Arthur
Wing Pinero
born May 24, 1855, London
died Nov. 23, 1934, London
a leading playwright of the late
Victorian and Edwardian eras in England who
made an important contribution toward
creating a self-respecting theatre by
helping to found a “social” drama that drew
a fashionable audience. It is his
farces—literate, superbly constructed, with
a precise, clockwork inevitability of plot
and a brilliant use of coincidence—that have
proved to be of lasting value.
Born into an English family descended
from Portuguese Jews, Pinero abandoned legal
studies at age 19 to become an actor; and,
though still a young man, he played older
character parts for the leading theatre
company headed by Henry Irving. His first
play, £200 a Year, was produced in 1877. His
best farces, such as The Magistrate (1885),
The Schoolmistress (1886), and Dandy Dick
(1887), were written for the Royal Court
Theatre in London. They combine wildly
improbable events with likable characters
and a consistently amusing style. Pinero was
at the same time studying serious drama by
adapting plays from the French (including
The Iron Master, 1884, and Mayfair, 1885)
and also mining a profitable vein of
sentiment of his own, as in The Squire
(1881) and Sweet Lavender (1888).
Seriousness and sentiment fused in The
Profligate (1889) and—most sensationally—in
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), which
established Pinero as an important
playwright. This was the first of several
plays depicting women battling with their
situation in society. These plays not only
created good parts for actresses but also
demanded sympathy for women, who were judged
by stricter standards than men in Victorian
society. In a less serious vein, Trelawny of
the “Wells” (written for the Royal Court
Theatre and produced in 1898) portrayed
theatrical company life in the old style of
the 1860s—already then a vanishing
tradition—and The Gay Lord Quex (1899) was
about a theatrical rake of no placeable
period but having great panache. Pinero was
knighted in 1909.
