Dame Alice Ellen Terry (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.
In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.
At the urging of George Bernard Shaw, Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre in 1903, opening a new play by Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, and Terry turned to touring. She continued to find success on stage until 1920 and especial success in lecture tours discussing the Shakespeare heroines. She also appeared in several films from 1916 to 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades.
Terry was born in Coventry, England, the third surviving child born into a theatrical family. Her parents, Benjamin (1818–1896), of Irish descent, and Sarah (née Ballard; 1819–1892), of Scottish ancestry, were childhood friends and began as comic actors in a Portsmouth-based company, where Sarah's father was a master sawyer. She used the stage name "Miss Yerrett", The two made a poor living in touring companies in their early years. The couple had eleven children, two of whom died in infancy. They had been christened Kate and Ellen after their paternal and maternal grandmothers; these names were reused for their next two daughters. At least five of the surviving nine became actors: Kate (b. 1844), Ellen, Marion, Florence, and Fred. The eldest son, Benjamin (b. 1839), went into commerce and emigrated to Australia and then India, and Tom (b. 1860), a drifter, lived on the fringes of criminality and poverty, constantly helped by his parents and siblings. Two other children, George and Charles, were connected with theatre management. Kate was the grandmother of Val and John Gielgud.
Benjamin coached his children in good stage diction. Terry later recalled that he "always corrected me if I pronounced any word in a slipshod fashion, and if I now speak my language well it is in no small degree due to my early training." Kate began acting at age 3; by 1851 she had received enough notice in the British provinces that she was invited to audition for Charles Kean of London's Princess's Theatre, who engaged her, and then her father, in his company. The family moved to London, and Sarah worked in the theatre's wardrobe department. Kean and especially his wife, Ellen Kean, were excellent teachers and models for young actors. Ellen Terry made her first stage appearance at age nine, as Mamillius in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale in 1856 alongside her sister and father in small roles. She also played the roles of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1856, with Kate as Titania), Prince Arthur in King John (1858), and Fleance in Macbeth (1859), continuing at the Princess's Theatre until the Keans' retirement in 1859. While at the Princess's, the Keans introduced the girls to a circle of artists and playwrights, including Charles Reade and Tom Taylor. During the theatre's summer closures starting in 1856, Terry's father presented farces in Portsmouth, starring Terry and Kate; Terry loved playing badly behaved boys onstage, delighting the provincial audience. In the summer of 1859, Benjamin Terry presented drawing-room entertainments featuring his daughters in the concert room of the Royal Colosseum, Regent's Park, London, and then on tour. Also in 1859, Terry appeared in Tom Taylor's comedy Nine Points of the Law at London's Olympic Theatre. She then played in melodrama at the Royalty Theatre, managed by Madame Albina de Rhona, while Kate starred in Mr and Mrs Alfred Wigan's company at St James's Theatre.
In 1862, Terry joined Kate in J. H. Chute's stock company at the Theatre Royal in Bristol, a strong company that also featured Marie Wilton and Madge Robertson, where she played a wide variety of parts, including burlesque roles requiring singing and dancing, as well as Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1863, Chute opened the Theatre Royal, Bath, where 15-year-old Terry appeared as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The family then returned to London where Kate starred at the Lyceum Theatre, while Ellen joined J. B. Buckstone's company at the Haymarket Theatre in Shakespeare roles as well as Sheridan plays and modern comedies. Her lack of maturity, though, led to such a bad experience for her there, that she became disenchanted with theatre.
In London, while Terry was still engaged at the Haymarket, she and Kate were the subject of The Sisters, painted by the eminent artist George Frederic Watts at his studio home in the annex of Little Holland House, the home of Sara Monckton Prinsep and her husband. His famous portraits of Terry include Choosing, in which she must select between earthly vanities, symbolised by showy but scentless camellias, and nobler values symbolised by humble-looking but fragrant violets. His other famous portraits of her include Ophelia and Watchman. At first Watts was interested in Kate, but he soon transferred his attentions to Ellen. She, in turn, was impressed with Watts's art, sense of style and elegant lifestyle, and she wished to please her parents by making an advantageous marriage; her friend Tom Taylor also was in favor of the union. Though Watts was vain, self-centered, unattractive and three decades her senior, she agreed to marry him. She left the stage during the run of Tom Taylor's hit comedy Our American Cousin at the Haymarket, in which she played Mary Meredith.
Terry and Watts married on 20 February 1864 at St Barnabas Church, Addison Road, Kensington, seven days before her 17th birthday; Watts was 46. At Little Holland House, she met many cultured, talented and important people in his social circle, such as the poets Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, prime ministers William Ewart Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, and Princep's sister, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Because of the marriage and Watts's paintings of her, she "became a cult figure for poets and painters of the later Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements, including Oscar Wilde". Terry soon became uncomfortable in the role of child bride. Watts was a cold and thoughtless husband, and some of his admirers, especially his patron, salon organiser and confidante, Prinsep, became increasingly hostile to her. Terry began to behave erratically and was banned from the salons and other social occasions, and Watts no longer found her a source of inspiration for his paintings. Meanwhile, one of the visitors to the Watts home was the progressive architect-designer and essayist, and a recent widower, Edward William Godwin. He was interested in theatre, fashion and design and was a good conversationalist. Both Watts and Terry enjoyed his company, and they visited him at his architecture practice. Eventually Terry visited alone. One night Terry stayed with Godwin until morning, saying that Godwin had been ill, and she had tended to him. Watts and Princep disbelieved her, and her social reputation was ruined. Watts and Terry separated after only ten months, and she returned to her parents' home.
She returned to acting in 1866, touring with her father and playing a small role in The Hunchback at the Olympic Theatre where her sister was then starring, but she had lost her love of the theatre. In 1867, Terry performed in the Wigans' company in several Tom Taylor pieces, including A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing at the Adelphi Theatre, The Antipodes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and Still Waters Run Deep at the Queen's Theatre, Long Acre. She would play there later that year for the first time opposite Henry Irving in a single performance of the title roles in Katherine and Petruchio, David Garrick's version of The Taming of the Shrew. Early in 1868, still unhappy and disinterested in theatre, Terry left the Wigans company abruptly and, knowing it would upset her parents, went to live with Godwin at a house in Harpenden, north of London. She retired from acting for six years. She was happy, in love, and enjoying country life. As she was still married to Watts, not finalising the divorce until 1877, she and Godwin could not marry, and their cohabitation was considered scandalous. They soon had a daughter, Edith Craig, born in 1869 and a son, Edward Gordon Craig, born in 1872. The children used the surname Wardell to deflect the stigma of illegitimacy during Terry's second marriage and chose Craig years later. Goodwin built a house for them in Harpenden called Fallows Green. A widowed neighbor who had befriended Terry, Mrs Rumball, became her constant companion for the ensuing 30 years.