page_title: Ellen Terry
section_title: Shakespeare, Irving, Lyceum
hierarchical_section_title: Ellen Terry / Shakespeare, Irving, Lyceum
caption_attribution_description: Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928) as William Shakespeare's Queen Katherine of Aragon in his play Henry VIII. Dame Ellen is wearing a costume designed for a production of Henry VIII at the Lyceum in London by Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905).
context_page_description: Dame Alice Ellen Terry, GBE, known professionally as Ellen Terry, was a renowned English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.
  In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean and comic actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.
  In 1903 Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre, focusing on the plays of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen.
context_section_description: In 1875, Terry gave an acclaimed performance as Portia in The Merchant of Venice at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, produced by the Bancrofts. Oscar Wilde wrote a sonnet, upon seeing her in this role: "No woman Veronese looked upon/Was half so fair as thou whom I behold." She recreated this role many times in her career until her last appearance as Portia at London's Old Vic Theatre in 1917.
  In 1876 she appeared as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Blanche Haye in a revival of T. W. Robertson's Ours, and the title role in Olivia by William Gorman Wills at the Court Theatre (an adaptation of The Vicar of Wakefield), where she joined the company of John Hare. In November 1877 she married Charles Clavering Wardell Kelly (1839–1885), an actor/journalist she had met while appearing in Reade's plays, but they separated in 1881. After this, she finally reconciled with her parents, whom she had not seen since she began to live out-of-wedlock with Godwin.
  In 1878 the 30-year-old Terry joined Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre as its leading lady at a generous salary, beginning with Ophelia opposite Irving's Hamlet. Soon she was regarded as the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain, and in partnership with Irving, she reigned as such for over 20 years until they left the Lyceum in 1902. Their 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice ran for an unusual 250 nights, and success followed success in the Shakespeare canon as well as in Tennyson, Bulwer-Lytton, Reade, Sardou, and plays by other contemporary playwrights, such as W. G. Wills, and other major plays.
  In 1879 The Times said of Terry's acting in Paul Terrier's All is Vanity, or the Cynic's Defeat, "Miss Terry's Iris was a performance of inimitable charm, full of movement, ease, and laughter... the most exquisite harmony and natural grace... such an Iris might well have turned the head of Diogenes himself." In 1880, at the Lyceum, she played the title role in an adaptation of King René's Daughter called Iolanthe. The Era wrote: "Nothing more winning and enchanting than the grace, and simplicity, and girlish sweetness of the blind Iolanthe as shown by Miss Ellen Terry has within our memory been seen upon the stage. The assumption was delightfully perfect. ... Exquisite ... exercise of the peculiarly fascinating powers of Miss Ellen Terry, who achieved an undoubted triumph ... and was cheered again and again".
  Among her most celebrated roles with Irving were Ophelia, Pauline in The Lady of Lyons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1878), Portia (1879), Queen Henrietta Maria in William Gorman Wills's drama Charles I (1879), Desdemona in Othello (1881), Camma in Tennyson's short tragedy The Cup (1881), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, another of her signature roles (1882 and often thereafter), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1882), Jeanette in The Lyons Mail (1883), the title part in Reade's romantic comedy Nance Oldfield (1883), Viola in Twelfth Night (1884), Margaret in the long-running adaptation of Faust by Wills (1885), the title role in Olivia (1885, which she had played earlier at the Court Theatre), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1888, with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan), Queen Katherine in Henry VIII (1892), Cordelia in King Lear (1892), Rosamund de Clifford in Becket by Alfred Tennyson (1893), Guinevere in King Arthur by J. Comyns Carr, with incidental music by Sullivan (1895), Imogen in Cymbeline (1896), the title character in Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau's play Madame Sans-Gêne (1897) and Volumnia in Coriolanus (1901).
  Terry made her American debut in 1883, playing Queen Henrietta opposite Irving in Charles I. Among the other roles she portrayed on this and six subsequent North American tours with Irving were Jeanette, Ophelia, Beatrice, Viola, and her most famous role, Portia. Her last role at the Lyceum was Portia in 1902, after which she toured in the British provinces with Irving and his company that autumn. Whether Irving's relationship with Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much speculation. According to Sir Michael Holr
caption: As Katherine in Henry VIII
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