Henry Irving's Hamlet

As one biographer claims of Henry Irving, “His career not only spanned the whole history of the Victorian theatre, but it was the Victorian theatre.” Born John Henry Brodbibb in 1838, Irving was the son of devoutly Methodist parents—in fact, after he became an actor, which was not considered a respectable profession, his mother neither spoke to him nor saw him again. At age 12, his father, a traveling salesman, took him to a performance of Hamlet and from that moment on, Henry Irving was determined to become an actor. Irving performed in almost every popular play. As Jeffrey Richards writes, “He made no distinction between high and low brow, alternating happily between Shakespeare and popular melodramas, showing all of them equal respect.” He not only performed to audiences in the Lyceum—the theatre he was ultimately to manage--but also toured extensively, and is credited with, by Oscar Wilde among others, establishing a truly national theatrical taste. He is associated wit...