KENDAL, WILLIAM HUNTER (1843-1917), English actor, whose family name was Grimston, was born in London on Dec. 16, 1843, the son of a painter. He made his first stage appear ance at Glasgow in 1862 as Louis XIV., in A Life's Revenge. He joined the Haymarket company in London in 1866, acting every thing from burlesque to Romeo. In 1869 he married Margaret (Madge) Shafto Robertson (1849-1935), sister of the dramatist, T. W. Robertson. As "Mr. and Mrs. Kendal" their professional careers then became inseparable. Mrs. Kendal's first stage appear ance was as Marie, "a child," in The Orphan of the Frozen Sea in 1854 in London. By 1865 she was playing Ophelia and Desde mona. She was Mary Meredith in Our American Cousin with Sothern, and Pauline to his Claud Melnotte. But her real triumphs were at the Haymarket in Shakespearian revivals and the old English comedies. While Kendal played Orlando, Charles Surface, Jack Absolute and Young Marlowe, his wife made the combination perfect with her Rosalind, Lady Teazle, Lydia Languish and Kate Hardcastle; and she created Galatea in Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea (1871). Short seasons followed at the Court theatre and at
the Prince of Wales's, at the latter of which they joined the Bancrofts in Diplomacy and other plays. Then in 1879 began a long association with Sir John Hare as joint-managers of the St. James's theatre, some of their notable successes being in The Squire, Impulse, The Ironmaster and A Scrap of Paper. In 1888, however, the Hare and Kendal regime came to an end. From that time Mr. and Mrs. Kendal chiefly toured in the provinces and in America, with an occasional season at rare intervals in London. William Kendal died on Nov. 7, 1917, in London.
See T. E. Pemberton, The Kendals (Igoo).