Henry Irving was by far the most celebrated actor during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He had few rivals, and literally none in Britain. But I believe no other actor has caused such extensive and continual controversy regarding his genius. From the beginning of his triumph, shortly after he joined the company of Hezekiah Bateman at the Lyceum in 1871, until long after his death in 1905, his devotees claimed for him a place among the greats of the past: Alleyn, Burbage, Betterton, Garrick, Edmund Kean; indeed, the claim is still occasionally heard today. No less a man of the theater than Gordon Craig wrote, twenty-five years after Irving's death, “I have never known of, or seen, or heard of, a greater actor than was Irving.” Certainly Irving made the Lyceum the most celebrated theater in England, and not even his severest critics denied his status as the head of his profession. He was the first actor in history to be knighted, and he was given burial in Westminster Abbey. And yet, the best critics of the day were from the first almost unanimous in their condemnation of his acting, and, after he took over the management of the Lyceum in 1878, of his productions. With none of the other “greats” of the stage was there any such distinguished chorus of dissent. A glance at the list of parts Irving performed and plays he produced reveals that he did nothing—absolutely nothing—for contemporary drama.
