Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a four-act play written by John McKinney in collaboration with the actor Daniel E. Bandmann. It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on Henry Jekyll, a respected London doctor, and his involvement with Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. After Hyde murders a vicar, Jekyll's friends suspect he is helping the killer, but the truth is that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. Jekyll has developed a potion that allows him to transform himself into Hyde and back again. When he runs out of the potion, he is trapped in his Hyde form and commits suicide before he can be arrested. The play debuted on Broadway in March 1888. The adaptation was not authorized by Stevenson, but copyright law in the United States allowed Bandmann to produce the adaptation without permission. In August, Bandmann took the play to London, where it was in direct competition with an authorized adaptation, also using the title Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, written by Thomas Russell Sullivan and starring Richard Mansfield. Both plays opened in London in August 1888, but Bandmann's production was quickly closed due to legal action by Stevenson's publisher. Plot In the first act, attorney J. G. Utterson is at a London vicarage, talking to the vicar, Reverend William Howell. Howell relates a story about how he intervened when he saw a boy being beaten by a man named Edward Hyde. Utterson is dismayed to hear the name Edward Hyde. After the vicar leaves, Utterson speaks with Dr. Lanyon, then with Dr. Henry Jekyll, who lives next door to the vicarage. After Jekyll and Utterson leave, Lanyon speaks to the vicar's daughter, Sybil Howell, who admits to being in love with Jekyll. Sybil sees that Lanyon does not approve, and she asks Jekyll about it when he returns. He says she would not understand, and begins talking about the dual presence of good and evil in men. Suddenly, Jekyll feels that a "change is approaching", and runs into the shadows. Edward Hyde emerges from the shadows and menaces Sybil. She calls for her father, who enters and is immediately attacked and murdered by Hyde. Hyde runs away; Jekyll returns and asks who has attacked them. With his dying breath, the vicar says it was Hyde.