Early Life
Born September 5, 1881, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, he was raised and educated in Manchester. He was the youngest of four children. His father, a Unitarian minister, died at age 52, when Payne was eleven years old. As a young child, the first Shakespeare play he saw was a touring production of Twelfth Night. Too young to understand much of the play, he described himself as being "enchanted" by the actress who played Viola. During his second year at the Manchester Grammar School he appeared in his first Shakespearean role, as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. Soon thereafter, he saw a production of the same play performed in Manchester by the touring company of Henry Irving, one of the great nineteenth-century Shakespearean impresarios. Mr. Irving played Shylock and Ellen Terry performed as Portia.
Read more about this topic: Ben Iden Payne
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or despatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)