Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Or a Mis-Spent Life is a four-act play written in 1897 by Luella Forepaugh and George F. Fish.

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.

In the second act, Inspector Newcomen shows Utterson part of the walking stick that Hyde used to kill Howell.

In the laboratory, Jekyll gives a monologue explaining that he can no longer find the ingredients for his potion and therefore will soon revert to Hyde, without the ability to transform back.

When Utterson and Poole come to the laboratory, Hyde commits suicide by drinking poison, declaring that he has also killed Jekyll.

The Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in 1885.

[3] Despite the opportunity to adapt without authorization, the actor Richard Mansfield secured permission for both the American and British stage rights in early 1887.

[4][5] A competing, unauthorized adaptation was written by John McKinney in collaboration with the actor Daniel E. Bandmann.

[8] In 1897, she and George F. Fish wrote a new adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the theater's company.

[9] It debuted at Forepaugh's on March 14, 1897, with the company's leading man, George Learock, in the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde.

[10] The debut was a matinée, with cinematograph images projected between the acts for the entertainment of children in the audience, and patrons were given souvenir copies of Stevenson's novella with their admission.

[11] Forepaugh and Fish married in 1899, and they decided to leave the theater to start the Luella Forepaugh-Fish Wild West Show, which opened in St. Louis, Missouri on April 17, 1903.

[16] Robert Louis Stevenson was not happy with any of the stage play adaptations, since he said they all added a sex angle to the story that was not in the original novel, which in fact featured no major female characters.

He called the plays "ugly" and said, "Hyde (was) no more sexual than another, but (was) the essence of cruelty and malice and selfishness and cowardice, and these are the diabolic in man....not this great wish to have a woman, that they make such a cry about."

[17] The 1908 silent movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a filmed theatrical performance of an abbreviated version of the 1897 play by Forepaugh and Fish.