Genevieve Hamper, an American actress, was married to Robert B. Mantell (she was thirty-four years his junior) and played in his company, often acting alongside him in major roles, until his death in 1928. She married another actor, John Alexander, and seems to have left the stage permanently for a career in Hollywood where she made several films. Her son, Robert Mantell, Jr., also an actor, committed suicide in 1933.

Evelyn Millard, a popular stage “beauty,” made her first appearance in 1891 as a walk-on at the Haymarket Theatre. Her first major parts came when she joined Sarah Thorne at the Theatre Royal in Margate; she played, among other roles, Juliet and then Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. When she joined the company of Sir Beerbohm Tree in 1897 she was given the role of Portia in Julius Caesar.

Between 1903 and 1916, she played in several more Shakespeare productions: Jessica in The Merchant of Venice (1903), Juliet in 1905, and Desdemona in Lewis Waller‘s production of Othello in 1906. After forming her own company in 1908 she played Ophelia in Hamlet (1910) and Olivia in Twelfth Night in 1912 with Harley Granville Barker at the Savoy Theatre. Her last recorded Shakespeare role was as Calpurnia in Julius Caesar during the Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration in 1916.

Notably, Millard is known for creating the role of Cecily Cardew in the 1895 premiere of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. A year later, she performed in a Royal Command Performance for Queen Victoria. After retiring from the stage, she died in Kensington, at her home, in 1941 at the age of seventy.

Elder sister of actor Dennis Neilson-Terry. Daughter of famous Shakespearean actors Julia Neilson and Fred Terry. Niece of Dame Ellen Terry.

Born in London in 1892, Phyllis was in good company. She studied in Paris and then at the Royal Academy of Music to be a singer. She made her first stage appearance in 1909 while on tour with her parent’s company in Blackpool. A few times, she would fill in for her mother when the latter would fall ill. Her acclaim in Shakespeare came early on with a 1910 production of Twelfth Night with Sir Beerbohm Tree‘s company at Her Majesty’s Theatre. Phyllis played the leading role of Viola, while Tree played Malvolio and her father, Fred, as Viola’s twin brother Sebastian. As such, Phyllis replaced Ellen in the role she would play opposite her brother.

For the next four years, she went on to play many of Shakespeare’s leading ladies, much in the legendary (and expected) Terry/Neilson tradition: Desdemona (Othello), Rosalind (As You Like It), Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Juliet. Many of the cards here represent her performances as Juliet as well as other coveted roles. She was lauded extensively for her portrayals. Likewise, in the 1930s, Phyllis played the roles of Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine in Macbeth and Henry VIII, respectively, at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford.

Legend has it that Phyllis, in 1922, gave her young cousin John Gielgud his first ever paid role in The Wheel by J. B. Fagan. She died in London at age eighty-four after having been married twice.

Playing first in amateur productions, Margaret Halstan became a professional actress in 1895 at the Haymarket Theatre in a walk-on part in Trilby. Her first part in Shakespeare was a small one; she was the Player Queen Hamlet with Herbert Beerbohm Tree‘s production of the play. In 1897, she played Octavia in Antony & Cleopatra and then that same year appeared as Bianca in an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew entitled Katherine and Petruchio.

In 1900, she joined Frank Benson‘s company where she had ample opportunity to play Shakespeare; she appeared as Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Lady Anne (Richard III), Hero (Much Ado), and Volumnia (Coriolanus). After touring with George Alexander’s group, she joined Beerbohm’s Shakespearean Company in 1904, and after that played many more Shakespeare parts: Anne Page, Calpurnia (Julius Caesar), Olivia (in 1906 and 1910), Juliet, Desdemona, and Rosalind (1908 and 1916). She played in Stratford in April 1909 as Imogen and Ophelia and Juliet again in 1913. Her role as Rosalind in 1916 may have been her last Shakespeare performance. Her early training as an actress was, however, primarily in Shakespeare’s best female roles.

She played dozens of parts in popular plays during her long career, and she was busy with films as well. Between 1917 and 1957 she played in fifteen films. The most notable of her parts was one she played several times on the London stage; she played Aunt Lydia in George O’Ferrall’s 1952 film version of The Holly and the Ivy, a sentimental but poignant story of a Christmas gathering of a family.