the blue smoke of the train. Then I held out a hand to each of them.

“We are all but half-men this morning,” said I, smiling. “But we have been men, eh, Sapt and Fritz, old friends? We have run a good course between us.”

“We have defeated traitors and set the King firm on his throne,” said Sapt.

Then Fritz von Tarlenheim suddenly, before I could discern his purpose or stay him, uncovered his head and bent as he used to do, and kissed my hand; and as I snatched it away, he said, trying to laugh:

“Heaven doesn’t always make the right men kings!”

Old Sapt twisted his mouth as he wrung my hand.

“The devil has his share in most things,” said he.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a book these days that teaches that there are more important things than love, eh?


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (A-)


Websites:

See also:

Classics
Anthony Hope Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Anthony Hope
    -WIKIPEDIA: THe Prisoner of Zenda
    -ENTRY: Anthony Hope (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: The Prisoner of Zenda (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Anthony Hope (Fantastic Fiction)
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-TRIBUTE SITE: The Ruritanian Resistance
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-INDEX: Hope, Anthony (Internet Archive)
    -VIDEO INDEX: “prisoner of zenda” (YouTube)
    -AUDIO INDEX: Anthony Hope (LibriVox)
    -ETEXTS: The Prisoner of Zenda (Project Gutenberg)
    -ETEXTS: Anthony Hope (Project Gutenberg)
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-AUDIO: The Prisoner of Zenda (LibriVox)
    -RADIO: Episode 349: 10 More Great Adventure Stories: The Prisoner of Zenda: Lux Radio Theatre (june 4, 1939) with Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Bonita Hume ( The Good Old Days of Radio)
    -FILM: Classic Cartoons || Prisoner of Zenda
    -RADIO: Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1992) starring Douglas Hodge (Mystical Magpie)
    -RADIO: Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1973) starring Julian Glover and Martin Jarvis (Mystical Magpie)
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-ESSAY: Nicholas Daly, “Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda (April, 1894) and the Rise of Ruritanian Fiction” (Nicholas Daly, Branch Collective)
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-STUDY GUIDE: The Prisoner of Zenda (New Book Recommendations)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Prisoner of Zenda (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Prisoner of Zenda (Study.com)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Prisoner of Zenda (Farhaj Dawood, Academia.com)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Prisoner of Zenda ()
    -REVIEW: Ridiculously honourable: Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda (Jo Walton, September 16, 2010, Reactor)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda: “The Prisoner of Zenda” by Anthony Hope: Escape From Cynicism (Sean Fitzpatrick, CERC)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Movies Silently)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Diary of an Autodidact)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Reading to Know)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Good Books for Catholic kids)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Iliyana Benina, Nikola Benin, World Literature)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (ImoReads)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (booklearned)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Idle Woman)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Edoardo Albert)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Matt Paust's Crime Time)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (English Plus Language Blog)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Books and Boots)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Nicky the Biblophilian)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (RPG.net)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (My Reader’s Block)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Worldly Obsessions)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Leah E. Good)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Sue’s Trifles)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Luminous Libro)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (Times uk)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (FictionFan’s Book Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (
    -REVIEW: of Prisoner of Zenda (

FILM:
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Anthony Hope (IMDB)
    -PODCAST: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) w/ Philip Womack (You're Missing Out: A National Film Registry Show)
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-WIKIPEDIA: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937 film)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) (IMDB)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) (Rotten Tomatoes)
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-SILENT FILM: The Prisoner Of Zenda (Rex Ingram) - 1922
    -FILM REVIEW:
   
-FILM REVIEW: Film in 1937: A Review and Christian Perspective of "The Prisoner of Zenda"--Action, Chivalry and Honor (Peter Veugelaers, hub Pages)
    -FILM REVIEW: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) (Kristin Battestella, I Think Therefoire I Review)
    -FILM REVIEW: Prisoner of Zenda (1937) (The Powell Blog))
    -FILM REVIEW: ' Prisoner of Zenda' Reappears at the Capitol Theatre With Stewart Granger in Title Role (Bosley Crowther, Nov. 5, 1952, NY Times)

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