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.

Born Angelita Helena Margarita de Silva Ferro, Nina de Silva was known by the stage-name N. de Silva. Her first stage appearance was as a page in Sir Henry Irving‘s 1882 production of Much Ado About Nothing. She married Sir Martin Harvey and played in his company when he was based at the Lyceum in London in 1899. De Silva played in Hamlet as Ophelia, Richard III as Lady Anne, The Taming of the Shrew as Katerina, and in Henry V as Princess Katherine. She reprised many of these parts in 1916 when Harvey moved to His Majesty’s Theatre. De Silva played Ophelia again in 1919. Over the years, she also toured with Harvey’s company at various British and Canadian theaters.

During WWI, she and Harvey toured the country (Britain), recruiting servicemen and women, and raised money for the Red Cross and the Nation’s Fund for Nurses. They raised so much money that they were able to fund a new building for the College of Nurses in 1920. With Harvey, she had two children, Muriel and Michael, both successful actors like their parents.

Shakespeare & the Players speculates that Harris was a member of the famous acting family, Glossop Harris, derived from Joseph Glossop, first manager of what is now known as the Old Vic.

Using the stage name Constance Featherstonhaugh in her first stage appearance she played Juliet with Kyrle Bellew in 1883. She soon after joined Frank Benson‘s company and they married in 1886. With Frank’s company she of course played a number of Shakespeare parts, almost all the female leads in the repertory in every major theatre in Great Britain. She married Benson in 1886 until they separated due to his affair with another actress, Genevieve Smeek. Constance became Lady Benson upon Francis’s knighting in 1916 by King George. In 1911, she starred in silent film versions of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and The Taming of the Shrew.

Among other books, Lady Benson wrote an interesting autobiography that is filled with anecdotes about the actors who worked with Benson called Mainly Players: Bensonian Memories (1926).

Hutin “Nellie” Britton’s first appearance on stage was with Frank Benson‘s B Company at Brighton in 1901 in Henry V. She had a long, successful career stretching over four decades. She played the parts of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing (1903), Ophelia (1909), Lady Elizabeth in Richard III (1909), and Lady Macbeth at Stratford (1911). With her husband Matheson Lang, she toured South Africa in 1911 where she played Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Juliet, and Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

She and Lang produced the first Shakespeare season at the Old Vic in 1914; she reprised her role as Portia. She and Lang reprised their roles once again in one of the first films of the silent era, The Merchant of Venice (1916). After a four-year illness and temporary retirement, she returned to the the stage to play Volumnia in Coriolanus in 1924. Her last important performances were in 1936. In her later life she was on the governing board of the Old Vic.

Elizabeth “Lily” Brayton was born in England on June 23, 1876. She made her first stage appearance in 1896 with Frank Benson’s company in Richard II (see anecdote below). She remained with the troupe for some time, so as a “Bensonian” she played many roles in the plays of Shakespeare, appearing several seasons in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Her last appearance on the stage was as Portia in Julius Caesar. She married fellow actor Oscar Asche in 1898 and they joined Beerbohm Tree‘s company in 1902. In 1907, she and her sister Agnes appeared in a production of The Taming of the Shrew, as Kate and Bianca, respectively, with the Oxford Union Dramatic Society. 

She and her husband entered joint-management later in life, managing the Adelphi Theatre and Her Majesty’s Theatre, both in London. While managing, they produced As You Like It, Othello, and The Taming of the Shrew before going on tour to acclaim in Australia and New Zealand. Brayton played Rosalind, Desdemona, and Katerina respectively. Asche and Brayton made history in 1916 as the former wrote a play entitled Chu-Chin-Chow in which he played the lead, Abu Hasan. The play broke all records when it ran for 2,238 performances. Brayton took the part of Zahrat-al-Kulub and performed it almost two thousand times during the run. She died in England in 1953.

Brayton herself explains her early days as an actor in a 1919 published interview with the The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia):

Technically speaking my first appearance was as a super, for I walked on in Twelfth Night the evening of the same day I arrived in Manchester. In the repertoire of that week were also included Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, and Richard II, and I appeared in all of them. It was in the last named that I spoke my first line as one of the ladies in attendance upon the queen, whom I afterwards played both with Mr. Benson and with Sir Herbert Tree at His Majesty’s. My line was, I believe, “Madam, we will play at bowls.” Unimportant as the line was, I think I felt an importance which has never been equalled when I have been playing the most onerous leading part.

Maude Fealy was born Maude Hawk; her mother divorced Hawk and took her maiden name. Maude was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 4, 1883 (some sources give the year 1886). Her first stage appearance when she was four was as an angel in Faust and Marguerite with her mother, Margaret Fealy, playing Marguerite. In her early years she played Juliet, and the producer Augustin Daly saw her perform the part when she was fourteen and invited her to join his company. Evidence is scant, but in 1905, she played Ophelia in Hamlet, and in 1904-5, Portia in The Merchant of Venice.

Besides a long and continuous career on the boards she played in forty-one films, the first in 1911 and the last in 1958. Her roles in Shakespeare’s plays were really an insignificant part of her career. Her first real entry into the world of film was in 1913 when she was employed by the Thanhouser Company; she became one of the company’s most important leading ladies. The company started a project of silent Shakespeare adaptations, among them King Lear and The Winter’s Tale, but some of the films suffered nitrate deterioration and exist only in fragments. One of the first of the films was The Winter’s Tale (1910), but Fealy, in some of her pictures costumed as the typical Perdita, did not join the company until 1913, so there is no hard evidence she played in any of the Shakespeare adaptations. Biographical papers in the Denver Public Library say that while living in California during the 1930s, Fealy participated in the Federal Theater Projects. Under the direction of Gareth Hughs, she enacted excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays. Throughout various periods in her career she had taught acting and in semi-retirement after 1957 she toured with her one-woman performances and gave a series of lectures on Shakespeare.

Fealy was a celebrated stage beauty and although written sources are hard to find, she is abundantly represented on the World Wide Web and still inspires a number of fans. There are literally dozens of photographs and postcards of Fealy in various roles and scenes. Start with The Maude Fealy Postcard Gallery and follow the links.