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Henry Brodribb Irving

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"HENRY BRODRIBB IRVING (1870-1919), English actor, elder son of Sir Henry Irving ( see 14.855), was born in London Aug. 5 1870. He was educated at Marlborough and New College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1894; but he quickly abandoned this profession for that of the stage, for which his inherited aptitude had always been very marked. At Oxford he had belonged to the O.U.D.S. and had played the leading parts in Browning's Straf f ord and Shakespeare's King John. His first professional appearance in London was made Sept. 1891 with John Hare at the Garrick theatre in Robertson's School. Three years later he joined Mr. Ben Greet's company, where he met Miss Dorothea Baird, whom he married in 1896 at the time of her great popular success in Du Maurier's play of Trilby. His earliest notable success was in Barrie's The Admirable Crichton in 1903, and he followed it by an interesting impersonation of Hamlet in 1905. His picturesque appearance and strong likeness to his father induced him to repeat many of his father's famous parts; but he did original work of a high order in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in Stephen Phillips's The Sin of David, in Walter Hackett's The Barton Mystery, and in other romantic and melodramatic productions, many of them produced at the Savoy theatre, London, of which he was lessee and manager from 1913 until his death. Throughout his life he was a keen student of criminology, and he published a Life of Judge Jeffreys (1898); French Criminals of the ipth Century (1901); A Book of (1918) and other papers on the subject. He died in London Oct. 17 1919.

His younger brother, Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving (1871-1914), English actor, was born in London Dec. 21 1871.

He was educated at Marlborough and abroad, being destined for the diplomatic service; but he joined Frank Benson's Shakespearean company in 1893 and made his first professional appearance in London a year later with J. L. Toole in Barrie's Walker, London. He married the actress Mabel Hackney, and with his wife played in Brieux's The Three Daughters of M. Dupont and The Incubus, as well as in The Unwritten Law - his own adaptation of Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment - and in Lengyell's Typhoon. In 1912 he acted Iago in Herbert Tree's production of Othello. He wrote Peter the Great, produced by his father in 1898, Bonnie Dundee and Richard Lovelace, as well as a number of translations and adaptations of plays. Both he and his wife lost their lives when the " Empress of Ireland " sank in the St. Lawrence river May 29 1914.