William Archer (23 September 185627 December 1924) was a
Scottish writer,
theatre critic
Theatre criticism is a genre of arts criticism, and the act of writing or speaking about the performing arts such as a play or opera.
Theatre criticism is distinct from drama criticism, as the latter is a division of literary criticism whereas t ...
, and
English spelling reformer based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
, and was an early friend and supporter of
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
.
Life and career
Archer was born in
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
, the eldest boy of the nine children of
Thomas Archer
Thomas Archer (1668–1743) was an English Baroque architect, whose work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his
contemporaries Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. His buildings are important as the only ones by an English Baroque archit ...
and his wife Grace, ''née'' Morrison. Thomas moved frequently from place to place seeking employment, and William attended schools in Perth,
Lymington
Lymington is a port town on the west bank of the Lymington River on the Solent, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. It faces Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to which there is a car ferry service operated by Wightlink. It is within the ...
,
Reigate
Reigate ( ) is a town status in the United Kingdom, town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earlie ...
and
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
.
[ ] He spent parts of his
boyhood with relatives in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
where he became fluent in
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
and became acquainted with the works of
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
.
Archer won a
bursary
A bursary is a monetary award made by any educational institution or funding authority to individuals or groups. It is usually awarded to enable a student to attend school, university or college when they might not be able to, otherwise. Some awa ...
to the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
to study
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
,
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
and
natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior throu ...
, and
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
. When the family moved to Australia in 1872, he remained in Scotland as a student. While still at the university he became a leader-writer on the ''
Edinburgh Evening News
The ''Edinburgh Evening News'' is a daily newspaper and website based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded by John Wilson (1844–1909) and first published in 1873. It is printed daily, except on Sundays. It is owned by JPIMedia, which also ...
'' in 1875, and after a year visiting his family in Australia, he returned to Edinburgh.
[ In 1878, in accordance with his father's wishes, he moved to London to train as a ]barrister
A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...
. He was uninterested in law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
, and was by now fascinated with the theatre, but he entered the Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn an ...
and was called to the bar
The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...
in 1883: he never practised.[ He supported himself by working as dramatic critic of '' The London Figaro'', and after he finished his legal studies he moved to '']The World
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
'', where he remained from 1884 to 1906.[ In London he soon took a prominent literary place and exercised much influence.
Archer played an important part in introducing Ibsen to the ]English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
public, starting with his translation of ''The Pillars of Society
''The Pillars of Society'' (or "Pillars of the Community"; original Norwegian title: ''Samfundets støtter'') is an 1877 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Ibsen had great trouble with the writing of this play. The ending i ...
'', produced at the Gaiety Theatre in 1880. It was the first Ibsen play to be produced in London but made little impression.[ He also translated, alone or in collaboration, other productions of the ]Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
n stage: Ibsen's ''A Doll's House
''A Doll's House'' (Danish and nb, Et dukkehjem; also translated as ''A Doll House'') is a three-act play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having bee ...
'' (1889), ''The Master Builder
''The Master Builder'' ( no, Bygmester Solness) is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's more significant and revealing works.
Performance
The play was published ...
'' (1893, with Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...
); Edvard Brandes
Carl Edvard Cohen Brandes (21 October 1847, in Copenhagen – 20 December 1931, in Copenhagen) was a Danish politician, critic and author, and the younger brother of Georg Brandes and Ernst Brandes. He had a Ph.D. in eastern philology.
Biograp ...
's ''A Visit'' (1892); Ibsen's ''Peer Gynt
''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five- act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed ''Per Gynt'', the Norwegian fairy tale on wh ...
'' (1892, with Charles Archer); Georg Brandes
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (4 February 1842 – 19 February 1927) was a Danish critic and scholar who greatly influenced Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind ...
"William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
"; (1895) ''Little Eyolf
Little is a synonym for small size and may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Little'' (album), 1990 debut album of Vic Chesnutt
* ''Little'' (film), 2019 American comedy film
*The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John P ...
'' (1895); and ''John Gabriel Borkman
''John Gabriel Borkman'' is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work.
Plot
The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to ...
'' (1897); and he edited Ibsen's ''Prose Dramas'' (1890–1891).
In 1881, Archer met Frances Elizabeth Trickett (1855–1929), the youngest of the eight children of John Trickett, a retired
Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload.
Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
. They married in October 1884; the following year they had their only child, Tom (1885–1918), who was killed in action in the First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. The marriage was enduring and companionable, although Archer began a relationship in 1891, which lasted for the rest of his life, with the actress Elizabeth Robins
Elizabeth Robins (August 6, 1862 – May 8, 1952) was an actress, playwright, novelist, and suffragette. She also wrote as C. E. Raimond.
Early life
Elizabeth Robins, the first child of Charles Robins and Hannah Crow, was born in Louisville, ...
.[
In 1897, Archer, along with Robins, ]Henry William Massingham
Henry William Massingham (25 May 1860 – 27 August 1924) was an English journalist, editor of ''The Nation and Athenaeum, The Nation'' from 1907 to 1923. In his time it was considered the leading British Radical weekly.
Life
He j ...
, and Alfred Sutro
Alfred Sutro OBE (7 August 1863 – 11 September 1933) was an English author, dramatist and translator. In addition to a succession of successful plays of his own in the first quarter of the 20th century, Sutro made the first English translation ...
, formed the Provisional Committee to organise an association to produce plays they considered to be of high literary merit, such as Ibsen's. The association was called the "New Century Theatre" but was a disappointment by 1899, although it continued until at least 1904.[ In 1899, a more successful association, called the Stage Society, was formed to replace it.]
Archer was a friend of George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
, and arranged for his plays to be translated into German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
. An attempted collaboration on a play foundered, although Shaw later turned their joint ideas into his early work, '' Widower's Houses''. Through Archer's influence Shaw obtained the post of art critic to ''The World'', before becoming its music critic.[ A biographer, J. P. Wearing, says of their relationship:
During the First World War, Archer worked for the official War Propaganda Bureau. After the war, he achieved financial success with his play '' The Green Goddess'', produced by ]Winthrop Ames
Winthrop Ames (November 25, 1870 – November 3, 1937) was an American theatre director and producer, playwright and screenwriter.
For three decades at the beginning of the 20th century, Ames was an important force on Broadway, whose repertoire i ...
at the Booth Theatre
The Booth Theatre is a Broadway theater at 222 West 45th Street ( George Abbott Way) in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1913, the theater was designed by Henry Beaumont Herts in the Italian Renaissance ...
in New York City in 1921. It was a melodrama
A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...
, and a popular success, although, he admitted, of much less importance to the art of the drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
than his critical work.[
Archer died in a London ]nursing home
A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of elderly or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to in ...
in 1924 of post- operative complications after the removal of a kidney tumour
Kidney tumours are tumours, or growths, on or in the kidney. These growths can be benign or malignant (kidney cancer).
Presentation
Kidney tumours may be discovered on medical imaging incidentally (i.e. an incidentaloma), or may be present in pat ...
. Reviewing his life and career, Wearing's summary is that Archer was "a clear, logical man whom some saw as too narrowly rationalistic", but who was perceptive, intuitive and imaginative. Wearing attributes Archer's great influence as a critic to these qualities and to the length of time for which he was engaged in the theatre and reviewing, although
Outside of his critical career, Archer and Walter Ripman wrote the first dictionary for the English spelling reform
For centuries, there have been movements to reform the spelling of the English language. It seeks to change English orthography so that it is more consistent, matches pronunciation better, and follows the alphabetic principle. Common motives for ...
system ''NuSpelling'', which would serve as a milestone in the development of SoundSpel
SoundSpel is a regular and mostly phonemic English-language spelling reform proposal. It uses a 26-letter alphabet that is fully compatible with QWERTY keyboards. Though SoundSpel was originally based on American English, it can represent dial ...
.
Works
Critical works
*''English Dramatists of To-day'' (1882)
*''Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...
'', a study (1883)
*''About the Theatre: Essays and Studies'' (1886)
*'' Masks or Faces? A Study in the Psychology of Acting'' (1888)
*''W. C. Macready
William Charles Macready (3 March 179327 April 1873) was an English actor.
Life
He was born in London the son of William Macready the elder, and actress Christina Ann Birch. Educated at Rugby School where he became headboy, and where now the t ...
'', a biography (1890)
*''Alan's Wife; a Dramatic Study in Three Scenes'' (1893)
*"The Theatrical World for..." (1893–97), in five volumes
*'' America To-day, Observations and Reflections'' (1900)
*
Poets of the Younger Generation
' (1901) John Lane, the Bodley Head, London
*
Real Conversations
' (1904)
*''A National Theatre: Scheme and Estimates'', with H. Granville Barker, (1907)
*
Through Afro-America
' (1910)
*''The Life, Trial, and Death of Francisco Ferrer
Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia (; January 14, 1859 – October 13, 1909), widely known as Francisco Ferrer (), was a Spanish radical freethinker, anarchist, and educationist behind a network of secular, private, libertarian schools in and aroun ...
'' (1911)
*''Play-Making'' (1912)
*''India and the Future'' (1917)
*''The Old Drama and the New'' (1923)
Essays
*''The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order'' (1912). Introduction by Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece ...
Plays
*''War is War'' (1919)
*'' The Green Goddess'' (1921)
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
External links
*
William Archer
on SF Encyclopedia
*
*
*
*
Article by Martin Quinn in ''Dictionary of Literary Biography''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Archer, William
1856 births
1924 deaths
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Writers from Perth, Scotland
Scottish biographers
Scottish dramatists and playwrights
Members of the Middle Temple
Presidents of the Critics' Circle