Ivah Wills Coburn

(1882-1937) Ivah Wills was co-founder in 1905 of the Coburn Shakespearean Players with Charles Coburn, whom she married the following year in 1905. They performed together, primarily in the plays of Shakespeare, for many years until her death in 1937 due to heart disease.Read more

Arthur Bourchier

(1863-1927) Arthur Bourchier was born in 1863; he attended Oxford University, where through the Oxford University Drama Society he first became interested in the theatre and Shakespeare. His first professional performance in 1889 was in Wolverhampton as Jaques in As You Like It; at the time he was performing with the company of Lillie Langtry. Bourchier acted in dozens of plays besides his regular roles in Shakespeare, and he played every season; he was still acting as late as 1924,Read more

Eric Blind

(? – 1916) Eric Blind’s obituary in the New York Times is a simple announcement that he died on New Year’s Eve, 1916. He is mentioned in passing in a number of reviews in the Times, but he seems to have played few important or memorable roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Here, he is represented as Posthumus in Cymbeline.Read more

Lily Brayton

(1876-1953) Elizabeth “Lily” Brayton was born in England on June 23, 1876. She made her first stage appearance in 1896 with Frank Benson’s company in Richard II (see anecdote below). She remained with the troupe for some time, so as a “Bensonian” she played many roles in the plays of Shakespeare, appearing several seasons in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Her last appearance on the stage was as Portia in Julius Caesar. She married fellow actor Oscar Asche in 1898 and theyRead more

Oscar Asche

(1871-1936) John Oscar Asche was born in Australia and first appeared on stage in 1893; his resonant voice and his dignified, formal bearing are often mentioned in the reviews of his performances. For eight years he was a member of Sir Frank Benson’s company with whom he played at the summer Stratford festivals. He then he joined the company of Sir Beerbohm Tree in 1902. After leaving Tree’s company he began to manage his own theatre group, eventually touring AustraliaRead more

Henry Ainley

(1879-1945) Henry Ainley was born in Leeds on August 21, 1879. He acted in literally hundreds of productions, but he began his career as an amateur. He joined Frank Benson‘s company and made his debut as a messenger in Macbeth. He later played with Herbert Beerbohm Tree‘s company as well. He played major parts in many Shakespeare plays, beginning with Henry V in 1900 and ending with As You Like it in 1936. He played Hamlet in 1930 at the Haymarket Theatre,Read more

Maude Fealy

(1883-1971) Maude Fealy was born Maude Hawk; her mother divorced Hawk and took her maiden name. Maude was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 4, 1883 (some sources give the year 1886). Her first stage appearance when she was four was as an angel in Faust and Marguerite with her mother, Margaret Fealy, playing Marguerite. In her early years she played Juliet, and the producer Augustin Daly saw her perform the part when she was fourteen and invited her toRead more

Charles Doran

(1877-1964) Like so many actors who played Shakespeare, Irish-born Doran made his stage debut with Frank Benson in Belfast’s Theatre Royale in 1899; he had a part in Julius Caesar. The next year, 1900, again with Benson’s company, he first appeared in London at the Lyceum as MacMorris in Henry V. He played with Benson, doing mainly Shakespeare, until he left in 1903 to perform with several different companies. In 1906, he made his first trip to the US withRead more

Gertrude Elliott

(1874-1950) Mary Gertrude Elliott (or Dermot), an American-born actress, first appeared on stage in 1894 when she was twenty. In 1899, she joined Nat Goodwin’s English company, where she met and a year later married the noted Shakespearean actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. From that time on she toured with her husband as his leading lady in many of Shakespeare’s plays, notably Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and Bernard Shaw’s Caesar & Cleopatra. In 1908, her sister, Maxine, also a famous actress, built herRead more

Constance Collier

(1878-1955) Collier was only three when she made her stage debut in 1881 as Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She was once a show girl—one of the popular “Gaiety Girls”—but she wanted to play more serious parts, so she joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s company and started playing in most of his important productions, many of them Shakespeare’s plays, from 1901 until 1908. This was fitting for Collier as she was notably tall and complimented the equally tall Beerbohm Tree.Read more