William Haviland (actor)

William Haviland (1856 – 19 September 1917) was a British actor-manager specialising in the works of Shakespeare who during his long stage career performed with some of the leading actors of his time including Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

[5] As Alexander J. Haviland he acted in The Lady of Lyons alongside his wife in John Martin-Harvey's Lyceum Theatre Company tour of the provinces in 1888.

[7] On returning from South Africa Haviland returned to the company of Henry Irving at the Lyceum for whom he played Christian in The Bells (1900),[8] François de Paule in Louis XI (1900),[9] and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (1891),[10] before joining the company of Johnston Forbes-Robertson and then, with his wife Amy Coleridge, that of John Martin-Harvey, with whom he appeared in A Cigarette Maker's Romance at the Royal Court Theatre (1901)[11] and joined him for his sixth tour of America in 1902[12] during which Haviland acted in A Cigarette Maker's Romance, The Children of Kings and The Only Way.

Later in 1906 he was in Cape Town in South Africa with his new wife in their joint Haviland-Latimer Company with which he acted in productions of Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Prospero in The Tempest, Iago in Hamlet, Macbeth, Svengali in Trilby and was Matthias in The Bells.

[20] His long career performing Shakespeare's plays ended with his appearance as the Duke of Norfolk in Tree's production of Richard II at Dublin in 1913.