Forgive & Forget

JEKYLL: I thought you quarreled with Aunt Rose.

POOLE: So I did, sir. And Aunt Rose, she was spiteful, that’s a fact. But you know what they say, sir: too err is human to forgive is divine. So I forgive her.

This interchange takes place right before Jekyll’s first transformation into Hyde. Do you think that this proverb, “to err is human to forgive is divine”, can be applied to Jekyll and his “relationship” with Hyde and himself? If not, what other character in the play could it be attached to and why?

Child’s Play

HYDE: Not fair. You’ve barely given me a breath of this air, and now you want me to go back inside. NOT FAIR!

JEKYLL: Don’t be childish, Mr. Hyde. I’m in control here. I’m giving the orders. Do as I say. Pick it up!

What would happen if you put a child inside of an adult’s body with adult desires and capabilities? What are the consequences of a person with no sense of right and wrong?

Mutation

JEKYLL: “First I was a mineral, then vegetable,
Then animal; at last, I have become man;
What I shall be next . . . you cannot imagine.”

Another translation of this work by Persian Poet Maulana Jalal ud-Din Rumi reads:

“ I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as a plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was less by dying?”

What do you think the poet is saying in his work? Why does the playwright use these words as Jekyll’s battle cry upon entering his experimentation?

Drug Addict

NEWCOMEN: He took the red potion almost every night that summer. In the beginning it was simply a game, an amusement for an overworked doctor. Soon it became a way of life.

JEKYLL: I’m only a tiny bit aware of what goes on when he’s in control! It’s as if I’m half awake and half dreaming. But even so, the excitement, the freedom!

LANYON: Freedom! Don’t mistake the symptoms for the disease, Henry. Can’t you see that you’re becoming addicted to this drug?

JEKYLL: (Laughs.) No!

LANYON: Whatever it is, if you crave it, it’s no different from an addiction to morphine or opium or this monstrous coffee!

Do you agree with Lanyon that Jekyll’s behavior is like that of a drug addict? If so, list examples from the play of Jekyll’s addictive nature? How do they affect his life and the lives of those he cares about?

The Missing Link

JEKYLL: This was to take me . . . beyond the stars. Instead I plummet to the bottom of the evolutionary scale. Primal man, more beast than man. But so free. So exhilaratingly free . . . Not the least like me.

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, twenty-seven years before Robert Louis Stevenson published Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Do you think Darwin’s theories may have influenced Stevenson in his creation.? What sort of comparison’s can you draw between Darwin’s theories and Jekyll’s experiments?

Back to Top