(1853-1917) Born in 1853, Tree’s real name was Herbert Draper Beerbohm. He assumed his famous stage name in the 1870s. After a string of performances, he joined Frank Benson’s company in 1886, where he played Iago before going on to London and the Haymarket Theatre where he eventually became the manager. “He elevated the Haymarket’s status as a Shakespearian playhouse, and his productions of The Merry Wives of Windsor (1889), Hamlet (1892), and Henry IV, Part 1 (1896) earned himRead more
Posts tagged: #players
Phyllis Neilson-Terry
(1892-1977) 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.Read more
Robert B. Mantell
(1854-1928) 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. HeRead more
Maude Fealy
(1883-1971) 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 toRead more
Ernest Harcourt Williams
(1880-1957) Ernest George Harcourt Williams began his career, like so many other Shakespearean actors, with Sir Frank Benson and first appeared in London in 1900 with Benson’s company. He married another player, Jean Sterling Mackinlay in 1908, and although his professional life was interrupted by World War I, he was associated with a number of fine actors and successful managers, among them George Alexander, H. B. Irving, Dame Ellen Terry, and, of course, Frank Benson. From 1929 until 1934 heRead more
Sir Henry Irving
(1838-1905) 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,Read more
Charles Doran
(1877-1964) 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 withRead more
Matheson Lang
(1879-1948) Matheson Alexander Lang was eighteen when he first appeared on the stage in 1897. Before forming his own company, he acted with the companies of Sir Frank Benson, Lillie Langtry, and Dame Ellen Terry. In his early career he toured the United States and the West Indies; after his success in 1908 in Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet, he toured South Africa, Australia, and Asia, where his company played Shakespeare with great success. Notably, he produced and starred in Romeo & JulietRead more
Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson
(1853-1937) Forever critical of his own acting prowess, Forbes-Robertson’s career, spanning almost forty years from 1874 to 1913, is impossible to summarize in so brief a space. Born in London, he was regarded as one of the preeminent Shakespearean players in the four decades of his active life on the stage. His interpretation of Hamlet is regarded as one of the best of the twentieth century. One of his younger eleven siblings was Norman Forbes-Robertson, also a noted Shakespearean, as wasRead more