Richard Mansfield

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Mansfield was best known as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, appearing on stage in the dual role in both London and New York, beginning just one year after the book was first published.

Richard Mansfield (1857-1907) was an American actor who was born on May 24 1857, in Berlin. His mother was Madame Rudersdorff (1822-1882), the singer, and his father, Maurice Mansfield (d. 1861), a London wine merchant. He first appeared on the stage at St Georges Hall, London, and then drifted into light opera, playing the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance, and the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, both in the English provinces and in America. In 1883 he joined AM. Palmers Union Square theatre company in New York, and made a great hit as Baron Chevrial in A Parisian Romance. He appeared successfully in several plays adapted from well-known stories, and his rendering (1887) of the doubled title-parts in T. Russell Sullivan's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, based on R.L. Stevenson's novella of the same name, created a profound impression. It was with this play that he made his London reputation during a season (1888) at the Lyceum Theatre, by invitation of Henry Irving. He produced the play Richard III the next year, at the Globe Theatre. Among his other chief successes were Prince Karl, Cyrano de Bergerac and Monsieur Beaucaire. He was one of the earliest to produce G. Bernard Shaws plays in America, appearing in 1894 as Bluntschli in Arms and the Man, and as Dick Dudgeon in The Devils Disciple in 1897. As a manager and producer of plays Mansfield was remarkable for his lavish staging. He died in New London, Connecticut, of cancer on August 30, 1907.

Trivia

Mansfield was preforming in Jekyll and Hyde in London during the time Jack the Ripper was murdering prostitutes. One frightened theater-goer wrote to the police accusing Mansfield because he could not believe that any actor could act so realisticly without being homicidal.

References

External links

[Biography of Richard Mansfield]

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