Wilkie made his stage debut in 1899 and almost immediately began touring with three of the great Shakespeare companies, those of Rawson Buckley, Ben Greet and Frank Benson. After his experience with these companies and the numerous parts he played in Shakespeare he formed his own company and toured England, India, and Australia. In 1920 after his company’s successful runs in Melbourne and Sydney, he took his troupe over much of Asia. In all, he staged twenty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays. In 1932, he returned to England and again toured the provinces with Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night. He produced a few contemporary dramas, but most of his career was dedicated to Shakespeare and he kept his company together long after the demise of most other actor-manager groups.

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.

William Stack was born in the United States, but he began his acting career in London at the Court Theatre in 1908. Between 1914 and 1916, he played with the Old Vic Company, and in 1920, he joined the Ben Greet Company where he played Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. In 1922, he performed with the New Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon; he had parts in Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Othello, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar.

The Internet Movie Database lists sixty-three films he appeared in between 1918 and 1945; he moved back and forth between England and the US for his films, but his stage performances were usually in England.

Young was an American actor who was famous for his Shakespeare roles and lecture on Shakespeare’s works and characters. He appeared in over 30 films from 1909 onward. The NYPL indicates that he was an avid collector of theatrical photographs and perhaps postcards. If you have anymore leads, contact us and let us know!

Here is some valuable information from the New York Public Library. Thanks, Laura Pokalsky, for finding this!

Here is a video clip of Young in an early silent film of Twelfth Night.

Ernest Gianello Milton, who was born in 1890 in San Francisco, played most of the major roles in Shakespeare’s plays with a number of Shakespearean companies such as the Old Vic (1918) and the Royal Shakespeare Company (1962). Early in his career he played Romeo and Bassanio, but it was in 1918 when he joined the Old Vic that he concentrated primarily on parts in Shakespeare. His last role was in 1960 when he played the Ghost and the First Player in Hamlet. These roles were only a part of the many characters he portrayed in a long, busy career on the stage in popular contemporary plays.

In 1938, he performed as Henry IV and Julius Caesar for pioneering BBC adaptations of the two plays. Just a year before, he had played Richard III in his first BBC adaptation. Milton’s credits include sixteen films and television parts between 1920 and 1964. He was married to prolific writer and editor Naomi Royde-Smith from 1926 until her death in 1964.

Henry Brodribb Irving was the first son of Sir Henry Irving; he used the stage name “H. B.” to distinguish himself from his illustrious father. In 1894, the same year he was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, he chose the theater as a profession and was continuously employed from then on as an actor. He acted in his father’s company, and served several times as an actor-manager in the London theaters. For a short period, he took over managing the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival while Sir Frank Benson visited the US. During World War I, however, he retired from acting to pursue a successful career in law and an interest in writing about criminals. His well-known book, A Book of Remarkable Criminals, was published in 1918. He founded, with Arthur Conan Doyle and others, Our Society, a club which continues to meet regularly for dinner to discuss murders and other crimes.

Over time, Irving played in many of the same Shakespeare roles as his father—Iago, Hamlet, Romeo, etc. However, he could never fully break free of his father’s immense shadow. He played Hamlet for the first time in 1904, just a year before his father’s death. This successful production at the Adelphi Theatre included Oscar Asche as Claudius, Lily Brayton as Ophelia, and Walter Hampden as Laertes. Some of the cards here are of this production.

H. B. married Dorothea Baird (1875-1833), a friend and actress who first appeared with him in several Oxford Union Dramatic Society performances while he was a student at New College. Known at the time as the best actress in Britain, she went on in her professional career to play many Shakespeare roles in the companies of Ben Greet, Beerbohm Tree, and her father-in-law, Henry Irving. In 1900, they both appeared in Tree’s hugely popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ran for 153 shows at Her Majesty’s Theatre. They went on to tour most of the provincial British cities, like his father had done, as well as the United States, Australia, and South Africa. With her, Irving had two children, Laurence and Elizabeth.

Sir John Martin-Harvey, one of the most popular actors of his time, had a long and successful career of more than forty years on the stage. He first appeared in 1881 and then the next year joined the troupe of Sir Henry Irving with whom he stayed until 1896. He played in at least nine Shakespeare plays, but usually in fairly minor roles. Not until 1899 and a year with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson in 1897 did he begin playing the major roles.

In 1899, Harvey took over the management of the Lyceum Theatre, after Irving, but his real success—and most enthusiastic audiences—was not in London but in the provinces where he toured extensively. It was around this time that he met and married fellow actress Nina de Silva with whom he performed many times. In his repertory were a number of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, which opened in Dublin in 1904 and then moved to London to the Lyric Theatre in 1905. Four of the plays he revived in 1916 for the Shakespeare tercentenary; he produced Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, and Henry V. In 1919, he again played Hamlet at Covent Garden, and in 1924 during years of touring, he played in Richard III.

Between 1916 and 1931, he appeared in five films, several of them—The Breed of the Treshams and The Only Way—screen adaptations of his most popular stage roles.

Harvey published The Autobiography of Sir John Martin-Harvey with Samson, Low and Marston and Company, in London, in 1933. He and de Silva had two children, Muriel and Michael, who each became successful actors in their own right.

Edward Hugh Sothern was born in New Orleans. His first American stage appearance was at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1879. His first London appearance was at the Royalty Theatre in 1881, two years before returning to the United States. In 1900, he appeared in Hamlet, his first Shakespeare performance at the Garden Theatre in New York City.

In 1904, Sothern first played with Julia Marlowe in Romeo & Juliet at the Illinois Theatre in Chicago. That same year, in repertory, he did Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. The next year, in Cleveland, he added The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice. In 1905, at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York, he played the same bill and added Twelfth Night with himself in the role of Malvolio. In 1907, he performed in the same four plays at the Lyric Theatre in New York. In 1907, he returned to England where he had a successful season with these and several popular non-Shakespeare plays.

When he returned to the United States, he added Antony & Cleopatra opening at the New Theatre, New York. He and Marlowe then toured with their productions of Shakespeare. When he returned to New York and the Broadway Theatre in 1910, he played in Macbeth for the first time. In 1911, he divorced his first wife and married Marlowe before the two went on to do many more Shakespeare plays together, including a tour in 1912-13. For a short time, they introduced Shakespeare to a much wider audience by performing many of his works at affordable prices at the Academy of Music in New York.

His final role in Shakespeare was as Leonatus in Cymbeline in 1923 at the Jolson Theatre. He then spent his time, beginning in 1928, traveling and lecturing on the many roles in Shakespeare that he and Julia had played.