Henry Hamilton (playwright)

He is best remembered for his musical theatre libretti, including The Duchess of Dantzic (1903), The School Girl (1903), Véronique (1905) and The Little Michus (1907), often adapting foreign works for the British stage.

[6] By 1880, Hamilton had joined Barry Sullivan's Shakespearan company, with which he played Horatio in Hamlet and Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice at Leicester's Theatre Royal.

[8] Later that year, he played minor roles in a comedy, False Shame, at the Royalty Theatre,[9] and after Christmas he appeared in a short season "of favourite pieces" starring Helen Barry at the Warrior Square Concert Rooms in St Leonards-on-Sea.

[10] In 1881 Hamilton joined the touring company of Miss Wallis, playing Shakespeare and other works, before taking a variety of roles in a summer season at Brighton's Theatre Royal.

[18] The production of Moths was prefaced by a virulent argument between Ouida and Hamilton conducted publicly in The Era concerning copyright theft and the right to adapt works.

[19] A third critic concluded that Hamilton, having followed the plot of the novel closely, "produced a passable play, which promises to become a popular but ... certainly not an artistic, success" and lost the spirit of Ouida's work.

The paper stated that, although Hamilton's inexperience meant that this work could "scarcely be spoken of in terms of unqualified praise", it admired the "courage which has led him to take so high a flight".

His most popular theatre libretti included The Duchess of Dantzic (1903) and The School Girl (1903), and English adaptations of the French operettas Véronique (1905) and The Little Michus (1907).

[31] Another jingoistic song penned by Hamilton was Sons of the Motherland, with music by Lionel Monckton,[32] introduced in 1901 into San Toy a year into its run.

[33] Away from his professional life, Hamilton studied theosophy and was the first chairman, and latterly the president, of the Folkestone Lodge of the Theosophical Society and a man of deep spiritual convictions.