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CAPTAIN_BLOOD

                                             October 2007


Rafael Sabatini - "Captain Blood" (1922)

      Sabatini was in fine form on
      this swashbuckler about a              TREASON_FACTORY
      reluctant pirate -- a
      physician accused of treating      There's many a touch of
      a rebel, transported to            wise philosophy and
      Barbados to become a slave         plausible psychology
      until his escape schemes are       here... but the quote
      interupted by an attack by         that catches my
      Spanish pirates -- whose ship      attention:
      he and his gang of escaping
      slaves then seize...                  "As for mademoiselle, she
                                            had risen, and was leaning
                                            forward, a hand pressed
                                            tightly to her heaving
                                            breast, her face deathly
                                            pale, a wild terror in her
                                            eyes."

                                            p. 135, Ch. XV "The Ransom"


                                         That was back in 1922.
                                         The heaving bossoms of the
                                         bodice-ripper became a
                                         figure of fun by the
                                         fifties or so... what's
                                         the history of this motif?
                                         Is this an early example?
                                         Was it well-established
                                         already?

                                            A true scholarship of
                                            popular fiction would
                                            include a study of
                                            such tropes...

                                            The heaving breast;
                                            The disembodied hand;
                                            The "injury-to-the-eye motif"...


   Rafael Sabatini
   "The Fortunes of Captain Blood" (1936)

       These are short stories that appear
       to lie chronologically in the middle
       of the earlier novel "Captain Blood".


As I remember it, there is a
passage in the novel that goes
"And then he had many other
adventures, of which we have       It would be
no space to relate".               interesting if
                                   Sabatini had
                                   this planned out    Maybe some of
                                   in advance.         the stories were
                                                       were written first?


                                               There would be
                                               problems with doing
                                               a straight sequel to
                                               the novel, since it
                                               essentially ends
                                               with Blood settling
                                               down with The Woman.




           This 1962 popular
           library edition claims:

           "Sabatini's works are credited with
           being almost soley responsible for
           the rebirth of the historical novel."

                 That's news to me, but
                 I'll believe it, being
                 a credulous fellow.

                 The film version of Captain Blood
                 (Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland)
                 was a pretty early talky, as I
                 remember it.

                 Not quite the first of
                 the swashbucklers, of
                 course: there's Douglas
                 Fairbanks' "Zorro"...


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