Arthur Playfair

Arthur Wyndham Playfair (20 October 1869 – 28 August 1918) was an English actor and singer.

[1] He went on to create roles in the Victorian burlesque Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891); the comic opera The Mountebanks (1892) by Alfred Cellier and W. S. Gilbert; as Sir Reddan Tapeleigh, with Jessie Bond, in the musical comedy Go-Bang (1894) by Adrian Ross and F. Osmond Carr; and the comic opera His Excellency (1895) by Gilbert and Carr.

He toured the United States in 1901 and 1903, in the latter year appearing in The Man from Blankley's at the Criterion Theatre in New York with Charles Hawtrey, and also appearing there as Bernard Mandeville in Letty in 1904.

[8] Playfair married the actress Lena Ashwell OBE in 1896; he began divorce proceedings in 1903 following her adultery with Robert Taber, the former husband of actress Julia Marlowe.

Playfair and Ashwell finally divorced in 1908, the divorce proceedings revealing that he also committed adultery and domestic violence, was an alcoholic and passed on venereal disease to his wife.