Edward Compton (actor)

Edward Compton (14 January 1854 – 16 July 1918) was an actor and actor-manager of the Victorian era who enjoyed considerable success in touring the English provinces with plays by Shakespeare, Sheridan and Goldsmith but who met with failure while trying to break into the West End theatre.

In 1874 he joined the Francis Fairlie Touring Company for who he appeared in East Lynne by Alfred Kempe, in Progress by C. R. Munro and The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, followed by seasons in Bristol, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Liverpool and Birmingham.

[1] Compton joined the company of the Adelphi Theatre in London and from September 1879 to July 1880 he accompanied Adelaide Neilson on her successful tour of America, playing in New York, Boston, New Orleans and San Francisco.

On completing the tour the company sailed from New York for London with Neilson continuing on to Paris to prepare for her forthcoming marriage to Compton arranged for September 1880.

[1][2][5] Among other roles Compton played Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1881), Dr. Pangloss in The Heir At Law (1881), Mawworm in Isaac Bickerstaffe's The Hypocrite (1881), Jack Rover in Wild Oats (1882), Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer (1882), Charles Surface in The School For Scandal (1883), Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors (1883) and Bob Acres in The Rivals (1883).

[6] By 1891 the Compton Comedy Company had been touring the UK for ten years and had given thousands of performances of such plays as Sheridan's The Rivals and The School for Scandal, The Road to Ruin by Thomas Holcroft, David Garrick by T. W. Robertson and She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.