The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau

by Hope, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780140437553
• ISBN10: 014043755X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Best known for his political fairy tale, The Prisoner of Zenda, which saw many screen adaptations, including the acclaimed 1937 film starring Ronald Colman, Anthony Hope captured a wide popular and critical audience throughout his lifetime.Regarded by many critics as the finest adventure story ever written -- and certainly one of the most popular -- The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) tells the story of Rudolf Rassendyl, a dashing English gentleman who bears an uncanny resemblance to the ruler of the fictional kingdom of Ruritania. Rassendyl masquerades as the king in order to save the country from a treacherous plot and secures the release of a wronged prisoner. In the process he wins the heart of the beautiful princess Flavia, but ultimately surrenders the crown and the hand of his beloved princess to the rightful ruler. Rupert of Hentzau, which ends in tragedy not triumph, is the darker sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda. Full of humor and swashbuckling feats of heroism, the tales also contain, within their narrative structures and characterizations, a brilliant satire on late-nineteenth-century European politics.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Suggestions for Further Reading	xxv
A Note on the Text	xxvii
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Rassendylls---with a Word on the Elpbbergs	3	(6)
Concerning the Colour of Men's Hair	9	(7)
A Merry Evening with a Distant Relative	16	(8)
The King Keeps His Appointment	24	(6)
The Adventures of an Understudy	30	(7)
The Secret of a Cellar	37	(7)
His Majesty Sleeps in Strelsau	44	(7)
A Fair Cousin and a Dark Brother	51	(8)
A New Use for a Tea Table	59	(8)
A Great Chance for a Villain	67	(7)
Hunting a Very Big Boar	74	(7)
I Receive a Visitor and Bait a Hook	81	(7)
An Improvement on Jacob's Ladder	88	(7)
A Night Outside the Castle	95	(6)
I Talk With a Tempter	101	(7)
A Desperate Plan	108	(7)
Young Rupert's Midnight Diversions	115	(6)
The Forcing of the Trap	121	(6)
Face to Face in the Forest	127	(6)
The Prisoner and the King	133	(7)
If Love Were All!	140	(7)
Present, Past---and Future?	147	(8)
Rupert of Hentzau
The Queen's Good-Bye	155	(10)
A Station Without a Cab	165	(9)
Again to Zenda	174	(10)
An Eddy on the Moat	184	(11)
An Audience of the King	195	(12)
The Task of the Queen's Servants	207	(11)
The Message of Simon the Huntsman	218	(11)
The Temper of Boris the Hound	229	(10)
The King in the Hunting-Lodge	239	(11)
The King in Strelsau	250	(12)
What the Chancellor's Wife Saw	262	(10)
Before Them All!	272	(9)
A King Up His Sleeve	281	(10)
The News Comes to Strelsau	291	(10)
A Pastime for Colonel Sapt	301	(11)
A Crowd in the Konigstrasse	312	(10)
Young Rupert and the Play-Actor	322	(11)
The Triumph of the King	333	(11)
For Our Love and Her Honour!	344	(12)
The Decision of Heaven	356	(12)
The Coming of the Dream	368