Arthur Wing Pinero
Encyclopedia
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (24 May 1855 - 23 November 1934) was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.
, John Daniel Pinero. He studied law at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution
before going on the stage.
In 1874 he joined R. H. Wyndham's company at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh
. After also acting in Liverpool
, Pinero joined Henry Irving
's Lyceum Theatre company in London in 1876, where he acted in supporting roles for five years, and later played under the Bancroft
s' management at the Haymarket Theatre
. He received good notice in Sheridan's The Rivals, in 1884, which he had revised himself.
Pinero began writing plays in the late 1870s while at the Lyceum, including Daisy's Escape in 1879 and Bygones in 1880. He became a prolific and successful playwright, authoring fifty-nine plays. These include serious social dramas, some dealing with social hypocrisy surrounding attitudes to women in second marriages, including:
He is best known for his comedies, of which the most notable are:
The Amazons, his 1895 farce, was filmed as a silent in 1917, starring Marguerite Clark
. His 1923 romance The Enchanted Cottage was successfully filmed in 1924 and 1945
. His House in Order
was made into a 1928 silent film starring Tallulah Bankhead
, but the film is lost.
Both The Magistrate and Dandy Dick
were made into films starring Will Hay
.
His opera in the style of a medieval morality play, The Beauty Stone
, (with Arthur Sullivan
and J. Comyns Carr
) has grown somewhat in popularity in recent years, having gained a recording, but the dialogue is often heavily abridged.
In Pinero's play Sweet Lavender, the character Horace utters the famous line, "While there is tea, there is hope."
Pinero was knighted in 1909, becoming the second man to be knighted for services to drama alone after W.S. Gilbert. While tremendously popular in his day, his plays are rarely revived. Even in his final years he saw his work starting to go out of style. He died in London in 1934, aged 79.
Pinero was one of the few dramatists of his time, apart from William Gillette
and Oscar Wilde
, who wrote strong parts for leading ladies, but many powerful actresses had their own ideas about how to play certain scenes, quite differently from how he had visualised them. After much trial and error, he eventually hit on a solution to this recurring problem. At rehearsal, he would explain loudly and clearly how he wanted the scene played. Then he would take his place in the stalls, to watch the woman playing it her own way, not his. Immediately he would rush up and shout "Perfect, perfect! Play it exactly like that on the night!" And for some reason, on the night, they would play it his way, not theirs! It was a remarkable piece of applied psychology that might baffle many theatrical directors to this day.
by German U-boat
on 7 May 1915, Pinero wrote to The Times
calling on naturalised British citizens of German origin to make public statements of their loyalty to the King and reject Germany's methods of warfare:
In the following days, numerous letters were received by the newspaper from naturalised Britons stating individually or collectively their loyalty including public figures Sir Ernest Cassel
, Sir George Henschel
, Sir Carl Meyer and Sir Felix Schuster
.
Biography
Pinero was born in London, the son of a Sephardic Jewish solicitorSolicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
, John Daniel Pinero. He studied law at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution
Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It offers many Master's and Bachelor's degree programmes that can be studied either part-time or full-time, though nearly all teaching is...
before going on the stage.
In 1874 he joined R. H. Wyndham's company at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. After also acting in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Pinero joined Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
's Lyceum Theatre company in London in 1876, where he acted in supporting roles for five years, and later played under the Bancroft
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
s' management at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
. He received good notice in Sheridan's The Rivals, in 1884, which he had revised himself.
Pinero began writing plays in the late 1870s while at the Lyceum, including Daisy's Escape in 1879 and Bygones in 1880. He became a prolific and successful playwright, authoring fifty-nine plays. These include serious social dramas, some dealing with social hypocrisy surrounding attitudes to women in second marriages, including:
- His House in Order and
- The Second Mrs TanquerayThe Second Mrs TanquerayThe Second Mrs. Tanqueray is a problem play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. It adopts the "Woman with a past" plot, popular in nineteenth century melodrama.-Plot:...
(1893)
He is best known for his comedies, of which the most notable are:
- The Schoolmistress (1866)
- The MagistrateThe Magistrate (play)The Magistrate is a farce by the English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. The plot concerns a respectable magistrate who finds himself caught up in a series of scandalous events that almost cause his disgrace....
(1885) - Dandy DickDandy Dick (play)Dandy Dick is an 1887 comedy by the British writer Arthur Wing Pinero. It is a farce about a clergyman who has taken a strong line against gambling discovers that he has a share in a racehorse.-Film adaptation:...
(1887) - The Cabinet MinisterThe Cabinet MinisterThe Cabinet Minister is a 1890 comedy play by the British writer Arthur Wing Pinero. A cabinet minister spends well beyond his means, leading to massive debts.-Bibliography:...
(1890) - The Notorious Mrs. EbbsmithThe Notorious Mrs. EbbsmithThe Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith is a play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. It was first produced on 13 March 1895, with Mrs Patrick Campbell playing the lead role of Agnes Ebbsmith. The theme of the play is social radicalism...
(1895) - Trelawny of the 'Wells'Trelawny of the 'Wells'Trelawny of the 'Wells' is an 1898 comic play by Arthur Wing Pinero. It tells the story of a theatre star who attempts to give up the stage for love, but is unable to fit into conventional society.-Synopsis:...
(1898) - The Gay Lord QuexThe Gay Lord Quex (play)The Gay Lord Quex is an 1899 comedy play by the British playwright Arthur Wing Pinero. A newly-engaged aristocrat tries to demonstrate his fidelity to his fiancee while one of his friends tries to urge him to be unfaithful.-Adaptation:...
(1899)
The Amazons, his 1895 farce, was filmed as a silent in 1917, starring Marguerite Clark
Marguerite Clark
Marguerite Clark was an American stage and silent film actress.-Early life and theater:Born to a farming family in Avondale, Cincinnati, Ohio, Clark was educated at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Cincinnati...
. His 1923 romance The Enchanted Cottage was successfully filmed in 1924 and 1945
The Enchanted Cottage (1945 film)
The Enchanted Cottage is a 1945 romantic film fantasy starring Robert Young, Dorothy McGuire, and Mildred Natwick. It was based on a play by Arthur Wing Pinero...
. His House in Order
His House in Order (1928 film)
His House in Order is a 1928 British silent film directed by Randle Ayrton. Based on the play His House in Order by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero...
was made into a 1928 silent film starring Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
, but the film is lost.
Both The Magistrate and Dandy Dick
Dandy Dick
Dandy Dick is a 1935 British comedy film starring Will Hay. It was based on the 1887 play Dandy Dick by Arthur Wing Pinero. It is the second and last of his films to be based on a play by Pinero – the first was Those Were the Days which was based on The Magistrate.-Plot:A vicar who lives in...
were made into films starring Will Hay
Will Hay
William Thomson "Will" Hay was an English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer.-Early life:He was born in Stockton-on-Tees, in north east England, to William R...
.
His opera in the style of a medieval morality play, The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone
The Beauty Stone is an opera, billed as a "romantic musical drama" in three acts, composed by Arthur Sullivan to a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr. The medieval Faustian story concerns an ugly, crippled girl, who dreams of being beautiful and meeting a handsome prince. The Devil...
, (with Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
and J. Comyns Carr
J. Comyns Carr
Joseph William Comyns Carr was an English drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager....
) has grown somewhat in popularity in recent years, having gained a recording, but the dialogue is often heavily abridged.
In Pinero's play Sweet Lavender, the character Horace utters the famous line, "While there is tea, there is hope."
Pinero was knighted in 1909, becoming the second man to be knighted for services to drama alone after W.S. Gilbert. While tremendously popular in his day, his plays are rarely revived. Even in his final years he saw his work starting to go out of style. He died in London in 1934, aged 79.
Pinero was one of the few dramatists of his time, apart from William Gillette
William Gillette
William Hooker Gillette was an American actor, playwright and stage-manager in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who is best remembered today for portraying Sherlock Holmes....
and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, who wrote strong parts for leading ladies, but many powerful actresses had their own ideas about how to play certain scenes, quite differently from how he had visualised them. After much trial and error, he eventually hit on a solution to this recurring problem. At rehearsal, he would explain loudly and clearly how he wanted the scene played. Then he would take his place in the stalls, to watch the woman playing it her own way, not his. Immediately he would rush up and shout "Perfect, perfect! Play it exactly like that on the night!" And for some reason, on the night, they would play it his way, not theirs! It was a remarkable piece of applied psychology that might baffle many theatrical directors to this day.
"Loyalty letters"
Following the sinking of the RMS LusitaniaRMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...
by German U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
on 7 May 1915, Pinero wrote to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
calling on naturalised British citizens of German origin to make public statements of their loyalty to the King and reject Germany's methods of warfare:
Sir—The sinking of the Lusitania, involving the cruel murder of hundreds of helpless and innocent non-combatants, affords those Germans who are naturalized British citizens holding prominent positions in this country an opportunity of performing an act which, even in the opinion of many who bear them no particular ill-will, is long overdue. We are in the tenth month on a war which has from the beginning been carried on by Germany with almost unspeakable treachery and vileness; but up to the present time not a single one of the distinguished Germans in our midst has thought fit to make a public avowal of his disagreement with the deliberate policy of barbarism pursued by the German Powers or to utter a word of indignation and disclaimer. Surely the moment has arrived when these gentlemen, in their own interests, if for no higher reason, should break silence and individually or collectively raise their voices against the infamous deeds which are being perpetrated by Germany. I venture to suggest that they might with propriety band together and present a loyal address to the King embracing an expression of their detestation of Germany's methods of warfare; but perhaps this may be better left to their own discretion and good feeling. What I would emphasize, however, is that continued silence on their part lays them open to the supposition that, thinking that the fate of England is hanging in the balance, they are—to use the common phrase—sitting on the gate. A word of warning, therefore, is neither gratuitous nor unfriendly. The temper of this country, slow to rouse, is becoming an ugly one. The gate may fall from its hinges.
Your obedient servant,
ARTHUR PINERO.
115A, Harley-street, W., May 10.
In the following days, numerous letters were received by the newspaper from naturalised Britons stating individually or collectively their loyalty including public figures Sir Ernest Cassel
Ernest Cassel
Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC was a German-born British merchant banker and capitalist.-Biography:...
, Sir George Henschel
George Henschel
Sir George Henschel , was a British baritone, pianist, conductor, and composer of German birth....
, Sir Carl Meyer and Sir Felix Schuster
Schuster Baronets
The Schuster Baronetcy, of Collingham Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington, was a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 24 July 1906 for the banker Felix Schuster. He was a senior partner in the family firm of Schuster, Son & Co, and was also a Finance Member of the...
.