The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
This book preview is from another edition of this book.
From Jenny Davidson’s Introduction to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
is at once a sharply conceived allegory about the psychological costs
of living the respectable life and a thrilling page-turner as compelling
as anything written by such modern masters of horror as Clive Barker
and Stephen King. Published in January 1886, Stevenson’s story quickly
became a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.
The
American actor-manager Richard Mansfield purchased the copyright to
Stevenson’s novella with the goal of maintaining exclusive rights for
theatrical adaptation, but the copyright laws failed to prevent a host
of other impresarios from mounting competing productions; one producer
touring in New England advertised that
his Mr. Hyde was so
terrifying that he had to be kept chained in a boxcar on the way to the
theater. Though the text of the adaptation, by playwright Thomas Russell
Sullivan, would seem dated and melodramatic to modern readers—as does
the trick photograph in which Mansfield’s Hyde crouches behind his
Jekyll, ready to spring—the actor’s performance brought to life for his
contemporaries all the most terrifying aspects of Stevenson’s story.
First acted at the Boston Museum on May 9, 1887, as Mansfield’s
biographer Paul Wilstach recounts,
Jekyll and Hyde had immensely
powerful effects on its audience: “Strong men shuddered and women
fainted and were carried out of the theatre. . . . People went away from
‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ afraid to enter their houses alone. They
feared to sleep in darkened rooms. They were awakened by nightmare. Yet
it had the fascination of crime and mystery, and they came again and
again” (
Richard Mansfield, the Man and the Actor, pp. 146–147; see “For Further Reading”).
Spectators found it difficult to believe that Mansfield transformed
himself without chemical assistance, and he was charged with using
acids, phosphorus, or even an inflatable rubber suit to facilitate the
transformation from Jekyll to Hyde. The truth of the matter, Wilstach
goes on to say, was that “his only change was in the muscles of his
face, the tones of his yielding voice, and the posture of his body” (pp.
147–148). The account of Mansfield’s friend and fellow actor De Wolf
Hopper confirms the effectiveness of the performance. As the two men sat
one evening in a darkened room at the Continental Hotel in
Philadelphia, Hopper asked Mansfield what he did and how he did it:
“‘And then and there, only four feet away, under the green light, as
that booming clock struck the hour—he did it—changed to Hyde before my
very eyes—and I remember that I, startled to pieces, jumped up and cried
that I’d ring the bell if he didn’t stop!’” (Wilstach, p. 155).
The great Victorian actor Henry Irving soon invited Mansfield to bring his production to the Lyceum Theatre in London, and
Jekyll and Hyde
opened there on August 4, 1888. On the last day of August, however, an
event took place that would transform the significance of Mansfield’s
production and, indeed, of Stevenson’s story as well. The mutilated
corpse of a prostitute was discovered in the East End of London, the
first in a series of five or more murders attributed to the terrifying
figure who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper. The Ripper cut his
victims’ throats, sliced open their torsos, and removed their organs;
he was suspected of having trained as either a butcher or a medical man.
As subsequent bodies were discovered, London went wild with fear.
Reporters drew public attention to the extraordinary poverty and squalor
of Whitechapel in the East End, where most of the murders took place,
and pointed to the hypocrisy of a society that allowed such
neighborhoods to exist in the face of the nation’s great prosperity,
thereby encouraging the emergence of a monster like the Ripper. Amid
riots and public frenzies, many citizens wrote letters to the newspapers
and the police suggesting precautions that might be taken to prevent
more murders. These suggestions ranged from providing better street
lighting and giving policemen whistles as a rapid warning system, to
arming prostitutes with revolvers, or even dressing up police officers
as prostitutes and protecting their throats and torsos with metal
corsets, perhaps attached to batteries that would electrocute the unwary
attacker. Many of these letters singled out prominent members of
society as suspects in the Ripper murders. At the peak of the frenzy the
police received more than a thousand letters a week, and the actor
Richard Mansfield was among those charged with being responsible for the
Whitechapel murders. As Donald Rumbelow relates in his history of the
crimes, “The writer accusing Mansfield had not been able to rest for a
day and a night after seeing the performance, claiming that no man could
disguise himself so well and that, since Mansfield worked himself up to
such a frenzy on stage, he probably did the real life murders too” (
The Complete Jack the Ripper, p. 124).