Charles Wyndham
Encyclopedia
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
actor-manager
Actor-manager
An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the company's business and financial arrangements, sometimes taking over the management of a theatre, to perform plays of their own choice and in which they will usually star...
, born as Charles Culverwell in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, the son of a doctor. He was educated abroad, at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
and at the College of Surgeons and the Peter Street Anatomical School, Dublin. His taste for the stage - he had taken part in amateur drama - was too strong for him to take up either the clerical or the medical career suggested for him, and early in 1862 he made his first professional appearance in[London, performing with Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
.
Further stage work was not forthcoming, and he returned to medicine. There was a shortage of surgeons in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, which was in the throes of the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and he volunteered to became brigade surgeon in the Union army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
. He served at the battles of Fredericksburg
Fredericksburg, Virginia
Fredericksburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia located south of Washington, D.C., and north of Richmond. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 24,286...
, Chancellorsville
Battle of Chancellorsville
The Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the American Civil War, and the principal engagement of the Chancellorsville Campaign. It was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the village of Chancellorsville. Two related battles were fought nearby on...
and Gettysburg
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Gettysburg is a borough that is the county seat, part of the Gettysburg Battlefield, and the eponym for the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. The town hosts visitors to the Gettysburg National Military Park and has 3 institutions of higher learning: Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg College, and...
. On 17 November 1864 he resigned his contract with the Army to return to the stage. He starred, in 1867, in W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
's La Vivandière
La Vivandière (Gilbert)
La Vivandière; or, True to the Corps! is a burlesque by W. S. Gilbert, described by the author as "An Operatic Extravaganza Founded on Donizetti's Opera, La figlia del regimento." In the French or other continental armies a vivandière was a woman who supplied food and drink to troops in the...
. In later years he was to appear in America: between 1870-1872 in his own Wyndham Comedy Company; and in later tours between 1882 and 1909. On one occasion he appeared in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
with John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
.
Returning to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, his career blossomed. Although he was occasionally to play Shakespeare, his work mostly consisted of the popular melodramas and comedies of the time. He played at Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
and Dublin in Her Ladyship's Guardian, his own adaptation of Edward B. Hamley's novel Lady Lee's Widowhood. He reappeared in London in 1866 as Sir Arthur Lascelles in Morion's All that Glitters is not Gold, but his great success at that time was in F. C. Burnand's burlesque of Black-eyed Susan, as Hatchett, "with dance." This brought him to the erstwhile St James's Theatre
St James's Theatre
The St James's Theatre was a 1,200-seat theatre located in King Street, at Duke Street, St James's, London. The elaborate theatre was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior by Samuel Beazley and built by the partnership of Peto & Grissell for the tenor and theatre...
, where he played with Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, 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 Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
in Idalia; then with Ellen Terry in Charles Reade
Charles Reade
Charles Reade was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth.-Life:Charles Reade was born at Ipsden, Oxfordshire to John Reade and Anne Marie Scott-Waring; William Winwood Reade the influential historian , was his nephew. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford,...
's Double Marriage, and Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
's Still Waters Run Deep.
As Charles Surface, his best part for many years, and in a breezy three-act farce, Pink Dominoes, by James Albery
James Albery
James Albery was an English dramatist.-Life and career:Albery was born in London. On leaving school Albery entered an architect's office, and started to write plays. His farce A Pretty Piece of Chiselling was given its first production by the Ingoldsby Club in 1864...
, and in Brighton, an anglicized version of Saratoga by Bronson Howard (1842–1908), who married his sister, he added greatly to his popularity both at home and abroad. In 1876 he took control of the Criterion Theatre
Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building. It has an official capacity of 588.-Building the theatre:...
. Here he produced a long succession of plays, in which he took the leading part, notably a number of old English comedies, and in such modern plays as The Liars, The Case of Rebellious Susan and others by Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
and Foggerty's Fairy
Foggerty's Fairy
Foggerty's Fairy, subtitled "An Entirely Original Fairy Farce", is a three-act farce by W.S. Gilbert based loosely on Gilbert's short story, "The Story of a Twelfth Cake", which was published in the Christmas Number of The Graphic in 1874, and elements of other Gilbert plays...
by W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
(1881); and he became famous for his acting in David Garrick
David Garrick (play)
David Garrick is a comic play written in 1864 by Thomas William Robertson about the famous 18th century actor and theatre manager, David Garrick....
. In 1899 he opened his new theatre, called Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by the actor/manager Charles Wyndham . Located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster, it was designed by W.G.R. Sprague about 1898, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916...
. From 1885 onwards his leading actress was Miss Mary Moore (Mrs. Albery), who became his partner in the proprietorship of the Criterion and Wyndham's theatres, and of his New Theatre, opened in 1903; and her delightful acting in comedy made their long association memorable on the London stage.
Wyndham was knighted
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
in 1902. In 1916 he married Mary Moore (widow of James Albery), who for 30 years had been his leading lady and had also been associated with him as a manager.
Publications
- Florence T. Shore, Sir Charles Wyndham (New York, 1908)
- Thomas Edgar Pemberton, "Sir Charles Wyndham, A Biography" (London, Hutchinson And Co., 1904)
See also
- Article: "A British Actor and Surgeon in Lincoln's Army"
- Wendy TrewinWendy MonkWendy Elizabeth Monk , wife of theatre critic J.C. Trewin , whom she married on October 4, 1938. They were "an inseparable couple, whose shared interests also bore fruit in literary collaboration, they had two sons"...
All on stage : Charles Wyndham and the Alberys (1980) ISBN 0-24553444-X - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by Michael Read, ‘Wyndham, Sir Charles (1837–1919)’ online edn, May 2006 , accessed 13 Jan 2007
- http://members.cox.net/ggtext/charleswyndham1837_obit.htmlWyndham's obituary in 'The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
' January 13, 1919]