Dame Madge Kendal (born Margaret Shafto Robertson; 15 March 1848 – 14 September 1935) was an English actress of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, best known for her roles in Shakespeare and English comedies. Together with her husband, W. H. Kendal (né Grimston), she became an important theatre manager.
Madge Kendal came from a theatrical family. She was born in Grimsby in Lincolnshire, where her father ran a chain of theatres. She began to act as a small child and made her London debut at the age of four. As a teenager she appeared with Ellen and Kate Terry in Bath, and played Shakespeare's Ophelia and Desdemona in the West End. Under the management of J. B. Buckstone, she joined the company of the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1869, when she was 21. While in the company she met and married the actor W. H. Kendal. After their marriage, in August 1869, the two made it a rule to appear in the same productions, and became known to the public as "The Kendals". They appeared together in new plays by such dramatists as W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Pinero, and from time to time in classics by Shakespeare, Sheridan and others.
After a series of generally successful appearances in London and on tour in Britain, the Kendals joined the actor John Hare in running the St James's Theatre between 1879 and 1888, transforming the fortunes of their theatre, previously known for financial failure. In the late 1880s and early 1890s the Kendals spent much of their time in the US, touring more than 40 cities, and making a considerable amount of money. After returning to acting in Britain for more than a decade, they retired in 1908 from their long careers on the stage.
Madge Kendal was generally considered a finer actor than her husband, and was particularly known for her performances in comic parts. Critical opinion was more divided about her performances in serious roles; some critics regarded her naturalistic acting as sensitive, while others found it cold. The Kendals were part of a movement to make British theatre more socially respectable, and she became known as "the matron of the English theatre". She was active in charitable causes but became estranged from her four surviving children later in life. Kendal outlived her husband and died in retirement at her home in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, at the age of 87.
Life and career Early years Madge Robertson, later Kendal, was born in Grimsby in Lincolnshire, the youngest of the reportedly 22 children of William Shaftoe Robertson and his wife Margharetta Elisabetta, née Marinus.Wright, p. 261Foulkes, Richard. "Kendal, Dame Madge [real name Margaret Shafto Robertson; married name Margaret Shafto Grimston] (1848–1935), actress", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2019 Her father was from a theatrical family. He performed at eight theatres his family owned in towns in and around Lincolnshire and later became manager of the same. Her mother was from a Dutch family: her father taught languages in London, and she spoke English with no trace of a foreign accent. At the age of 17, she joined the Robertsons' company, meeting William, whom she married in 1828. Her eldest brother was T. W. Robertson, a dramatist who led the movement toward naturalistic acting and design in theatre.Kendal, p. 42 Her elder sisters Fanny (1830–1903) and Georgina (1840–1913) became actresses.Kendal, p. 53 Another brother, Edward Shafto Robertson (1844–1871), became an actor.Parker, pp. 451–453 Kendal attended a music academyKendal, p. 20 and later recorded in her memoirs that her father continually educated her in literature.Kendal, pp. 21–22
Lincolnshire theatres gradually became financially unviable, and the Robertsons moved to London in the early 1850s, where William became joint manager of the Marylebone Theatre.Pemberton, p. 33 There, in 1854, aged five, Kendal played the role of young Marie in the drama The Struggle for Gold; or, The Orphan of the Frozen Sea by Edward Stirling, under her father's management. Other child roles quickly followed: Jeannie, a blind girl, in The Seven Poor Travellers (a stage adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens), and roles in the pantomime Tit-Tat-Toe and an old melodrama, The Stranger, by August von Kotzebue.Kendal, p. 8
The family moved to Bristol in 1855, where Kendal played Eva in a dramatised Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she had four songs. Her singing was much praised, and an operatic career seemed possible, but she contracted diphtheria, and her voice suffered after the removal of her tonsils.Kendal, p. 21 Nevertheless, she played a singing role in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bath Theatre in 1863, starring the sisters Ellen and Kate Terry as Titania and Oberon, respectively. Seventy years later Kendal recalled the production: "Even today I remember Ellen Terry's performance of Titania as a dream of charm. As girls we were 'Nellie' and 'Madge' to one another and 'Nellie' and 'Madge' we remained until her death".Kendal, p. 25
Over this decade, the Robertsons played steadily in provincial theatres. After Bristol and Bath there was a false start in Kendal's career when she was engaged to play leading roles in the West End. In July 1865 she opened at the Haymarket Theatre, playing Ophelia to the Hamlet of Walter Montgomery. Her performance attracted favourable notice. The Era wrote: Miss Madge Robertson … is youthful in figure, but thoroughly practised in her art, and has a bright, intelligent face, which seems capable of expressing every variety of emotion. The mad scene in the fourth act was rendered with much taste, pathos and discrimination, and the debutante obtained a conspicuous share of the honours of the evening."The Haymarket Theatre", The Era, 6 August 1865, p. 15
In the same Haymarket season she played Blanche to Montgomery's King John, and Desdemona to the Othello of Ira Aldridge.Scott, Clement, "Mrs Kendal", The Theatre, April 1883, pp. 214–216 But despite good business at the box office, Montgomery was not a top-rank star, and the season did not mark a breakthrough in the leading lady's career. Returning to provincial theatres, Kendal and her father followed Montgomery to the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, where Montgomery had been appointed director, and in the inauguration in September she spoke the prologue in Sheridan's School for Scandal. Later the same year she appeared there as Nerissa, with Mary Frances Scott-Siddons as Portia and Montgomery as Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice.
The next year Kendal rejoined her mother in Hull. There she played Lady Macbeth opposite Samuel Phelps."Mrs Kendal", The London Journal, 1 April 1893, p. 251 In her brother T. W. Robertson's play Society, Kendal played Maud Hetherington, while her mother was Lady Ptarmigant. After Hull, Kendal went with her father to Liverpool, where she starred in Shakespeare, Sheridan and modern plays.Kendal, p. 92
West End star In April 1867 the Robertsons returned to London, where Kendal appeared at Drury Lane, playing Edith Fairlam in The Great City, and then at the Haymarket in E. A. Sothern's company, appearing with him in Our American Cousin, Brother Sam, David Garrick and A Hero of Romance, and playing leading roles in two other productions there. At the opening of John Hollingshead's Gaiety Theatre in December 1868 she played Florence in On the Cards, a comedy adapted from the French;"The Gaiety Theatre", The Theatrical Journal, 13 January 1869, p. 10 she also appeared there as Lady Clara Vere de Vere in Dreams in 1869, before rejoining the Haymarket company, at this point on tour under the management of J. B. Buckstone. She played Viola, Rosalind, Lady Teazle, Kate Hardcastle and Lydia Languish.
When the Haymarket company returned to London, Kendal remained with it; a fellow member was William Hunter Grimston, who acted under the stage name W. H. Kendal. The two were married on 7 August 1869. She adopted his stage surname, and after their marriage they almost always appeared in the same productions. They remained at the Haymarket until the end of 1874, during which period she played the four parts listed above and seventeen other leading roles. Among the new plays in which she starred were a series of "fairy comedies" by W. S. Gilbert: The Palace of Truth (1870, as Princess Zeolide), Pygmalion and Galatea (1871, as Galatea), and The Wicked World (1873, as Selene); in Gilbert's drama Charity (1874) she played Mrs Van Brugh.Stedman, pp. 84, 91–92, 103, 115 and 135
The Haymarket company disbanded in late 1874, and the Kendals then set up their own tour beginning in Birmingham in November. For six consecutive nights they appeared there in Romeo and Juliet, The Lady of Lyons, The Hunchback, As You Like It, East Lynne, Uncle's Will and Weeds. Back in London in early 1875, they played Kate Hardcastle and Young Marlowe in She Stoops to Conquer at the Opera Comique, and went on to the Gaiety in As You Like It; the reviewer in The Athenaeum wrote, "One side of the character of Rosalind is shown by Mrs Kendal with admirable clearness and point. So suited to her style are the bantering speeches Shakespeare has put into the mouth of Rosalind, they might almost have been written for her", although the same critic missed "the underlying tenderness that more emotional artists are able to present.""The Week", The Athenaeum, 27 February 1975, p. 301
The Kendals joined the actor John Hare at the Court Theatre in March 1875, opening in a new comedy, Lady Flora. Hare had a comic character role, and the Kendals played the romantic leads, Flora and Harry Armytage."Court Theatre", The Era, 14 March 1875, p. 4 She went on to play Mrs Fitzroy in Hamilton Aide's A Nine Days' Wonder, and then Lady Hilda in Gilbert's fairy comedy, Broken Hearts. She played Susan Hartley (a part she reprised in several later revivals) in Palgrave Simpson's adaptation of a French comedy, called A Scrap of Paper. In September 1876 the Kendals moved to the Prince of Wales's Theatre under the management of the Bancrofts. There Kendal played Lady Ormond in Peril, a carefully anglicised French comedy. She subsequently played Clara Douglas in Money, Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance and Dora in Sardou's Diplomacy, the last of which played for twelve months, in London and on tour. The Kendals returned to the Court, where they revived A Scrap of Paper in January 1879. In February, in her brother T. W. Robertson's adaptation from the French, The Ladies' Battle, the Kendals played the Countess d'Autreval and her suitor, Gustave; in April she played Kate Greville in The Queen's Shilling, an adaptation of an old French comedy by Jean-François Bayard.
St James's Theatre: 1879–1888