Lewis Waller

After early stage experience with J. L. Toole's and Helena Modjeska's companies from 1883, Waller became known, by the late 1880s, for romantic leads, both in Shakespeare and in popular costume dramas of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Waller was born in Bilbao, Spain, the eldest son of an English civil engineer, William James Lewis, and his wife, Carlotta née Vyse.

[5] In that month he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in a charity matinee for the Actors' Benevolent Fund with Toole's company and such contemporary stars as Rutland Barrington, Lionel Brough, Arthur Cecil, Nellie Farren, George Grossmith, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

He joined a touring company, playing the central role, the blind Gilbert Vaughan, in Called Back by Hugh Conway, dramatised by J. Comyns Carr.

At the Strand Theatre in early 1887, he played Roy Carlton in Jack-in-the-Box, which his biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes as his first substantial success in London.

[7] Waller then joined William Hunter Kendal and John Hare at the St. James's Theatre, where he played the Duc de Bligny in The Ironmaster, Sir George Barclay in Lady Clancarty, and Lord Arden in The Wife's Secret.

[7] Rudolph de Cordova, in a 1909 biographical sketch notes, "During this period, few theatres played regular afternoon performances, so that the actors were, for the most part, engaged only in the evening.

"[11] In particular he played several Ibsen roles in these matinees in the early 1890s, bringing him to the attention of people of influence in the theatre such as William Archer, Jacob Grein and Bernard Shaw.

"[12] Returning to London, Waller, in partnership with H. H. Morrell, leased the Theatre Royal, Haymarket while its regular tenant, Herbert Beerbohm Tree was on tour in the US.

[16] Pearson lamented, "the puerile nature of the plays he usually put on, and the adolescent behaviour of his female admirers, prevented many people from appreciating his superb gift as a declaimer of Shakespeare's rhetoric, and frequently exposed him to ridicule.