Born in London, Julia Neilson spent her early years studying in Germany before enrolling in the Royal Academy of Music and earning prize after prize for her singing abilities. On March 21, 1888, she made her first stage appearance at the Lyceum Theatre in W.S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea in the role of Cynisca. A few months later, she moved up to the lead role of Galatea opposite Lewis Waller. Soon, she began performing and touring with Beerbohm Tree, who introduced her to Shakespeare through his production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. She continued to work under Tree’s guidance at the Haymarket Theatre, honing her craft and renown as an acclaimed tragedienne. In 1890, she met and married fellow actor Fred Terry who was also working at the Haymarket, and came from a famous acting family. Together, in their five years in Tree’s company, they performed in a variety of plays, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In 1892, Neilson and Terry welcomed a daughter, Phyllis, into the world, who herself would grow up to become an accomplished actor in her own right. Later in life, both she and Phyllis would appear on stage several times together. Their second child, Dennis, also an actor-to-be, was both in 1895. After much success in England and in New York, Neilson and Terry performed as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing and she played, to much acclaim, Rosalind in As You Like It, both staged at the St. James’s Theatre in London in 1898. Neilson was known for her statuesque figure and expressive voice. In 1899, she returned to Tree’s company, now at Her Majesty’s Theatre, to play the role of Lady Constance in King John, and appeared in the short, early silent film version of this play. With this second stint with Tree, Neilson also appeared as Oberon in the 1900 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then again as Rosalind in As You Like It.

After 1905, she devoted much of her time to theater management. From 1900, she and her husband managed the Haymarket Theatre for over twenty-seven years and led successful annual seasons at the New Theatre in London between 1905 and 1913. Neilson retired from the stage in 1934, a year after Fred’s death and two years after the untimely death of her son Dennis. She was honored in 1934 with a celebratory luncheon to honor the fiftieth anniversary of her stage debut. Neilson passed away after a fall at her home in London in 1957. Both she and Fred are buried at Hampstead Cemetery in London.

Neilson is connected to many of the famous names in the acting community. Her cousins include Eileen and Nora Kerin and a young John Gielgud, and through her marriage to Fred, she became sister to Ellen and Kate Terry, and aunt of such figures as Edith and Edward Gordon Craig.

William Haviland began his long association with Shakespeare in 1882 when he joined the company of Sir Henry Irving; until he left Irving in 1895, he performed a number of parts, major and minor, in the thirteen years he played and toured with Irving. After a tour in South Africa, he joined Johnston Forbes-Robertson and then Martin Harvey for his sixth tour of America in 1902.

In 1903 he joined Beerbohm Tree’s company and remained with him until 1905; he returned to South Africa with Tree for his fourth tour. His countless parts in practically all of Shakespeare’s plays ended in a 1913 Dublin production of Richard II with Tree. With all his credits in the major companies of the period it is small wonder that he listed among his recreations “rehearsing.”

Some of these actors have simply disappeared from view. The only piece of information that Shakespeare & the Players could discover about Hamelin was that he was a character actor in films; even the date of his birth was difficult to track down.

Miss Keane was born in Michigan and moved to London in 1907 to continue her career. She acted a part in Shakespeare only once: she played Juliet in 1919 at the Lyric Theatre in London. The production was a good one with Dame Ellen Terry as the Nurse and Basil Sydney as Romeo; the play had a run of seventy-three performances, but Miss Keane had no need to depend on Shakespeare for a living and several smash hits kept her quite busy. She married Syndey in 1918, only to divorce in 1925.

When Keane played Margherita Cavallini in Edward Sheldon’s play Romance, she was instantly elevated to stardom. When she took Romance to London in 1915, the play ran for an astounding 1,049 performances. The story is a fairly simple one. Thomas Armstrong (played by Owen Nares) is first the rector of St. Giles in New York. Forty years later, when he is Bishop, he looks back upon his love for the opera singer, Mme. Cavallini. The audiences seemed never to tire of this romantic play nor Miss Keane’s performance. It was revived in 1921, 1926, and 1927.

Lohr was four years old when she first appeared on stage in her birthplace of Sydney, Australia. Her family moved to England, and she played at the Garrick Theatre in 1901 when she was eleven. Lohr married Anthony Leyland Val Prinsep and from 1918 to 1927, they co-managed the Globe Theatre in London. She was in dozens of stage performances in a long and busy career, including, between 1916 and 1968, fifty motion pictures. She played only one Shakespeare role, Ophelia in Hamlet at Tree‘s His Majesty’s Theatre in London in 1909. Lohr passed away in 1975 after retiring from an acting career lasting over seventy years.

Charles Courtice Pounds began his career as a singer. Born in London, he studied music at various academies and institutions and his first stage appearance was in 1881 in the chorus of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. Not until 1901 at His Majesty’s Theatre did he play a part in Shakespeare, as Feste in Twelfth Night. That same year he played Touchstone at the Prince’s Theatre in Manchester; in 1902 he played in The Merry Wives of Windsor. His ability as a Shakespearean is attested to by his being asked to perform his Touchstone and other parts in the 1907 Shakespeare Festival in London at His Majesty’s Theatre.

He returned later in his career to the musical theatre where he played the part of Ali Baba for nearly five years in Oscar Asche‘s Chu Chin Chow. In 1922 he starred in one of his most memorable roles as Franz Schubert in Lilac Time.