Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the West End's Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre.

He competed in a recitation contest at a local Methodist chapel where he was beaten by William Curnow, later the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

When he saw Samuel Phelps play Hamlet soon after this, he sought lessons, letters of introduction, and work in the Lyceum Theatre in Sunderland in 1856, labouring against great odds until his 1871 success in The Bells in London set him apart from all the rest.

Before joining the Lyceum, Terry had fled her first marriage and conceived two out-of-wedlock children with architect-designer Edward William Godwin, but regardless of how much and how often her behavior defied the strict morality expected by her Victorian audiences, she somehow remained popular.

It could be said that Irving found his family in his professional company, which included his ardent supporter and manager Bram Stoker and Terry's two illegitimate children, Teddy and Edy.

Whether Irving's long, spectacularly successful relationship with leading lady Ellen Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much historical speculation.

But at earlier periods in her life, when there were more people around to be offended, she said contradictory things.Terry's son Teddy, later known as Edward Gordon Craig, spent much of his childhood (from 1879, when he was 8, until 1897) indulged by Irving backstage at the Lyceum.

After a few years' schooling while living at Halsetown, near St Ives, Cornwall, Irving became a clerk to a firm of East India merchants in London, but he soon gave up a commercial career for acting.

On 29 September 1856 he made his first appearance at Sunderland as Gaston, Duke of Orleans, in Bulwer Lytton's play, Richelieu, billed as Henry Irving.

Possessed of a fine voice, which he modulated with great taste and judgment, he was able to mark the depth or frivolity of the character he was representing with remarkable facility.

[9]He gained recognition by degrees, and in 1866 Ruth Herbert engaged him as her leading man and sometime stage director at the St. James's Theatre, London, where she first played Doricourt in The Belle's Stratagem.

One piece that he directed there was W. S. Gilbert's first successful solo play, Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack (1866)[10] The next year he joined the company of the newly opened Queen's Theatre, where he acted with Charles Wyndham, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough, John Clayton, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Wigan, Ellen Terry and Nellie Farren.

In 1875, again with Bateman, he was seen as the title character in Macbeth; in 1876 as Othello, and as Philip in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Queen Mary; in 1877 in Richard III; and in The Lyons Mail.

His Shylock was as much discussed as his Hamlet had been, the dignity with which he invested the vengeful Jewish merchant marking a departure from the traditional interpretation of the role.

[7] After the production of Tennyson's The Cup and revivals of Othello (in which Irving played Iago to Edwin Booth's title character) and Romeo and Juliet, there began a period at the Lyceum which had a potent effect on the English stage.

[7] Much Ado about Nothing (1882) was followed by Twelfth Night (1884); an adaptation of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield by W. G. Wills (1885); Faust (1885); Macbeth (1888, with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan[13]); The Dead Heart, by Watts Phillips (1889); Ravenswood by Herman, and Merivales' dramatic version of Scott's Bride of Lammermoor (1890).

[7] As Terry aged, there seemed to be fewer opportunities for her in his company; that was one reason she eventually left, moving on into less steady but nonetheless beloved stage work, including solo performances of Shakespeare's women.

He enjoyed cultivating rivalries between his followers, and to remain in his circle required constant, careful courting of his notoriously fickle affections.

Terriss had been stabbed at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre in December 1897 and in the wake of his death, Prince was committed to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.

[7] On 13 October 1905, at 67 years old, Irving had completed a performance and suffered a stroke after returning to his lodging at the lobby of the Midland Hotel, Bradford, where he died before medical attention could arrive.

A little more than three-quarters of an hour afterward I was sent for by the man who attended Sir Henry from the theatre, who told me that he had fainted or collapsed on entering the Midland Hotel.

"[23] Guthrie's confusion may have come from the fact that the character Becket's last words in the play are "O Lord, into thy hands," but, as a correspondent noted, "Then the curtain falls, and within a very short time, having just reached his hotel, the great actor breathed his last.

[1] His acting divided critics; opinions differed as to the extent to which his mannerisms of voice and deportment interfered with or assisted the expression of his ideas.