page_title: Henry Hamilton (playwright)
section_title: Playwright and lyricist
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Hamilton (playwright) / Playwright and lyricist
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover page for original 1885 sheet music of "The Locket Song" from operetta "The Lady of the Locket".
context_page_description: Henry Hamilton was an English playwright, lyricist and actor. He is best remembered for his musical theatre libretti, including The Duchess of Dantzic, The School Girl, Véronique and The Little Michus, often adapting foreign works for the British stage.
  He began as an actor in 1873 but turned to writing plays in 1881 and was especially successful in the first decade of the 20th century. He was also the author of the popular song "Private Tommy Atkins". Away from his professional life, Hamilton studied theosophy.
context_section_description: "Not being a great actor", Hamilton began to diversify. In November 1881 he sold his first play, A Shadow Sceptre, to the producer Charles Bernard for his leading lady Annie Alleyn. His second play, Moths, was an adaptation of the 1880 novel of the same name by Ouida centred on the idle and pleasure-seeking European aristocracy. The two plays were staged within three weeks of each other – Moths at the Globe Theatre on 25 March 1882 and A Shadow Sceptre at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, on 13 April. The production of Moths was prefaced by a virulent argument between Ouida and Hamilton conducted publicly in The Era concerning copyright theft and the right to adapt works. The dispute inadvertently benefited both novel and play.
  One reviewer of Moths declared that "a more inartistic finale has seldom been put on the stage", while another thought the treatment "appropriate and undeniably dramatic". A third critic concluded that Hamilton, having followed the plot of the novel closely, "produced a passable play, which promises to become a popular but ... certainly not an artistic, success" and lost the spirit of Ouida's work. Moths transferred to the Olympic Theatre where it continued to attract large audiences. A Shadow Sceptre was a four-act historical play, set in the world of Lady Jane Grey in the Court of Queen Mary. The Era thought it well written and staged, with only minor faults. The paper stated that, although Hamilton's inexperience meant that this work could "scarcely be spoken of in terms of unqualified praise", it admired the "courage which has led him to take so high a flight". It looked forward "with both interest and pleasure" to further work from Hamilton.
  His next play, Our Regiment, was a farce adaptation of the 1881 German play, Krieg im Frieden by Gustav von Moser and Franz von Schönthau, which had previously been adapted in English as The Passing Regiment in New York. Hamilton's adaptation was first staged at a Vaudeville Theatre matinée on 13 February 1883; it also had two London revivals and a successful provincial run the next year.
  Hamilton then wrote the libretto for William Fullerton's successful comic opera Lady of the Locket, staged at The Empire Theatre on 11 March 1885, before penning "an independent and ambitious dramatic work of his own", Harvest, that premiered at the Princess's Theatre on 18 September 1886. The plot centres around Scottish marriage law. Hamilton then staged the play in New York at Wallack's Theatre beginning on 12 October 1886, playing the character Bevil Brooke; it closed on 3 November 1886.
  His 1897 melodrama, The White Heather, written with Cecil Raleigh, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, achieved success in both London and New York. It was adapted as an American silent film in 1919. Thereafter he collaborated with Raleigh several times.
  His most popular theatre libretti included The Duchess of Dantzic (1903) and The School Girl (1903), and English adaptations of the French operettas Véronique (1905) and The Little Michus (1907). According to the obituary writer of the Daily Mirror, Hamilton "was a workmanlike constructor of melodrama, as the records of many Drury Lane successes testify. He was also a deft adaptor of French libretti into English and a lyric-writer of no small capability."
  He was also the author of the popular song Private Tommy Atkins, music by Samuel Potter, introduced when interpolated into the musical A Gaiety Girl in 1893. Another jingoistic song penned by Hamilton was Sons of the Motherland, with music by Lionel Monckton, introduced in 1901 into San Toy a year into its run.
caption: Song from Lady of the Locket, 1885
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