ELLEN TERRY

'Dame Ellen Terry, GBE' (February 27 1848 – July 21 1928) was an English stage actress. Born into a theatrical family, Terry played her first role opposite Charles Kean at London's Princess' Theatre at the age of eight. She continued acting and entered the company at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in 1861.

Contents

Early life

The Royalty Theatre, Chute's Stock Company and the Haymarket

Marriages, relationships, career

Bibliography

External links

Early life

Born 'Alice Ellen Terry' -- she reversed her names by the time of her first marriage -- in Coventry, England in 1847 into a theatrical family headed by actors.
Of Benjamin and Sarah (née Ballard) Terry's eleven children, five (including Ellen) became actors: Florence, Fred, Kate and Marion. Two other children, George and Charles, were connected with theatre management. Charles was the father of two daughters who would also appear on the stage, Minnie and Beatrice.^[1]
Ellen's first appearance on stage came at the age of eight, when she appeared under Charles Kean as Mamilius in Shakespeare's ''The Winter's Tale''. Her older sister Kate, who had begun acting in London in 1852, also played at the Princess. She continued acting at the Princess Theatre until the Keans' retirement in 1859.^[2] In her autobiography she described herself during those years as "a very strong, happy and healthy child."^[3]
For the next two years, Ellen and Kate began travelling as strolling players, accompanied by their parents and a musician. They travelled to a different town almost every day and slept in small inns. The family returned to London in 1861.

The Royalty Theatre, Chute's Stock Company and the Haymarket

Between 1861 and 1862, Ellen was engaged by the Royalty Theatre, managed by Madame Albina de Rhona.
In 1862, she joined her sister Kate in Bristol and began working with J.H. Chute's stock company where she played a wide variety of parts. When first cast for a burlesque role, Ellen pointed out that she was unable to sing or dance, was told that she had to do it anyway, and grew to enjoy burlesque as much as Shakespeare. In 1863, Chute opened the Theatre Royal in Bath, where Ellen appeared at the opening as Titania in ''A Midsummer's Night's Dream''.

Marriages, relationships, career

Ellen Terry married three times, and was involved in numerous relationships during her lifetime. In London, during an engagement with the ''Haymarket Theatre'', Ellen and Kate had their portrait painted by the eminent artist George Frederick Watts, and was impressed with the music, art and elegance of his lifestyle. She married him on February 20,1864, shortly before her 17th birthday, when Watts was 46. Ellen gave up acting during her marriage to Watts and she was treated more like a timid child bride than a hostess when eminent visitors came to call. They were separated 10 months later, and Ellen Terry returned unhappily to the stage.

The birth of her son, Edward Gordon Craig, in 1872, was the result of a liaison with the progressive architect-designer Edward William Godwin, with whom she retreated to Hertfordshire, again temporarily retiring from acting. The liaison cooled in 1874, and she returned to her acting career.
From 1874 she became the leading Shakespearean actress in London, and in partnership with Henry Irving became successful in England (especially at Irving's Lyceum Theatre) and the USA. Among her roles with Irving was a memorable Imogen in ''Cymbeline'' in 1896. She married on 21st December 1877 Charles Clavering Wardell, an actor/journalist. In 1903 she formed a theatre management business with her son, abandoning her business partner Irving. She struck up a friendship and a famous correspondence with George Bernard Shaw (who wrote the play Captain Brassbound's Conversion explicitly for her) during this time, and divorced from Wardell. On 22 March 1907 she married American actor James Carew. She became a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1925. She died three years later, aged 80.
Her son, Edward Gordon Craig, became an important actor, designer, and director; her daughter Edith Craig became theatre director, producer, and early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England; her grandnephew, Sir John Gielgud, also became an actor. The singer Helen Terry, and illustrator Helen Craig are also descendants of hers.
Her ashes rest at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London.
Ellen Terry should not be confused with Charles Dickens's mistress Ellen Ternan, also an actress, who was a few years her senior.

Bibliography

★ ''The Story of My Life'' (autobiography)

★ ''Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time'' by Nina Auerbach

External links

★

★

★ Ellen Terry at the Family Records Centre

★ Find-A-Grave biography