Alfred Wareing

[1] Wareing found sufficient interest amongst Glasgow industrialists to provide the £1,000 he needed for a lease of the Royalty Theatre, and the Scottish Playgoers' Company opened on 5 April 1909 with Shaw's You Never Can Tell.

[3] Wareing's health was frail, and he was helped by assistant directors who included Norman Page, Harley Granville-Barker and William Armstrong.

[1] The team built a reputation and a regular audience, and after initial financial struggles the company came close to breaking even, but in 1913 Wareing's health gave way and he resigned, handing over to Lewis Casson.

The First World War put an end to the enterprise; the lessors of the Royalty favoured escapist entertainment in wartime and did not renew the Glasgow company's lease.

He helped W. E. Henley with the six-volume "Edinburgh Edition" of the complete works (1901) and from 1931 to 1933 was the librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial Library, Stratford-on-Avon.