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.

Clifton Alderson’s first stage appearance was in 1882 in Manchester. His debut was impressive enough to earn him an invitation the next year in 1883 to the Stratford Memorial Theatre where he play in Henry IV, Part 1 and Macbeth. After a long hiatus when he toured several times in Australia and played in popular plays in London, he returned to Shakespeare. At the Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, he played Iago in 1907 and Jaques in As You Like It in 1908. There are no indications that he ever played Shakespeare again; instead, he appeared regularly in a number of popular contemporary plays on the London stage. When asked his favorite role, he answered unhesitatingly, “Iago.”

Sir Henry Irving was the stage name of John Henry Brodribb, who was born in 1838 and raised in a working-class family. He was one of the most famous British actor-managers and dominated the late Victorian Stage (along with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree). He was born in Somerset but lived in London from the age of ten. It was seeing Samuel Phelps (also a mentor to Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson) playing Hamlet that inspired Irving to take to the stage, and he joined the Lyceum Theatre, Sunderland, in 1856. Irving serves as somewhat of a common ancestor of the majority of the players in our collection and on the site, having mentored Forbes-Robertson and Sir Frank Benson, who himself mentored Beerbohm Tree.

Irving’s breakthrough came with the success of The Bells in 1871, produced at the Lyceum in London. From then on, his personal life took second place to his professional life. On opening night of The Bells, November 25, 1871, Irving’s wife, Florence criticized his profession: “Are you going on making a fool of yourself like this all your life?” Irving got out from their carriage at Hyde Park Corner, walked off into the night and chose never to see her again. Though they never formally divorced, he never married again after this. Their two children were Henry Brodribb, born in 1870, and Laurence, born in 1871. Henry “H. B.” Irving became an accomplished actor-manager in his own right and later a lawyer and writer.

It was after this that Irving took over the lease for this theater, the Lyceum, from Hezekiah Bateman, and Ellen Terry became his leading lady. She was the Ophelia to his Hamlet, the Juliet to his Romeo, the Beatrice to his Benedick, the Portia to his Shylock, the Lady Macbeth to his Macbeth. Together, they were an international sensation, the gold standard of Shakespeare-in-performance, a tour de force. Their air-tight performing relationship reportedly made Bernard Shaw, then a theater critic, jealous. They went into joint management of the Lyceum in 1878. During this period, Irving’s Shylock (shown here) became as renowned as his Hamlet and became the new standard for the Jew’s stage portrayal. He also famously played Iago opposite Edwin Booth’s Othello. In 1892, he memorably played Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII. With the Lyceum company, he and Terry made several hugely successful tours in the US and Canada. As Terry aged, she moved on to solo performances and eventually left the company.

In 1898, he was appointed Rede Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, a position previously held by the likes of Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, J. J. Thompson, and others. His lecturer was called, “The Theater in Relation to the State.”

Irving was the first actor ever to be appointed to knighthood, which he received in 1895. His final Shakespeare performance in London was of Coriolanus, in 1901. He died in Bradford after having a stroke during his final provincial tour in 1905 where he played crowd favorite, Tennyson’s Becket. The chair in which he sat when he died is now on display at the Garrick Club, of which he was a member. He enjoys the distinction of being the first person to ever be cremated prior to internment at Westminster Abbey.

Irving produced his own critical edition of Shakespeare’s works, from a performer’s lens, published as The Henry Irving Shakespeare by Cambridge University Press in 1906. He wrote, in an 1893 issue of The English Illustrated Magazine, that his four favorite parts were Hamlet, Richard III, Iago, and Lear. That same year, Bram Stoker, Irving’s manager and friend, published a two-volume biography titled, Personal Reminisces of Henry Irving. William Archer published a study (1885) of Irving during his lifetime, but the rest came posthumously. There have been many books published about the monumental Sir Irving and his work, even to this day.