On February 6, 1838, John Henry Brodribb was born in the lovely Somerset village of Keinton Mandeville. The settlement is tiny, and its population is still modest by today's standards. Regardless of its small, it has the distinguished distinction of being the birthplace of one of Britain's most renowned performers.
Brodribb's humble origins were actually humble. He was an only kid who lived with his mother, Mary, and father, Samuel, who worked for the local general store as a tailor's traveling salesman. The family relocated to Bristol in 1842, but his parents opted to relocate John to Halsetown in St Ives in Cornwall, fearing that settling in a big city might harm their young son's health. When his parents went to London in 1849, Brodribb was sent to live with his maternal aunt Sarah Penberthy and his cousins, where they all got a rudimentary education.
The school originally opened its doors in 1830, under the capable leadership of William Pinches, and quickly flourished despite Victorian England's poor curriculum. 'The basics for a successful English education, thoroughly taught,' according to the school. The extra frills of Greek instruction went unnoticed, and Latin was just a small part of the educational objective. Instead, the school wanted to teach its students how to write effectively and read aloud with 'intelligent emphasis,' skills that would prove critical in the future years and ensuring that the £6 per year tuition was well spent.
Brodribb's frequent recitations at school had already inexorably attracted him to the theatrical world, and he began to take nighttime elocution sessions as he approached his teenage years. Brodribb did not come from a theatrical family, but he had laid the groundwork for a career that would see him acclaimed across the country. Visits to Sadler's Wells Theatre to see Samuel Phelps' acting abilities were a favorite activity. Phelps was by this time the theatre's actor-manager, and he had nearly single-handedly changed the public's image of it.
Despite the fact that Charles Dickens described the theatre as having "as ruffianly an audience as London could shake together" in the 1830s, Phelps made a commercial success of a long run of Shakespeare productions at Sadler's Wells, bringing a wide range of the great playwright's works to the theatre.
Brodribb, who was a regular face to Phelps at Sadler's Wells, got an interview with the renowned tragedian when he was 17 years old. Despite his success in the theatre, Phelps cautioned the young man against following in his footsteps, maybe as a reflection of the hardships he had faced during his career. Nonetheless, Brodribb showed great perseverance in his theatrical designs, and after an amateur performance as Romeo at the Soho Theatre in 1856, he received a timely legacy of £100 from an uncle, which he used to outfit himself with all of the necessities a Victorian actor would require: props, costumes, and a variety of wigs. Brodribb's professional career may have been in its early beginnings, but the name Henry Irving was inserted to the playbill after the main man fell ill in a performance of Richelieu at Sunderland's Royal Lyceum Theatre. Brodribb's stage name would become associated with British theater for the rest of his life.
Monday, September 29, 1856, was a watershed occasion not just for Irving, but also for Sunderland's Royal Lyceum Theatre. The structure had been devastated by fire only a year earlier, and as Irving's flourishing career came to a close, so did the rebirth of the town's cultural center on Lambton Street. Irving's first stage work at Sunderland was unpaid, and it signaled the start of several years of grueling toil, but it also provided a thorough background and a plethora of arenas in which to refine his enormous abilities. Irving's first words on that untrodden platform were, "Here is to our enterprise" - and how prophetic those words would prove to be. After then, there were assignments in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Manchester, as well as short-term assignments in the provinces and Ireland. Walter Montgomery, Barry Sullivan, and Ira Aldridge all unwittingly contributed to mold Irving into the remarkable player with the unusual capacity of 'carrying' his audiences at this time.
His insatiable appetite for theatre, along with his desire to learn, guaranteed that his supporting roles eventually morphed into main ones. Irving suffered enormous grief just before one of his most famous theatrical victories, when his mother died in 1869, prompting his father to return to Bristol to live with his surviving family. Irving, on the other hand, was to marry Florence O'Callaghan on July 15, 1869 in London's St Marylebone. The couple had met in 1866, but the marriage seemed doomed from the start, with Florence having little comprehension of the life of actresses and the expectations put on them.
Regardless, they had two boys, Harry and Laurence, who would eventually follow their father into the theater. Henry Irving's life would be forever changed by the winter of 1871. In the French melodrama The Bells, he made a magnificent performance as the haunted burgomaster Mathias. Irving was firmly placed at the forefront of British theater when the play played for 150 nights. His enthralling charisma had made him an instant celebrity adored by the literary elite.
Irving's wife, Florence, was less than thrilled with her husband's newest performance when, on the way home from the opening night on November 25th, with the ovation still ringing in his ears, Florence asked him, "Are you going to keep making a fool of yourself like this all your life?" Irving departed the vehicle, possibly grateful for the chance, and strolled out into the London night, never to see his wife again. Irving's connection with his sons was undoubtedly harmed by the separation, since both of them had developed a 'jaundiced' perspective of their father thanks to Florence.
The Lyceum Theatre in London had been founded in 1771, but it had endured a lot of misfortune over the nineteenth century, including being destroyed by fire and being bankrupted by a slew of management. However, in 1871, this location of prior misadventure would provide the polar opposite for Irving, with American actor and manager Hezekiah Bateman putting together a group to run the theatre, which would be led by Irving.
As Irving succeeded in numerous title parts such as Charles I, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Richard III, the crowds began to increase. Many people were taken aback by his work's visionary intellectuality.
After Bateman's death in 1875, his widow offered the Lyceum's lease to Irving, claiming that running the theatre was too difficult for her. Irving was now the Lyceum's manager as well as its top performer, exciting the crowds.
Irving's new enterprise happened to coincide with a resurgence in British theatre, which was a happy coincidence. The popular appeal of theatre had been growing for several reasons; since 1660, plays in London had been restricted to only Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but with the passage of the Theatre Regulation Act (1843), this monopoly was justly abolished, and a slew of new theatres opened across the city and, indeed, the country. Queen Victoria was a passionate theatregoer, and other members of the Royal Family happily shared her enthusiasm. So, it appears, did the emerging urban populations of Britain's burgeoning industrial cities.
Irving began his first season as manager in December 1878 with a revival of Hamlet. Irving enlisted Ellen Terry as his co-star on stage, and the two embarked on a series of opulent shows that received critical praise as well as box-office success. Terry was one of the few females at the period who could match Irving's stage presence, and their perfect coupling turned the Lyceum into the world's theatrical center.
Without a strong infrastructure, such a success story could never have come to fruition; Henry Loveday was hired as stage manager, and most importantly, Irving brought in Bram Stoker as business manager and personal assistant for a total of twenty-seven years. Of course, with his Gothic book Dracula, published in 1897, Stoker would imprint his own mark on classic literature. Indeed, it is thought that Irving gave Stoker with the real-life idea for the vampire count unintentionally. There is near-universal agreement on this issue, and it is definitely physically feasible; Irving was over six feet tall, with sunken cheekbones and thin lips — an unerringly precise portrayal of the violent figure.
Stoker was completely mesmerized by Irving's charisma and charm, as did most of Britain at the time.
Irving was someone that 'every right-minded actor was proud of,' according to fellow actor-manager John Lawrence Toole. Stoker, like the rest of Irving's staff, regarded the 'Governor' with admiration and unswerving devotion. 'For over thirty years I was an intimate friend of Irving; in some respects the most personal friend of his life,' Stoker proudly claims in his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.
I knew him as well as any man is capable of knowing another.'
Irving exploited his privileged position as a factor for beginning considerable innovation in Victorian theatre and how it was seen, amidst such an outpouring of tremendous enthusiasm. Irving had always maintained that drama should only be viewed as a positive force, and that its prestige and position needed to be elevated to that of the other arts. Irving was the ideal person to issue such a direction because of his passionate belief in theater as a civilizing and enriching component of cultural life. Irving's ultimate objective was to raise the caliber of plays, get ecclesiastical support (church leaders had long been opposed to the theatre), and elevate the theater to the same level of respectability and stature as the other arts.
His forethought and careful temperament necessitated that his performances be produced by the greatest scenic painters and that his music be commissioned from the best Victorian composers. Even the publicity was created with great care and attention to detail. The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VIII, and Othello were among the many great triumphs packed with sumptuous magnificence that resulted. Irving had brought Shakespeare to the masses and, moreover, he had made the theatre appealing to people of all social strata. From Queen Victoria to the galleryites, he returned the respect they showed him, therefore increasing his popularity.
Irving would travel his company across the British Isles after each season of thrilling London audiences, and from 1883, he began a series of transatlantic tours. The preparations were as rigorous as ever, with trains laden with scenery, props, and the whole cast traveling across America. Conquering 'the land of opportunity' is a very difficult undertaking, but audiences were as intrigued as those he had left behind in Britain. Irving's popularity was immeasurable, and eight triumphant tours insured that his reputation across the water would never waver.
In 1895, the conclusion of a lifetime’s hard work resulted in Henry Irving’s knighthood from Queen Victoria - the first ever to be given to an actor. He had completely revolutionized British theatre, working tirelessly to raise the bar of the art form to which he was dedicated. Regrettably, Irving's latter years were marred by a series of irreversible setbacks. A tragic fire at Irving's off-site shop in February 1898 destroyed most of the scenery and costumes for a range of performances in the company's repertory. Ellen Terry departed the Lyceum Company in 1902, signaling the start of additional issues behind the scenes.
Irving's health was deteriorating at this point, and his physical decline was visible after episodes of pneumonia and pleurisy. His financial condition looked to be deteriorating in tandem with his physical deterioration. Following the fire and a drop in box office earnings, Irving chose to turn the Lyceum over to a limited company, thereby ending his lengthy involvement with theatre administration.
Irving kept on in his own distinctive style, surviving on the road between seasons at Drury Lane. Sir Henry Irving's final performance was in 1905 at Bradford's Theatre Royal in the main role of Tennyson's Becket. Irving's health worries had generated a lot of stress among Irving's close friends, especially Stoker, who was worried about putting too much load on his already frail partner. Irving, who was portraying Becket, had just been 'wounded' on stage by the deadly De Tracy on Friday, October 13th, 1905. Irving said the following words before lying prone before the altar:
‘At the right hand of Power,
Power and Great Glory,
For Thy Church, O Lord -
Into Thy hands, O Lord,
Into Thy hands!’
Irving was struck by syncope after announcing his final writing, which was an unsettling irony. As the curtain fell, nobody could have predicted that these words, his penultimate said on his beloved stage, would also be the great man's final words in life, since although living an hour longer, Sir Henry Irving never spoke again. He fell in the foyer after being returned to the Midland Hotel. He was assisted to a chair, but he passed away 10 minutes before midnight. His dying remarks were forever suitable, belying a gloriously sad significance within, just as they were in his stage debut.
'His loss will be acutely felt throughout the English-speaking globe,' declared the British press, as the country was united in collective sadness for the 'foremost performer of our time.' His passing is a national tragedy, and his memory is a national treasure.' Irving's death had clearly sparked a significant outpouring of grief, as seen by numerous prominent members of society lobbying for Irving to be interred at Westminster Abbey after his death. 50,000 applications were submitted for the meager 1,200 spots available for the service within the Abbey, adding to the uproar.
The funeral was held at noon on October 20, 1905. Over 40,000 people observed the procession with Irving's casket. Many famous peers and members of the performing profession were in the packed pews of Westminster Abbey, filled with mournful grief. Thousands of people assembled outside in reverent silence. Inside, Irving's ashes were interred in the south transept, next to the tomb of the eighteenth-century Shakespearian actor David Garrick, and in front of Shakespeare's memorial monument, as was only fitting.
The chair in which Britain's first actor-knight died is now kept separate from the other chairs in the lobby of London's magnificent Garrick Club, thanks to a thoughtful observer of Irving's final moments realising, perhaps ghoulishly, that the chair would hold sentimental and historical significance; it was kept separate from the other chairs in the lobby. The fact that it's at the Garrick Club adds to the appropriateness of the tribute, as Irving was an avid member who frequented the club whenever he could.
Irving's effect may still be felt. Every February, a wreath is placed at the base of Irving's statue near Charing Cross Road, which is notable for being the capital's sole statue of an actor. He selected the stage and rose to never-before-seen heights with his iron-like drive. 'He has earned his rest, and to it, with our appreciation and compassion, we leave him,' the Bath Chronicle said after his death.