Marion Terry
Encyclopedia
Marion Bessie Terry was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
actress. In a career spanning half a century, she played leading roles in more than 125 plays. Always in the shadow of her more famous sister Ellen
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, Terry nevertheless achieved considerable success in the plays of W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, 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...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
and others.
Biography
Terry was born in England, into a theatrical family. Her birth name was Mary Ann Bessy Terry, and she was nicknamed "Polly". Her parents, Benjamin (1818–1896), of Irish descent, and Sarah (née Ballard) (1819–1892), of Scottish ancestry, were comic actors in a touring company based in PortsmouthPortsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
(where Sarah's father was a Wesleyan minister) and had eleven children. At least five of these became actors: Kate
Kate Terry
Kate Terry was an English actress. Elder sister of the famous Ellen Terry, she was born into a theatrical family, made her debut when still a child, became a leading lady in her own right, and left the stage in 1867 to marry. In retirement she commented that she was 20 years on the stage, yet...
, Ellen
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, Marion, Florence and Fred
Fred Terry
Fred Terry was an English actor and theatrical manager. After establishing his reputation in London and in the provinces for a decade, he joined the company of Herbert Beerbohm Tree where he remained for four years, meeting his future wife, Julia Neilson...
. Two other children, George and Charles, were connected with theatre management.
Terry's sister Kate was a very successful actress until her marriage and retirement from the stage in 1867, and her sister Ellen became the greatest Shakespearean actress of her time. Her great nephew (Kate's grandson), Sir John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, became one of the twentieth century's most respected actors. Terry attended a boarding-school for girls at Sunnyside, Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames
Kingston upon Thames is the principal settlement of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London. It was the ancient market town where Saxon kings were crowned and is now a suburb situated south west of Charing Cross. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the...
, together with her favourite sister, Florence.
Career
Terry's first professional stage appearance was in July 1873 as Ophelia in a production of HamletHamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
directed by Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. Her first West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
appearance came in October 1873 as Isabelle in a farce by John Maddison Morton
John Maddison Morton
John Maddison Morton was an English playwright who specialized in one-act farces. His most famous farce was Box and Cox . He also wrote comic dramas, pantomimes and other theatrical pieces.-Biography:...
, A Game of Romps at the Olympic Theatre
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
, in the company of Henry Neville
Henry Neville
Sir Henry Neville was an English courtier, politician and diplomat. In 2005, he was put forward as a candidate for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.- Early life :...
. This was followed by the role of Lady Valeria in Morton's All that Glitters Is Not Gold at the same theatre. In 1874, she was Hero in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
at the Olympic. She then played a season at the Strand Theatre
Strand Theatre
- England :* Royal Strand Theatre, London* Strand Theatre , London in the United States...
, and in 1875 appeared in Weak Woman by H. J. Byron.
Terry next joined the company 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...
and became a protégée of W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, soon appearing in several of his plays, including Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith is a play by W. S. Gilbert, styled "A Three-Act Drama of Puritan times". It opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 11 September 1876, starring Hermann Vezin, Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Marion Terry. The play was a success, running for about 100 performances and...
(1876) as Dorothy, The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth
The Palace of Truth is a three-act blank verse "Fairy Comedy" by W. S. Gilbert first produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 19 November 1870, partly adapted from Madame de Genlis's fairy story, Le Palais de Vérite. The play ran for approximately 140 performances and then toured the British...
(1876 revival), Pygmalion and Galatea (1877 revival) and Engaged
Engaged (play)
Engaged is a three-act farcical comic play by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 October 1877, the same year as The Sorcerer, one of Gilbert's comic operas written with Arthur Sullivan, which was soon followed by the collaborators' great success in H.M.S. Pinafore...
(1877), creating the role of Belinda Treherne with great success. Also during that period, she first appeared in The Danischeffs by Lord Newry (1876), Fame by C. M. Rae (1877), Charles XII by James Planché
James Planche
James Robinson Planché was a British dramatist, antiquary and officer of arms. Over a period of approximately 60 years he wrote, adapted, or collaborated on 176 plays in a wide range of genres including extravaganza, farce, comedy, burletta, melodrama and opera...
(1877 revival), The Vagabond
The Ne'er-do-Weel
The Ne'er-do-Weel is a three-act drama written by the English dramatist W. S. Gilbert. It is the second of three plays that he wrote at the request of the actor Edward Sothern. The story concerns Jeffery Rollestone, a gentleman who becomes a vagabond after Maud, the girl he loves, leaves him. He...
, by Gilbert (1878), Two Orphans (1878), The Crushed Tragedian, and My Little Girl by Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
. In 1879 she moved to the Prince of Wales's Theatre under the management of the Bancrofts
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...
and then moved with the company to the Haymarket, performing in revivals of T. W. Robertson's comedies, including as Blanche Haye in Ours and Bella in School. In 1879 she also appeared as Mabel in Duty by James Albert
James Albert
is a professor of biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Albert is an author of over 70 scientific papers on the evolution and diversity of fishes, and is an expert in the systematics and biodiversity of Neotropical electric fishes . Albert and his colleagues to date have described...
and the title role in Gretchen
Gretchen (play)
Gretchen is a tragic four-act play, in blank verse, written by W. S. Gilbert in 1878–79 based on Goethe's version of part of the Faust legend....
by Gilbert.
Now an established actress, Terry continued to play leading roles in contemporary plays. She was Bathsheba in the stage adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive...
by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
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....
(1882). The same year, she starred with Lottie Venne
Lottie Venne
Lottie Venne was a British comedienne, actress and singer of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, who enjoyed a theatre career spanning five decades. Venne began her stage career in musical burlesque before moving into farce and comedy. She appeared in several works by each of F. C. Burnand and W. S...
and Johnston Forbes-Robertson
Johnston Forbes-Robertson
Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson was an English actor and theatre manager. He was considered the finest Hamlet of the nineteenth century and one of the finest actors of his time, despite his dislike of the job and his lifelong belief that he was temperamentally unsuited to acting.-Early life:Born in...
in G. W. Godfrey's comedy The Parvenu at the Court Theatre
Court Theatre
Court Theatre or Royal Court Theatre may refer to:*Court Theatre , Chicago, Illinois*Court Theatre , a theatre company in Christchurch, New Zealand*Court Theatre of Buda, Budapest, Hungary...
. She substituted for her sister Ellen, who was ill, as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Lyceum Theatre in 1884. In 1885 she played in The Magistrate by Arthur Wing Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
. In 1887, she joined the company of Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
first at the Comedy Theatre and then at the Haymarket. That year, she also appeared in The Ballad-Monger, by Walter Bessant. In February 1888, she starred in a revival of Gilbert's Broken Hearts
Broken Hearts
Broken Hearts is a blank verse play by W. S. Gilbert in three acts styled "An entirely original fairy play". It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 9 December 1875, running for three months, and toured the provinces in 1876...
. Later that year, she toured the British provinces with 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...
in another of her sister Ellen's roles, Margaret in Faust. She played Mrs. Erroll in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy (1889), appeared in Cyrene by Alfred C. Calmour (1890), and appeared in 1891 in Sunlight and Shadow by R. C. Carton. She continued to tour with Irving's Lyceum company in the 1890s, as Rosamund in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Becket, as Portia in The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
(one of her sister's signature roles), and again as Margaret.
Later years
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893...
, by 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...
, at the St James's Theatre
St James's Theatre
The St James's Theatre was a 1,200-seat theatre located in King Street, at Duke Street, St James's, London. The elaborate theatre was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior by Samuel Beazley and built by the partnership of Peto & Grissell for the tenor and theatre...
. This was followed by Hetty in The Cotton King by Sutton Vane Sr. (1893). In 1895, she appeared in Alabama by Augustus Thomas
Augustus Thomas
Augustus Thomas was an American playwright, born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a doctor, he worked a number of jobs including a page in the 41st Congress, studying law and gaining some practical railway work experience before he turned to journalism and became editor of the Kansas City Mirror...
, in the title role in Delia Harding by 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....
, and as Mrs. Peverel in Guy Domville
Guy Domville
Guy Domville is a play by Henry James first staged in London in 1895. The première performance ended with the author being jeered by a section of the audience as he bowed onstage at the end of the play. This failure largely marked the end of James' attempt to conquer the theater...
by Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
. In 1900 she played the roles of Rosalind and Portia at the Stratford festival. She was Nina in Forgiveness by J. Comyns Carr (1901), the title role in Eleanor by Mrs. Humphrey Ward
Mary Augusta Ward
Mary Augusta Ward née Arnold; , was a British novelist who wrote under her married name as Mrs Humphry Ward.- Early life:...
(1902), Susan Throssell in Quality Street
Quality Street (play)
Quality Street is a comedy in four acts by J. M. Barrie, written before his more famous work Peter Pan. The story is about two sisters who start a school "for genteel children"....
by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
(1902), and Audrie in Michael and His Lost Angel by Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
, among many other engagements.
In 1907, Terry performed in a Royal Command Performance
Royal Command Performance
For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...
of Still Waters Run Deep, together with Charles Wyndham
Charles Wyndham
Sir Charles Wyndham was an English actor-manager, born as Charles Culverwell in Liverpool, the son of a doctor. He was educated abroad, at King's College London and at the College of Surgeons and the Peter Street Anatomical School, Dublin...
, before King Edward VII. She played Hamlet's mother in a 1908 revival of Gilbert's parody of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Gilbert)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short comic play by W. S. Gilbert, a parody of Hamlet by William Shakespeare...
. She toured in America and Canada in 1908 and 1909. Her last role was the Principessa della Cercola in Our Betters at the Globe by Somerset Maugham in 1923, fifty years after her first professional appearance. Suffering from arthritis and other ailments, she retired from the stage. In her last years, Terry lived in Paddington
Paddington
Paddington is a district within the City of Westminster, in central London, England. Formerly a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965...
, after having lived for many years at Buckingham Palace Mansions.
Terry died at her home in 1930, aged 76, of a cerebral haemorrhage and was buried at St Albans cemetery. She never married and, intensely private offstage, nothing is known of her romantic life. She left an estate of more than £12,000.