BARRETT, WILSON 1846-1904 ) . An English actor, manager, and playwright. He was horn in Essex, February 18, 1846, and went. upon the stage at Halifax in 1864. After playing in different provincial towns. he was for a time manager of the Amphitheatre, at Leeds, and of other playhouses. In 1579, three years after his first appearance in London, he took the manage ment of the Court. Theatre there, the next year securing Madame for her first English appearance. He became manager of the Prin cess's Theatre in 1881, and produced that autumn The Lights o' London, which held the boards for 286 nights. In 1882 came The Si/rer /tiny, with Barrett's rule of Wilfred Denver. which had an even longer run, and, like the other, has been repeatedly revived. Ilis Hamlet was first presented in London in Ilet(dier. 1884. This was Ids best Shakespearean part, the other most notable being (Midi() (1897). In 1886 lie produced Chic), a tragedy written by himself in collaboration with Sydney Grundy. Ilis own drama of Nowadays, he brought out in 1889, and his Pharaoh, at Leeds, in Is.'92. The most successful of his own plays was The Sign of the Cross. founded on legends of the early Christian
martyrdoms under Nero. Produced in America in 1395. it inet with great. popular favor, and though severely dealt with by some of the critics, had a run of considerably more than a year at the Lyric Theatre, London. which Barrett took in 1896. There, in February. 1897. he pro duced his Daughters of Babylon. Ile also p•o duced his own adaptations of several well kncma novels, among them Ilall Caine's Dccm sire (as lien My Chree, 18); The Bondman (18931 : and Manxman (1894) ; and Sienkie wicz's Quo Vudis? (at Edinburgh, Slay, 1900). Besides his dramatic writings and various eon tributions to periodicals. he was antho• or joint author of several works of fiction. among them novels based on The Sign of the Cross and Daughters of Babylon.
He was well known in America, having come here for more or less extended tours in 1836,1888, 1839, 1393. and 1897. In 1898 he visited Austra lia. In 1899 he became manager of the house so long under Henry Irving's immediate direction, the Lyceum. Consult Scott, The Drama of Yes tcrda.0 and To-Day (London, 1899).