Richard Mansfield
Encyclopedia
Actor-manager
An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the company's business and financial arrangements, sometimes taking over the management of a theatre, to perform plays of their own choice and in which they will usually star...
best known for his performances in Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
operas and for his portrayal of the dual title roles in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Life and career
Mansfield was born in Berlin and spent his early days on HeligolandHeligoland
Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea.Formerly Danish and British possessions, the islands are located in the Heligoland Bight in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea...
, Germany, an island in the North Sea, then under British sovereignty. His mother was Madame Rudersdorff (1822–1882), the operatic soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
, and his father, Maurice Mansfield (died 1861), a British London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
-based wine merchant. Mansfield was educated at Derby School
Derby School
Derby School was a school in Derby in the English Midlands from 1160 to 1989. It had an almost continuous history of education of over eight centuries. For most of that time it was a grammar school for boys. The school became co-educational and comprehensive in 1974 and was closed in 1989...
, England, and studied painting in London. He travelled to America with his mother, but returned to England at age 20 where his work as an artist would not support him. He was more successful as a drawing-room entertainer, and eventually drifted into acting.
Early career and D'Oyly Carte years
He first appeared on the stage at St. George's HallSt. George's Hall
St. George’s Hall may refer to:*St George's Hall, Bradford*St. George's Hall, Liverpool*St. George's Hall, Reading*One of the state rooms at Windsor Castle*St George's Hall and Apollo Room of the Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg...
, London, in the German Reed Entertainments and then turned to light opera, joining Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
's Comedy Opera Company in 1879 to appear as Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
on tour. He would play the leading Gilbert and Sullivan comic "patter" roles on tour in Britain until 1881. Mansfield created the role of Major General Stanley in the single copyright performance of The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
in Paignton
Paignton
Paignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251. It has...
, England, in 1879. In addition to Sir Joseph and the Major General, he also played John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
beginning in 1880.
He left the D'Oyly Carte company in 1881, returned to London, and soon made his London debut in Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's La Boulange. After several further engagements in London and following the death of his mother in Boston, Mansfield travelled to America in 1882, where he made his New York stage debut as Dromez in a D'Oyly Carte production of Bucalossi's Les Manteaux Noirs. This was followed by the roles of Nick Vedder and Jan Vedder in Robert Planquette
Robert Planquette
Jean Robert Planquette was a French composer of songs and operettas.Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, including Les cloches de Corneville , the length of whose initial London run broke all records for any piece of musical theatre up to that time, and Rip...
's Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle (operetta)
Rip Van Winkle is an operetta in three acts by Robert Planquette. The English libretto by Henry Brougham Farnie was based on the stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving after the play by Dion Boucicault and Joseph Jefferson.-Performance history:The operetta...
(1882), another D'Oyly Carte production.
Mansfield then appeared in Baltimore, Maryland as the Lord Chancellor in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe
Iolanthe
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
in December 1882. Two days later, however, he suffered a disabling ankle sprain and had to leave the cast. Returning to New York, Mansfield began to focus on the legitimate stage. In 1883 he joined A. M. Palmer
Albert Marshman Palmer
Albert Marshman Palmer was an American theatrical manager, born at North Stonington, Connecticut.He graduated from the law school of the University of New York in 1860, served as librarian at the Mercantile Library, New York, in 1869-72, and then for ten years managed the Union Square Theatre...
's Union Square theatre company in New York, and made a hit as Baron Chevrial in A Parisian Romance. He returned to Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
again to play the role of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, in Boston in 1886.
Later career
Mansfield was also a theatrical manager, producing the comedy Prince Karl and A Parisian Romance in Boston and New York in 1886. He appeared successfully in several plays adapted from well-known stories, and his 1887 rendering of the title-characters in T. Russell Sullivan's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, only a year after publication of Robert Lewis Stevenson's novella of the same name, created a profound impression. It was with this play that he made his London reputation during the 1888 season at the Lyceum TheatreLyceum Theatre (London)
The Lyceum Theatre is a 2,000-seat West End theatre located in the City of Westminster, on Wellington Street, just off the Strand. There has been a theatre with this name in the locality since 1765, and the present site opened on 14 July 1834 to a design by Samuel Beazley. The building was unique...
, by invitation of 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...
.
Richard III (play)
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...
the next year, at the Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre (Newcastle Street)
The Globe was a Victorian theatre built in 1868 and demolished in 1902. It was the third of five London theatres to bear the name. It was also known at various times as the Royal Globe Theatre or Globe Theatre Royal. Its repertoire consisted mainly of comedies and musical shows...
. Among his other successes were Prince Karl, Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. Although there was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, the play bears very scant resemblance to his life....
and Monsieur Beaucaire
Monsieur Beaucaire (operetta)
Monsieur Beaucaire is a romantic opera in three acts, composed by André Messager. The libretto, based on the 1900 novel by Booth Tarkington, is by Frederick Lonsdale, with lyrics by Adrian Ross...
. He was one of the earliest to produce George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's plays in America, appearing in 1894 as Bluntschli in Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....
, and as Dick Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple
The Devil's Disciple
The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist, George Bernard Shaw. The play is Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright...
in 1897. The latter production was the first Shaw production to turn a profit. As a manager and producer of plays, Mansfield was known for his lavish staging.
It is difficult to overstate Mansfield's popularity and the respect and admiration that he commanded as a Shakespearean actor. At the time of his death, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
claimed that "As an interpreter of Shakespeare, he had no living equal in his later days, as witnessed by the princely grace, the tragic force of his Richard, his thrilling acting in the tent scene of "Caesar", the soldierly dignity and eloquence of his Prince Hal, and the pathos of the prayer in that play. He was the greatest actor of his hour, and one of the greatest of all times."
He continued to perform until his final year. One of his last performances, just a few months before his death, was the title role in a New York City production of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
, the play's U.S. premiere.
Mansfield died in New London, Connecticut
New London, Connecticut
New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States.It is located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, southeastern Connecticut....
in August, 1907, from liver cancer.
Suspected in Jack the Ripper case
Mansfield was performing in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in late summer – early autumn 1888 during the time that Jack the RipperJack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
was murdering prostitutes in London. One frightened theatre-goer wrote to the police accusing Mansfield of the murders because he could not believe that any actor could make so convincing a stage transformation from a gentleman into a mad killer without being homicidal. Mansfield attempted to gain public favour and stem the criticism that he was receiving by offering a performance of Prince Karl for the benefit of the Suffragan Bishop
Suffragan bishop
A suffragan bishop is a bishop subordinate to a metropolitan bishop or diocesan bishop. He or she may be assigned to an area which does not have a cathedral of its own.-Anglican Communion:...
of London's home and refuge fund.
Mansfield was a character (and initial Ripper suspect) in the 1988 TV limited series Jack The Ripper
Jack the Ripper (1988 TV series)
Jack the Ripper is a 1988 four-part television movie/mini-series portraying a fictionalized account of the hunt for Jack the Ripper, the unidentified serial killer responsible for the Whitechapel murders of 1888...
. He was portrayed by Armand Assante
Armand Assante
-Personal life:Assante was born in New York City and raised in Cornwall, New York, the son of Katherine , a music teacher and poet, and Armand Anthony Assante, Sr., a painter and artist. His father was Italian and his mother was Irish, and was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic family...
.
Family life
Mansfield was married in 1892 to Beatrice Cameron (1868–1940), an actress. After their wedding, she was often referred to as Mrs Richard Mansfield by the press. In 1898 the couple had their only child, Richard Gibbs Mansfield (1898–1918). The younger Mansfield became an ambulance driver in France early during World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, eagerly enlisting while underage. When America entered the war, he joined the U.S. Army and went to Texas to be part of an aviation unit. While in Texas, however, he contracted meningitis and died in 1918.
External links
- Biography of Richard Mansfield
- Profile of Mansfield
- Richard Mansfield photo gallery at NYP Library
- Richard Gibbs Mansfield, son of Richard Mansfield; photos NYP Library