Henry James Byron
Henry James Byron (8 January 1835 – 11 April 1884) was a prolific English dramatist, as well as an editor, journalist, director, theatre manager, novelist and actor.
Returning to London and beginning to study for the bar, he finally found playwriting success in burlesques and other punny plays.
In the 1860s, he became an editor of humorous magazines and a noted man-about-town, while continuing to build his playwriting reputation, notably as co-manager, with Marie Wilton, of the Prince of Wales's Theatre.
[1] Byron joined several provincial companies as an actor from 1853–57, sometimes in his own plays and sometimes in those of T. W. Robertson (with whom he acted and starved) or others, but had little success.
He described his early attempts at acting, and the hardships of the journeyman touring actor, in an 1873 essay for The Era Almanack and Annual called "Eighteen Parts a Week".
His successful works in 1858 included The Lady of Lyons, or, Twopenny Pride and Pennytence and Fra Diavolo Travestie; or, The Prince, the Pirate and the Pearl, also at the Strand, which later played in New York.
[1] Another successful Strand burlesque in 1858 was The Maid and the Magpie; or, The Fatal Spoon an early play to include a dance at the end of a song.
[4] He wrote numerous dramatic critiques and humorous essays for magazines, including the rival of Fun, Punch.
[1] Henry Morley acknowledged with dismay Byron's position in the literary world as chief punster but found in him "a true power of fun that makes itself felt by high and low".
[1] Upon his severing the partnership and starting theatre management on his own account in the provinces, he lost money, ending up in bankruptcy court in 1868.
He even collaborated with W. S. Gilbert on Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife, which played in 1867 at the Haymarket Theatre in London.
Byron's acting was again admired in An American Lady in 1874, with which he began as the manager of the Criterion Theatre, and then Married in Haste (1875) which was much revived.
Other roles included Dick Simpson in Conscience Money (1878), Charles Chuckles in his An English Gentleman (1879) and John Blunt in his Michael Strogoff (1881).
[1] The Times explained that "in such parts as Gibson Greene in Married in Haste, a self-possessed, observant, satirical, well-bred man of the world, [Byron] was beyond the reach of rivalry.
[5] The popular three-act comedy The Guv'nor, credited to "E. G. Lankester" and first performed in the 1880s, has been attributed to Byron on stylistic grounds.
