A Sentence of Sorts

The Pseudoscientists, Act II, scene 3: Hyde and Frankenstein Have Words

(Summary: Hyde’s night out is derailed when he runs into Frankenstein, who is making an escape attempt. Frankenstein convinces Hyde to accompany him on a graverobbing outing, and the two get to talking.)

The weak-willed Jekyll gives in, and soon Hyde is racing to the rooftops to begin his nightly adventure. There’s a bit of a drizzle coming down, but he’s so eager for a night out that he hardly notices. But before he can go, he notices Frankenstein trying to sneak out of his attic window.The Creature is asleep and there is no one left to stop him. Hyde is torn: the idea of wasting even a minute of his precious night out to watch after Victor is terrible to him. (Not to mention, he would be forced to carry out Dr. Jekyll’s wishes, and he had become fed up with Jekyll entirely.) On the other hand, he had a funny fascination with Frankenstein and it would not do if he fell to his death. Grudgingly, he goes to confront Frankenstein.

He blocks Frankenstein from leaving, but Victor persists. To his irritation, Hyde finds he has to waste more and more time keeping him inside and can’t seem to convince him to stay put. Frankenstein begins to question Hyde–he doesn’t SEEM like a rule-obsessed idiot like Jekyll is, so why is he going to so much trouble to follow Jekyll’s orders?

At first Hyde is merely annoyed by this: after all, there is a VERY good reason why he and Jekyll might want the same thing now and again—he just can’t explain it to anyone because it would blow his whole identity. But when he stops to think about it, why DOES he have to do what Jekyll wants him to do? In the past, Jekyll had never intruded into Hyde’s private world, but now … things were different. And if Jekyll wasn’t going to play by the rules, why should he?

Frankenstein then tempts him by telling him about his nightly plans: he’s going to do a bit of window shopping at the local graveyard. He’s looking for an eye of a particular blue hue. Hyde can’t resist the morbid whimsy of grave-robbing and gives in. 

——————————-

Frankenstein begins wobbling off towards the graveyard, straight through the middle of the street. Hyde pulls him back: Frankenstein may have been asleep for the police fiasco last night, so he might not recall that Hyde isn’t exactly a welcome presence in London tonight. They duck behind a building just in time to avoid a passing officer turning the corner. 

Frankenstein asks Hyde what happened to him, and Hyde explains in brief about how (according to him) he saved the Creature’s skin. Frankenstein seems pleased with this: How nice of you to help him! 

Hyde wrinkles his nose at him. “Help him? No! I attacked a madman with a gun and won. There’s a difference.” Frankenstein nods slowly.

Hyde wants Frankenstein to cross London via the rooftops, like he does. When Frankenstein tries to climb, however, it becomes obvious that the last of his daredevil energies were spent on getting out of the window. Stringing him along becomes so tiresome that Hyde decides it would be easier to go along the narrow alleyways instead. 

The trouble here is that Hyde doesn’t know the alleyways so well. He’s spent the last few months of his existence learning the coolest-looking way to get around the city, but the alleyways are practically new territory to him. He can intuit the correct route through a basic sense of direction, but the going is still awkward. Hyde becomes irritated.

Casually Frankenstein points out that Hyde doesn’t quite seem to know where he’s going. Hyde rounds on him angrily, of course, but Frankenstein seems unfazed. He thinks it is odd that Hyde wouldn’t know the alleyways well, since he looks the sort of person who had grown up in and around these grimy streets. “The … vhat is zhe English vord? A city urchin?" 

Hyde snaps that that is definitely not the right word. When he himself can’t come up with the exact correct term (something akin to street urchin, but that’s not quite it either), he replies, "Nevermind. Do you even know English that well? It’s, what, your fourth language?”

“Bien sur!" 

Hyde rolls his eyes and mutters something about "bloody Romantics!”.

As they are walking there, the drizzle turns into a much harder rain, and the both of them get soaked. Unfortunately both of them are far too stubborn to stop, even when Frankenstein begins hacking and wheezing terribly.

———————————-

They turn a corner and Hyde lets out a triumphant cackle. They have found the graveyard! After peering out of the alley to check that the coast is clear, the two of them  enter. Frankenstein takes the lead, and he seems to be looking for something.

His search has a certain rambling quality to it, and Hyde quickly becomes bored, despite the allure of grave-robbing. He asks Frankenstein if this is what he’s been doing with this life, bumbling through the countryside. He always imagined something more interesting. Frankenstein admonishes him: life is not all excitement, even for a graverobbing scientist!

Hyde asks, “What do you want this eye for, anyway?" 

Frankenstein replies that an eye is a wondrous thing to study! He hopes to learn all he can about the marvelous human form. Hyde is disappointed in this. He’s not going to make a monster or anything even remotely interesting with it? 

Frankenstein says that he already made a monster, when he was young and foolish. He knows better now than to tamper with creating life, and he has moved on to better things. Hyde rolls his eyes.

He then gets to asking Frankenstein how it is he has survived this long. "The last I heard, from Jekyll, was you being torn away by the Creature, who was a lot more …” He feigns the classic Frankenstein’s-Monster pose. “… than I remember. Hearing." 

Frankenstein confirms that yes, he and the Creature used to hate each other very much! Hyde says he is sure the Creature had some good reason for hating Frankenstein. "Maybe he didn’t like having to follow all the rules of regular people. Maybe he didn’t like being told what to do all the time!”

Calmly, Frankenstein agrees with him. But after their encounter in the arctic, and being forced to live together for so long, they came to a kind of truce, and then to a kind of friendship. It is funny, he says, how two creatures so different can, in fact, have so much in common.

Hyde doesn’t like that answer at all. They are polar opposites! How could they have anything in common? Frankenstein asks him if he is sure. Hyde says yes.

They reach a suitable grave and Frankenstein begins digging … only to pass out cold in the ditch he digs. In the distance, guard dogs are heard: okay, so maybe this wasn’t the best idea in the world. Hyde bolts, and we hard cut to …