Basil Sydney is an actor most teachers of Shakespeare immediately recognize; he played Claudius in Laurence Olivier’s benchmark 1948 film of Hamlet. His first stage appearance was in 1911 and his first part in Shakespeare was as Claudius in 1914 at the Old Vic. Over the years he played Romeo, Mercutio, Hamlet, Prince Hal, and in 1914 appeared in productions of six of Shakespeare’s plays at Stratford-upon-Avon.  He spent over a decade in New York playing the title roles in many Shakespeare plays in the mid-1920s. Between 1920 and 1964 he also had parts in sixty films and television productions. His first wife was Broadway star Doris Keane (pictured here), but they divorced and Sydney married twice more, to actresses Mary Ellis and Joyce Howard, before he died.

Vernon Steel’s first appearance on the stage was in 1899; in 1906, he joined the company of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and toured the United Kingdom and the United States. He played Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (1906), Orlando in As You Like It (1908), and Romeo (shown here) in 1911 at the New Theatre, London opposite Phyllis Neilson-Terry. He moved to Hollywood in the 1930s where he produced a number of plays for Los Angeles theaters.

Younger brother of Phyllis Neilson-Terry. Nephew of Dame Ellen Terry. Son of Julia Neilson and Fred Terry.

Dennis was born into the legendary acting family and had big shoes to fill from day one. He made his stage debut in the 1906 jubilee celebrations for his aunt, Ellen, as a page in Much Ado About Nothing. Under the stage name “Derrick Dennis,” he made his next appearance as Silvius in As You Like It (1911). After this, he spent time with his parent’s company before touring with Sir Frank Benson‘s company, allowing him the opportunity to play many Shakespeare roles: Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice, Rosencrantz in Hamlet, Paris in Romeo & Juliet, Octavius in Antony & Cleopatra, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Malcolm in Macbeth. 1912 proved to be another fruitful year for Dennis as it saw him performing with Sir Beerbohm Tree‘s company in a performance of Twelfth Night. He played Sebastian, twin to Viola, who was played by his own sister Phyllis. Therein, they seemed to replicate, for another generation, the brother-sister acting team of their father, Fred, and his sister, Ellen, in those exact roles. He also, that year, played Florizel in Harley Granville Barker‘s production of The Winter’s Tale. In 1913, he was especially praised for his starring role, a first for him, in Romeo & Juliet as Romeo. Before serving in the war, Dennis played Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1914).

Dennis served in the Royal West Surrey Regiment of the British Army, demobilized in 1917. He continued acting after the war, although he elected for comic and crowd-pleasing roles. He appeared in several films between 1916 and 1932. After a tour in 1932 with his wife in South Africa, Dennis contracted pneumonia at the age of thirty-six and died there. His body was taken back to England for a funeral and burial.

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.

While at New College, Oxford, Benson produced Agamemnon, the first play to be performed there in the original Greek. In 1882, he made his first professional appearance at the Lyceum Theatre, London—then under the management of Sir Henry Irving—playing the role of Paris in Romeo & Juliet. The next year, he formed a company of his own. In 1886 he married Gertrude Constance Featherstonhaugh (1860–1946), who acted in his company and played leading parts with him. Benson continued to appear in London and regularly toured the English provinces in Shakespearean roles, and he also performed in Canada (1913) and South Africa (1921). He is remembered for his performances of the characters Hamlet, Coriolanus, Richard II, Lear, and Petruchio (Britannica).

For many years between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Benson devoted himself to the production of Shakespeare’s plays. In 1886, in particular, Benson was granted control over the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and artistic direction of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. After 1888, he organized twenty-six of the annual Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festivals. However, in 1889-1890, the plays were directed by Osmond Tearle, and in 1895, Ben Greet was invited to produce a year of his plays. In his Festivals, Benson always made a point to “resurrect” some long-forgotten play in the Shakespeare canon to be performed during the three-week run of the festival. Many of these resurrected plays are now staples of the world stage and the classroom: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Henry IV, Richard II, The Tempest, Twelfth Night. We may credit Benson with reviving the character of Falstaff for the modern audience and for the first documented modern performances of Shakespeare’s great cycle of history plays. Over his years, he managed to produce every one of Shakespeare’s plays, including an uncut version of Hamlet, except for Titus Andronicus and Trolius and Cressida. Benson founded an acting school in 1901, and was knighted in 1916 in Drury Lane Theatre—the first actor to earn such an honor since David Garrick in the eighteenth Century (Buckley).

Here are a few audio and video clips featuring Sir Frank Benson.

Henry Ainley was born in Leeds on August 21, 1879. He acted in literally hundreds of productions, but he began his career as an amateur. He joined Frank Benson‘s company and made his debut as a messenger in Macbeth. He later played with Herbert Beerbohm Tree‘s company as well. He played major parts in many Shakespeare plays, beginning with Henry V in 1900 and ending with As You Like it in 1936. He played Hamlet in 1930 at the Haymarket Theatre, London, a production that was chosen for a Royal Command Performance.

Beginning in 1915, Ainley played in several films, but the stage was his real home, where he performed in one of the Shakespeare plays almost annually in a busy career that spanned four decades. He died on October 13, 1945.

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.

He returned to the UK, but met with little success and went back to the US permanently, where for years he toured with his own company. He was not particularly popular in New York City, so he toured other cities in the country. He was an indefatigable worker—something of a war horse—and he was constantly on the road with this troupe. One way for him to keep a leading actress with this kind of workload was to marry her, which he did four times. He married his last wife, actress Genevieve Hamper, thirty-four years his junior, until his death.

Over the years, Mantell played in Hamlet, Othello (as both Iago and Othello, alongside Hamper’s Desdemona), Romeo & Juliet (alongside Hamper), Richard III, King Lear (a role he especially enjoyed), Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, and King John. Despite his failure to excite the critics and public in London and New York, he was a well-respected Shakespearean actor on the road. He also played in eight films between 1896 and 1923. Clarence J. Bulliet wrote his biography, Robert B. Mantell’s Romance, in 1918.

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 he was a producer at the Old Vic Theatre, where his Shakespeare presentations eventually won him high praise as he moved away from the Victorian and Edwardian concepts of Shakespeare’s plays towards more modern and controversial stagings. In 1935 he published Four Years at the Old Vic, a volume of his memoirs.

Williams also played in a number of films, all told twenty between 1944 and 1956. Of particular interest to us are two Shakespeare films; he played King Charles VI of France in Laurence Olivier’s 1944 production of Henry V and the First Player in Olivier’s 1948 Hamlet.