Arthur Wing Pinero
His other successes included Trelawny of the "Wells" (1898), a romantic comedy celebrating the theatre, old and new, and The Gay Lord Quex, about a reformed roué and a feisty young woman.
A venture into opera, with a libretto for The Beauty Stone (1898), was not a success, and Pinero thereafter generally stuck to his familiar genre of society dramas and comedies.
His grandfather abandoned the Jewish faith, became a member of the Church of England, married a Christian Englishwoman, Margaret Wing, and became a highly successful lawyer.
[1] He attended Spa Fields Chapel charity school in Exmouth Street, Clerkenwell, London, until the age of ten, when he went to work in his father's office.
[6] As a junior member of Wyndham's company Pinero quickly gained experience in a range of roles, supporting E. A. Sothern in Our American Cousin, and Charles Mathews in the Balzac adaptation A Game of Speculation, and graduating to larger parts such as Crosstree in Black-Eyed Susan.
[2] He was fortunate in being offered another provincial engagement, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool, where he began to be noticed by the press, gaining approving reviews for his acting in supporting roles.
[7] A production of Miss Gwilt, an adaptation of Wilkie Collins's Armadale, starring Ada Cavendish, was reported by the theatrical paper The Era as "a genuine triumph";[8] the play transferred from Liverpool to the West End, and Pinero retained his role as an elderly solicitor.
[2] Pinero's profile as a playwright was further raised by The Money Spinner, a full-length comedy, first given at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester in November 1880 and then at the St James's in London in January 1881.
[12] After leaving Irving's company Pinero joined another well-known London management, Squire Bancroft and his wife Effie, who ran the Haymarket Theatre.
Wearing writes that in these plays Pinero "attacked facets of Victorian society by creating credible though blinkered characters, trying to preserve their respectability while trapped in a relentless whirlpool of catastrophically illogical events".
[19] Three touring companies were needed to meet the demand for the play in the British provinces, and local managements in Australia, India and South Africa were licensed to stage it; Pinero travelled to New York for the American premiere, at Daly's Theatre in October 1885.
A retrospective review of his career published in 1928 pointed out that Pinero – who had recently celebrated 50 years as a West End playwright – achieved fame at an unusually early age: his contemporaries Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie and John Galsworthy were all in their thirties before their plays were produced in London.
[23] This piece concerns an impoverished clerk, a bibulous but wise barrister, fraudulent bankers, a long-lost sweetheart and happy endings all round.
It was billed as "a domestic drama", and was mainly comic, but, The Era reported, "there are scenes where the laughter is hushed, where smiles give way to tears, and where mirth is merged in heartfelt sympathy".
Hare declined to present it, and George Alexander, the actor-manager running the St James's Theatre, to whom Pinero then offered the play, said, "Sorry, I daren't do it".
In Wearing's words, "although not as avant-garde as Ibsen's plays, Tanqueray confronted its fashionable St James's audiences with as forceful a social message as they could stomach".
It is not clear why Carte chose to commission a libretto from two writers with no experience in the genre, but for Arthur Sullivan's The Beauty Stone he brought together Pinero and J. Comyns Carr, an art critic, gallery owner and part-time author of dramas.
[34][n 5] Sullivan, who was used to Gilbert's skill and flexibility, quickly found his new collaborators inept: "gifted and brilliant men, with no experience in writing for music, and yet obstinately refusing to accept any suggestions from me as to form and construction".
[38] At its premiere, on 28 May 1898, the piece ran for four hours, and Pinero and Carr had to accept some drastic cuts to their words, which also meant sacrificing some of Sullivan's best music.
[2] The Gay Lord Quex, a story of a determined and resourceful young woman and a reformed aristocratic philanderer,[43] had an initial run of 300 performances,[44] and has proved one of Pinero's more revivable plays.
The alliance between Alexander had by now become a firm friendship, punctuated by occasional arguments between the actor-manager and the author, who became extremely prescriptive about the staging of his plays and the delivery of his lines.
Shaw conceived the idea that playwrights needed a titled figure to lead their campaigns, and lobbied the British government to secure a knighthood for Pinero.
[52] A memorial service was held at St Marylebone Parish Church on 28 November 1934,[53] after which, by Pinero's request, his ashes were buried in his wife's grave in the churchyard of Chiddingfold, Surrey, close to their former country house.
[2] The original London productions that were followed by New York productions were: The Money Spinner (New York, 1882); The Squire (1882); Girls and Boys (1883); Lords and Commons (1884); In Chancery (1885); The Magistrate (play) (1885); The Schoolmistress (1886); Dandy Dick (1887); Sweet Lavender (1888); Lady Bountiful (1891); The Cabinet Minister (1892); The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893); The Amazons (1894); The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith (1895); The Benefit of the Doubt (1896); The Princess and the Butterfly (1897); Trelawny of the Wells (1898); The Gay Lord Quex (play) (1900); Iris (1902); Letty (1904); A Wife without a Smile (1904); His House in Order (1906); Mid-Channel (1910); Preserving Mr. Panmure (1912); The "Mind the Paint" Girl (1912); and The Enchanted Cottage (1923).
[22] Among the notable British revivals of Pinero plays singled out in John Dawick's 1993 study of the dramatist were: In 2012 The Times remarked on a revival in interest in Pinero, with new productions of The Second Mrs Tanqueray at the Rose Theatre, The Magistrate at the National Theatre, starring John Lithgow in the title role, Trelawney of the "Wells" at the Donmar, and Dandy Dick, with Patricia Hodge and Nicholas Le Prevost.
[22] The first of Pinero's works to be filmed was The Second Mrs Tanqueray, in an unauthorised American silent version in 1914, which prompted a successful but not very lucrative lawsuit by the author.
[56] With his approval, eight of his plays were adapted for the silent cinema, an authorised version of The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1916) with George Alexander in his first film role, reprising the part he created in 1893; Trelawny of the "Wells" (1916); Sweet Lavender (twice: in 1915 and 1920); Iris (twice: 1916 and as A Slave of Vanity, 1920); The Profligate (1917); The Gay Lord Quex (twice: 1917 and 1919); Mid-Channel (1920); His House in Order (1920) and The Enchanted Cottage (1924).
Television versions include The Gay Lord Quex (1946, 1953 and 1983, starring respectively Ronald Ward, André Morell and Anton Rogers); The Magistrate (1946, 1951 and 1972, Desmond Walter-Ellis, Richard Goolden and Michael Hordern); Trelawny of the "Wells" (1949, 1971 and 1985, Bransby Williams, Roland Culver, Michael Hordern); Dandy Dick (1948, directed by Athene Seyler) and The Second Mrs Tanqueray starring Elizabeth Sellars (1962).
In a 1972 study of the playwright, Walter Lazenby wrote, "Pinero cannot be outranked as a farceur by any other English writer; not even Shakespeare consistently expended on this form the care and art which went into the Court Theatre farces or achieved such thoroughly satisfying results".
[60] Reviewing the book, the academic Robert Ronning agreed that the farces were Pinero's most enduring works: In 2012 the director Stephen Unwin wrote:
