Henry Baynton first appeared on stage in 1910 and almost immediately began a long career during which he performed in almost every important part in Shakespeare’s plays. In 1911, he joined the company of Oscar Asche and then in the same year moved to Frank Benson‘s company. He worked with Benson for several years and played, among other parts, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet (1915). Then in the summer of 1916 he played Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival. In 1917 he joined the company of H. B. Irving where he played Laertes.

That same year he struck out and formed his own company, playing Hamlet, Orlando (in As You Like It), Romeo, Henry V, Shylock, Brutus, King Lear, Othello, Falstaff and Petruchio. Then between 1926 and 1930 (when he disbanded his company) he toured the provinces playing Shakespeare regularly. His last role in Shakespeare came in 1934 when he played Lord Capulet in Romeo & Juliet.

In Shakespeare on the English Stage 1900-1964, J. C. Trewin comments on Baynton’s energy and his stage presence, both of which made him quite popular, a “lion,” all over Great Britain—except, unhappily, in London where he was not so well received. One critic noted that on the stage he had “stature but little depth” (Trewin 100); the reason for his never quite making his mark was probably due less to a lack of talent than to the winding-down of the theatrical era of the actor-manager that was close to its end. Baynton was the among the last of the actor-managers when he dissolved his own company in 1930; only Frank Benson still kept his “Bensonians” together regularly playing Shakespeare, but not without real difficulty.

Colbourne was born in 1864 in Cuddington, Cheshire and studied at the prestigious Repton School, along with Basil Rathbone, where he started the first Dramatic Society there. After Repton, he studied at Oxford and became the President of the Oxford Union Dramatic Society, which catapulted him into his distinguished career. Colbourne played in twenty-two Shakespeare plays at Stratford-upon-Avon between 1921 and 1925. He became Governor of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. One of his earliest parts in Shakespeare was as Polixenes in The Winter’s Tale. He began his film career in 1932. He played in twenty-two films and television productions, active until 1964, a year before he died.

While at New College, Oxford, Benson produced Agamemnon, the first play to be performed there in the original Greek. In 1882, he made his first professional appearance at the Lyceum Theatre, London—then under the management of Sir Henry Irving—playing the role of Paris in Romeo & Juliet. The next year, he formed a company of his own. In 1886 he married Gertrude Constance Featherstonhaugh (1860–1946), who acted in his company and played leading parts with him. Benson continued to appear in London and regularly toured the English provinces in Shakespearean roles, and he also performed in Canada (1913) and South Africa (1921). He is remembered for his performances of the characters Hamlet, Coriolanus, Richard II, Lear, and Petruchio (Britannica).

For many years between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Benson devoted himself to the production of Shakespeare’s plays. In 1886, in particular, Benson was granted control over the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and artistic direction of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. After 1888, he organized twenty-six of the annual Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festivals. However, in 1889-1890, the plays were directed by Osmond Tearle, and in 1895, Ben Greet was invited to produce a year of his plays. In his Festivals, Benson always made a point to “resurrect” some long-forgotten play in the Shakespeare canon to be performed during the three-week run of the festival. Many of these resurrected plays are now staples of the world stage and the classroom: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Henry IV, Richard II, The Tempest, Twelfth Night. We may credit Benson with reviving the character of Falstaff for the modern audience and for the first documented modern performances of Shakespeare’s great cycle of history plays. Over his years, he managed to produce every one of Shakespeare’s plays, including an uncut version of Hamlet, except for Titus Andronicus and Trolius and Cressida. Benson founded an acting school in 1901, and was knighted in 1916 in Drury Lane Theatre—the first actor to earn such an honor since David Garrick in the eighteenth Century (Buckley).

Here are a few audio and video clips featuring Sir Frank Benson.

Mantell was born in Scotland and first appeared on stage in Belfast, Northern Ireland; for a time he used the stage name Robert Hudson, but he reassumed his name Mantell after he joined the company of Helena Modjeska in 1878 and came to the United States. His first professional appearance was at the Theatre Royal in Rockdale in 1876. His first role with Dame Modjeska was as Tybalt in Hamlet at the Leyland Opera House in Albany, New York.

He returned to the UK, but met with little success and went back to the US permanently, where for years he toured with his own company. He was not particularly popular in New York City, so he toured other cities in the country. He was an indefatigable worker—something of a war horse—and he was constantly on the road with this troupe. One way for him to keep a leading actress with this kind of workload was to marry her, which he did four times. He married his last wife, actress Genevieve Hamper, thirty-four years his junior, until his death.

Over the years, Mantell played in Hamlet, Othello (as both Iago and Othello, alongside Hamper’s Desdemona), Romeo & Juliet (alongside Hamper), Richard III, King Lear (a role he especially enjoyed), Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and King John. Despite his failure to excite the critics and public in London and New York, he was a well-respected Shakespearean actor on the road. He also played in eight films between 1896 and 1923. Clarence J. Bulliet wrote his biography, Robert B. Mantell’s Romance, in 1918.

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 with H.B. Irving, and a year later to South Africa with Cora Brown Potter‘s company. In 1908, he toured with Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s company and in 1909-1910, he toured England and Australia with the company of fellow Bensonians Oscar Asche and Lily Brayon. In 1919, Doran performed back in Stratford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo & Juliet, and The Tempest.

With seventeen years experience with various directors and actors, Doran struck out on his own in 1920 and became actor-manager of his own company; he then appeared as practically every major character in most of Shakespeare’s plays.

In 1931, he embarked on yet another path when he went to India to become first the director of Shakespeare’s plays at the State Theatre in Jhalawar and then on to Bombay where he performed primarily in Shakespeare on the radio. He returned to England in 1937, still acting in Shakespeare. His last part was in 1951 as Time in The Winter’s Tale. But he was still active on the stage in other parts until 1954; he even went on to film, where he played one part in 1956.

On stage in one role or another, Doran’s fifty-seven years in the theater made him a major force in the profession, particularly in his productions of Shakespeare. Such was his energy and enthusiasm that he kept alive for a few more years the actor-manager system when the major talents, men like Tree, Benson, and Irving, had dissolved their companies. Doran was indeed the last of his theatrical breed.

Lewis Waller, born in Spain, initially studied to work in the commercial industry. He got his start in the companies of famous Dame Helena Modjeska and J. L. Toole in the 1880s.  During his career, he was best known as something of a matinee-idol in the popular romantic plays of his day like The Three Musketeers and his most popular role in Monsieur Beaucaire, a dramatic adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel. For his portrayals, he attracted large female audiences who made themselves in a fan club. Waller won critical acclaim in at least some of his Shakespeare roles: as Brutus in Julius Caesar, as Henry V, and as Faulkenbridge in King John. He created the role of Sir Robert Chiltern in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1895). He married Florence West, an actress who appeared often with Waller in his most successful romances. He became manager for the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in the mid-1890s after leasing it during Sir Beerbohm Tree‘s tour in the US. Tree invited Waller to join his company in 1897 and toured with him and his lavish productions of Shakespeare.

Although Waller himself loved playing Shakespeare roles like Romeo, Othello, and Henry V, his most profitable plays were always his romances and he is often remembered for his good looks. He did make several recordings of his speeches from Henry V which still exist. Waller died  just two days shy of his fifty-fifth birthday from pneumonia.