Shakespeare, Irving, Lyceum
In 1875, Terry gave an acclaimed performance as Portia in The Merchant of Venice at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, produced by the Bancrofts. Oscar Wilde wrote a sonnet, upon seeing her in this role: "No woman Veronese looked upon / Was half so fair as thou whom I behold." She recreated this role many times in her career until her last appearance as Portia at London's Old Vic Theatre in 1917. In 1876, she appeared as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Blanche Haye in a revival of T. W. Robertson's Ours, and the title role in Olivia by William Gorman Wills at the Court Theatre (an adaptation of The Vicar of Wakefield), where she joined the company of John Hare. Terry married again, in November 1877, to Charles Clavering Wardell Kelly (1839–1885), an actor/journalist whom she had met while appearing in Reade's plays, but Kelly and Terry separated in 1881. After this, Terry was finally reconciled with her parents, whom she had not seen since she began to live out of wedlock with Godwin.
In 1878, the 30 year old Terry joined Henry Irving's company at the Lyceum Theatre as its leading lady, at a generous salary, beginning with Ophelia opposite Irving's Hamlet. Soon, Terry was regarded as the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain, and in partnership with Irving, reigned as such for over 20 years until they left the Lyceum in 1902. Their 1879 production of The Merchant of Venice ran for an unusual 250 nights, and success followed success in the Shakespeare canon as well as in Tennyson, Bulwer-Lytton, Reade, Sardou, and plays by other contemporary playwrights, such as W. G. Wills, and other major plays. In 1879, The Times said of Terry's acting in All is Vanity, or the Cynic's Defeat by Paul Terrier, "Miss Terry's Iris was a performance of inimitable charm, full of movement, ease, and laughter... the most exquisite harmony and natural grace... such an Iris might well have turned the head of Diogenes himself." In 1880, at the Lyceum, she played the title role in an adaptation of King René's Daughter called Iolanthe. The Era wrote: "Nothing more winning and enchanting than the grace, and simplicity, and girlish sweetness of the blind Iolanthe as shown by Miss Ellen Terry has within our memory been seen upon the stage. The assumption was delightfully perfect. ... Exquisite ... exercise of the peculiarly fascinating powers of Miss Ellen Terry, who achieved an undoubted triumph ... and was cheered again and again".
Among her most celebrated roles with Irving were Ophelia, Pauline in The Lady of Lyons by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1878), Portia (1879), Queen Henrietta Maria in William Gorman Wills's drama Charles I (1879), Desdemona in Othello (1881), Camma in Tennyson's short tragedy The Cup (1881), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, another of her signature roles (1882 and often thereafter), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1882), Jeanette in The Lyons Mail by Charles Reade (1883), the title part in Reade's romantic comedy Nance Oldfield (1883), Viola in Twelfth Night (1884), Margaret in the long-running adaptation of Faust by Wills (1885), the title role in Olivia (1885, which she had played earlier at the Court Theatre), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1888, with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan), Queen Katherine in Henry VIII (1892), Cordelia in King Lear (1892), Rosamund de Clifford in Becket by Alfred Tennyson (1893), Guinevere in King Arthur by J. Comyns Carr, with incidental music by Sullivan (1895), Imogen in Cymbeline (1896), the title character in Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau's play Madame Sans-Gêne (1897) and Volumnia in Coriolanus (1901).
Terry made her American debut in 1883, playing Queen Henrietta opposite Irving in Charles I. Among the other roles she essayed on this and six subsequent American tours with Irving were Jeanette, Ophelia, Beatrice, Viola, and her most famous role, Portia. Her last role at the Lyceum was Portia, in 1902, after which she toured in the British the provinces with Irving and his company in the autumn of that year. Whether Irving's relationship with Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much speculation. According to Michael Holroyd's book about Irving and Terry, A Strange Eventful History, after Irving's death, Terry stated that she and Irving had been lovers and that: "We were terribly in love for a while". Irving was separated, but not divorced from his wife. Terry was separated from Wardell in 1881, and Irving was godfather to both her children. The two travelled on holiday together, and Irving wrote tender letters to Terry.
In London, Terry lived in Earl's Court with her children and pets during the 1880s. She first lived in Longridge Road before moving to Barkston Gardens in 1889, but she kept country homes. In 1900, Terry bought her farmhouse in Small Hythe, Kent, where she lived for the rest of her life. In 1889, her son joined the Lyceum company as an actor, appearing with the company until 1897, when he retired from the stage to study drawing and produce woodblock engravings. Her daughter, Edith, also played at the Lyceum for several years beginning in 1887, but she eventually turned to stage direction and costume design, creating costumes for Terry and for Lillie Langtry and others early in the 20th century.
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