& W. Beggarstaff, was the pseudonym used by the British artists William Nicholson and James Pryde for their collaborative partnership in the design of posters and other graphic work between 1894 and 1899.

[1] William Nicholson met his future wife Mabel "Prydie" Pryde in 1888 or 1889 at Hubert Herkomer's art school at Bushey, Herts, where both were students.

The initial design was made partly by collage, the hair and clothing of Craig as Hamlet cut from plain black paper; the life-sized figure in the printed version used to publicise the play was stencilled on brown wrapping-paper by Nicholson, with some details added by hand.

An example is in the Museum of Modern Art of New York City; this version was printed in facsimile in 1898 in Paris by the Imprimerie Chaix as plate 107 of Les Maîtres de l'Affiche.

At about the same time, the Beggarstaffs designed and printed a poster showing Craig in another of his leading rôles on the same tour with Hardy's company, that of Charles Surface in Sheridan's School for Scandal.

They completely ignored the floral trend of art nouveau, which made their work although an artistic success, a financial disaster.