Dame Alice Ellen Terry was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Sir Henry Irving, christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the West End's Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society.
Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving was an English dramatist and actor. He died along with his wife, Mabel, in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster.
Sir Francis Robert Benson was an English actor-manager. He founded his own company in 1883 and produced all but two of Shakespeare's plays. His thirty-year association with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the annual Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon laid down foundations for the creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company after his death.
Charles Courtice Pounds, better known by the stage name Courtice Pounds, was an English singer and actor known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his later roles in Shakespeare plays and Edwardian musical comedies.
The Duchess of Dantzic is a comic opera in three acts, set in Paris, with music by Ivan Caryll and a book and lyrics by Henry Hamilton, based on the play Madame Sans-Gêne by Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau. Additional lyrics by Adrian Ross. The story concerns Napoleon I and a laundress, Catherine Üpscher, who marries Marshal Lefebvre and becomes a Duchess.
Viva Birkett was a British stage actress active on both sides of the Atlantic over the early decades of the twentieth century.
Eric Maxon was an English stage and early film actor and member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom, for a period, he also designed the costumes.
Charles Doran was an Irish actor, one of the last of the touring actor-managers in the tradition of Frank Benson, John Martin-Harvey and Ben Greet. Among those who joined his company at the start of their careers were Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Francis L Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.
Frederick Walter James Peisley was a British stage, film and television actor and theatre director whose career spanned five decades. He is known for The Secret of the Loch (1934), Gentlemen's Agreement (1935) and Murder at the Cabaret (1936). His later career was mostly in television.
Francis Henry Westerton was a British stage and silent film actor of the 19th and early 20th centuries who carved a successful career on Broadway from 1905 to 1922.
William Haviland was a British actor-manager specialising in the works of Shakespeare who during his long stage career performed with some of the leading actors of his time including Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
Amy Coleridge was a British actress who had a successful career playing in Shakespeare's plays in South Africa as well as in her home country. She acted in the companies of Henry Irving and John Martin-Harvey.
Percy Anstey was a British stage actor of the early 20th-century who later studied Economics and became a lecturer and college Principal in India.
Beatrice Ferrar was a British actress who made a speciality of playing in 18th-century dramas.
Ada Ferrar was a British actress of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Otho Stuart was a British actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who specialised in performing in the plays of Shakespeare. Stuart played the range of Shakespearean leading men, both with the Company of F. R. Benson and with his own Company during his management of the Adelphi Theatre in London. Of independent means, he used his own money to help finance Benson's productions and his own. The theatre critic J. C. Trewin described him as 'one of the handsomest Oberons of all time.'
Mabel Lucy Hackney was a British actress and the wife of the dramatist and actor Laurence Irving and daughter-in-law of the actor Henry Irving in whose company she acted before she joined that of her husband. She died along with her husband in the RMS Empress of Ireland disaster in 1914.
The Lyons Mail is an 1877 drama by Charles Reade based on his play The Courier of Lyons (1854). The new version was written for Henry Irving for performance at the Lyceum Theatre.
Diplomacy is an 1878 English play which is a translation and adaptation by B. C. Stephenson and Clement Scott of the 1877 French play Dora by Victorien Sardou. It saw frequent revivals and was a popular play for over fifty years.
