Richard Mansfield’s Impact as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Richard Mansfield’s Impact as Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

      In the latter part of the 1800’s, 1887 to be exact, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published.  The following year, Richard Mansfield and his writing partner created a stage adaptation and decided to take it to London to be performed.  This performance forever changed how audiences viewed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as characters and how they perceived the world around them, especially regarding Jack the Ripper, whose infamy began around the same time as the Mansfield’s play gained popularity.  The play was not, however, the only catalyst in this social phenomenon.  Commencing the controversy surrounding the stage adaptation was one double-exposure photograph of Mansfield as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde concurrently.

To begin, double exposure photography exhibited the technological advancements occurring at this time.  It seemed to Mansfield an ideal depiction of his role, showing two personalities borne from the same physical being.  Thus, he went to a photoshoot to advertise his play and his role because he loved the attention that came with it and wanted people to recognize him as a world-renown actor – as a celebrity (Dahanay 57).  However, shortly after this photograph hit the main stream, people became skeptical of Mansfield’s acting ability and accused him of using technology in his shows to make his transformation more believable.  Mansfield adamantly refuted these claims and instead focused on his acting skills, specifically control of his body, as Martin Danahay explains:

While it is tempting to view this photograph as part of the history of early film special effects, such a reading occludes the importance of the body in Mansfield’s acting.  Mansfield in his performances had closer affiliations with contortionists such as Harry Houdini than with cinema technology in that his acting depended on his control of his body and face to effect the live transformation from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde.  The ghostly presence of Mr Hyde in the double exposure photograph dematerialises Mansfield’s body and actually subverts what he himself stressed about his performance in interviews, namely the physical skill involved in his instantaneous change [See Figure 1] from the upright, respectable Dr Jekyll into the stooped, violent and malevolent Mr Hyde.  The only technological aid that Mansfield used in this performance was special lighting that illuminated his face differently when he was performing the role of Hyde; otherwise, the transformation was entirely due to his skill as an actor. (55)

This statement addresses a few notable characteristics of Mansfield and others who have influenced his acting for the role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  He mentions Harry Houdini, a contortionist, and the special effects or lack thereof that is used in the transformation.  Mansfield did not have to use any technological aid because he modeled his acting on Houdini’s contortions, thus deeming technological aid unnecessary.  In order to prove to his audiences that he was not using technological aid, Mansfield went on interviews in which he discussed his method of transformation – quick changes.  He is described as a quick-change artist.  The manager of the Lyceum Theatre, E. D. Price, also wrote a letter to a newspaper confirming that no technological aid was used during performances, except for a different lighting when Mansfield played Mr. Hyde, if that even counted at technological aid (Dahanay 58-59).  Although these statements highlighted the controversy surrounding Mansfield’s acting, they gave the play publicity and notoriety throughout London, so audiences would want to see it for themselves.

In addition to so many people questioning the integrity of the stage performance, audiences who saw the photo may have thought it to be magic.  People at this time thought that photography of this nature was meant to deceive those looking at it and created a sensation around the technology now so close at hand: “For performers like Mansfield, the proliferation of visual technology posed problems for their live performances by casting doubts on whether they were using tricks or prosthetics to create the effects in their performances rather than relying on their own bodily skills” (Dahanay 58).  Magic, then, was beginning to be undermined by the introduction of photographs such as this double exposure, which made people expect technological intervention in the live performances of not just Mansfield but also Houdini and other contemporary actors and magicians.  However, when Mansfield defended his craft and tried to prove that no technological aid of any kind was used, the audience’s reaction was entirely altered.

Subsequently, when the Jack the Ripper murders came to the forefront of London news, merely a few weeks after Mansfield’s stage adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debuted, Mansfield’s portrayal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde brought new fears to the minds of his audiences.  It showed that Mr. Hyde is human with an evil core, whereas the original novella describes him as ape-like, simian, and atavistic (Winter 177-178).  Mansfield’s portrayal, though, demonstrated that a man could wholly transform in the matter of minutes from respectable to beastly, without the help of any devices.  He depicted two parts of the same whole, a linked duality that the audience found eerily fascinating.  Consequently, people watching Mansfield’s play were enthralled by the idea that Jack the Ripper could do the same thing.  Coupled with the emerging theories on psychology, the idea that someone’s conscious mind could be completely opposite from their unconscious mind sent London theatre-goers into a frenzy: “The stage plot’s emphasis on violent tendencies lurking beneath outward propriety illustrates a collapse between life and art, as the melodrama played a dynamic role in fueling public perceptions of the Ripper as a murderer concealed by a guise of respectability” (Winter 176).  The theory grew even more plausible when people started to think that Jack the Ripper had medical knowledge, which parallel’s Dr. Jekyll.

With the suspects and case unfolding, people in attendance of Mansfield’s play began to have visceral reactions to his transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.  They essentially thought that he was the real murderer, even though he was only playing the role of someone with split personalities, a concept that was further considered in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: “Once the murders had begun, the amalgamation of real fear with theatrical terror not only made the audience more open to the concept of a split personality but also affectively primed them” (Winter 187).  Women fainted in the theater, and men were afraid to walk home alone because of the fear they experienced while watching this now incredibly realistic and unnerving transformation of a respectable man into a beastly terror.  One person even sent an anonymous letter to the police regarding Mansfield as Jack the Ripper: “In early October, the Ripper was believed to be literally within the theatre, as an anonymous letter was sent to the police on 5 October claiming that Mansfield’s convincing portrayal of the dual figure was too real, and therefore he or she could not dispel suspicions that he was the Ripper” (Winter 188).  It was becoming too difficult for the audience to separate the actor and characters from the hidden presence in London.  Mansfield was the only real taste of this kind of internal monster that they had yet come across.

Furthermore, there was an attempt to normalize the Ripper in news stories.  This occurred when a news report painted the Ripper as a man with a significant other, much like the stage adaptation’s love story between Jekyll and Agnes (but which did not occur in the novella), to again create a more humane picture of the Ripper (Winter 185).  Winter faults the stage adaptation for this forced depiction of the murderer on London’s streets: “Therefore the newspapers’ growing tendency to make the Ripper seem more of an ordinary, respectable citizen, rather than a monstrous and savage criminal, was directly shaped by the melodrama and its toned-down simian imagery” (185).  While the stage adaptation attempted to make Hyde’s character more relatable to the average person going to see it, it is also the cause for the connection between the Ripper and Hyde becoming more irreversibly bonded.  Winter may argue that if the original text’s imagery was kept, none of these links would have been made because Hyde would still seem abstract, and Victorian London probably would not have seen a vicious killer like Jack the Ripper as a respectable man most of the time with a split personality.

Because of the publicity of both the play and the murders, people could not separate reality from fiction, especially when it was so close to them.  When they saw the photograph, however, and the idea of a man with split personalities was just an abstract one, they felt that it was nothing more than an exhibition of the newest technology and that no man could possibly have changed his appearance and demeanor so completely in such a short amount of time and without any aid.  It was too distant from them, almost like a moment of science fiction – new technology informing the current times.  It only took the perfect storm to change the audience’s perception and impact two separate yet seemingly interwoven stories forever.

Mansfield’s Testimonial

To the people and police of London:

I, Richard Mansfield, formally renounce the claims that I am Jack the Ripper.  Throughout years of practice, I have produced in myself a formidable player and have prided myself on the difficult roles I have played.  My role as the transforming Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is just one more role that has improved my acting abilities through necessity.  In order to transform from respectable doctor into an animal, I must use my whole body, mind, and soul; I cannot only use one-third of this indominable trio.  If I did not use every singular skill and part of my body advantageously in this transformation, it would not be believable, and thus no one person in the audience would appreciate my efforts.  I would not even appreciate my efforts, in this case.

As aforementioned, I would like to reiterate my innocence in the Whitechapel murders.  During these goings on, I have been in the theatre creating the transformation from which people now believe me to be all of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and myself, Richard Mansfield.  Even if this were possible, in no way has my acting implied that I can be in two or more places at once, even if I seem to be more than one person.  Accordingly, I could not have committed the murders and concurrently acting in the playhouse.  Therefore, I would appreciate it if these rumors of my actions and intentions would be put to an end.  I am just a man trying to make my way in my craft.  I do not wish, and never would, harm any persons in my path.

Yours Most Sincerely,

Richard Mansfield

Works Cited

Danahay, Martin.  “Richard Mansfield, Jekyll and Hyde and the History of Special Effects.”  Nineteenth
Century Theatre and Film, vol. 39, no. 2, 2012, pp. 54-72.

Van der Weyde, Henry.  Mr. Mansfield.  1895.  The American Museum of Photography,https://www.photographymuseum.com/jekyll.html.  Accessed 6 October 2017.

Winter, Sarah A. “’Two and the Same’: Jack the Ripper and The Melodramatic Stage Adaptation of Strange Case of
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.”  Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, vol. 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 174-194.