LAURENCE IRVING
Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving, actor, author and manager, was the second son of the late Sir Henry Irving, born in London August 5, 1870. He was educated at Marlborough College and the New College, Oxford. Later he spent three years in Russia studying for the Foreign Office. He made his first appearance on the stage in F. R. Benson’s Shakespearean company in Dundee in 1893, and for the next two years was with J. L. Toole’s company. Mr. Irving played in provincial tours, appearing in “A Bunch of Violets,” “Trilby,” and “Under the Red Robe,” from 1896 until 1898. In the latter year he joined his father, for whom he wrote the play “Peter the Great,” which proved a disastrous experiment, although it was a work of considerable cleverness and force. He was the translator of “Robespierre,” written especially for his father by Sardou, and he himself played Tallien. He was the Junius Brutus in his father’s unfortunate revival of “Coriolanus,” and later was Colonel Midwinter in “Waterloo,” Fouche in “Madame Sans Gêne,” Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice,” Nemours in “Louis XI,” and Valentine in “Faust.” In all these diverse characters he manifested marked intelligence and ability, although his histrionic facility was developed slowly. He then entered into management for himself, acting in England in “Bonnie Dundee” and “Richard Lovelace,” with moderate popular success, but no little critical approval, and later in “Raffles.” He had made great advancement as an actor, proving himself an eccentric comedian of fine finish and incisive force, when he and his wife (Mabel Hackney) appeared in New York in 1909-1910 in “The Incubus” (“Les Hannetons”), and “The Three Daughters of M. Dupont.” In both these plays he won critical and popular approval. Recently, he was the Iago in Sir Herbert Tree’s revival of “Othello.”