Richard Mansfield was born on 24 May 1857 in Berlin, Germany, while his mother was on an opera tour. His father, Maurice Mansfield, was a London wine merchant with musical proficiency; his mother, Erminia Rudersdorff, daughter of an Amsterdam violinist, was a noted opera singer. His father died in 1859, and Richard passed his boyhood in many places, both in England and on the Continent.
Education
He had a variety of schooling, and singing lessons from his mother. His mother wished him to go to Oxford, but he lacked sufficient scholastic application.
Career
In 1872, when Richard was eighteen, Madam Rudersdorff came to Boston, to sing at the Peace Jubilee, bringing her son with her, and she remained in Boston as a singing teacher, also buying a summer residence in Berlin, Massachussets Young Richard passed the next few years either in Boston or Berlin (near Fitchburg), uncertain of what he wished to do, and often quarreling with his temperamental mother. For a time he was employed by Eben D. Jordan in the latter's great store in Boston. But trade did not appeal to him. He left his mother's house, took a room on Beacon Hill, and decided to become an artist. He also joined an amateur dramatic group, "The Buskin Club, " and acted Beau Farintosh in School, January 14, 1876. In June of the same year he gave a one-man entertainment at the Y. M. C. A. Hall on Boylston Street. Feeling that he was getting nowhere with his painting in Boston, he returned to London in 1877 and there led a precarious existence for many months. To support himself he gave entertainments of song and mimetic skits in private houses, and when he could, in music halls. His painting brought him nothing. Finally he secured an engagement in a touring company of Pinafore to sing Sir Joseph Porter, at fifteen dollars a week, and kept the job till he asked for a raise when D'Oyly Carte dropped him. But in December 1879 he was reëngaged for the part in a more important company and also sang in the copyright performance of the Pirates of Penzance. According to Paul Wilstach the tune of "A Modern Major General" was improvised by Mansfield at the rehearsals, and retained by Sullivan. Until the spring of 1882 he eked out a poor existence playing small parts in London and the provinces, both in plays and operettas. His motherdied in Boston in February 1882, and in April his old employer, Eben D. Jordan, found him lonely and discouraged, and persuaded him to return to America. His first professional appearance in the United States was on September 27, 1882, at the Standard Theatre, New York, as Dromez in the operetta Les Manteaux Noirs. He next sang both Nick Vedder and Nick's son in an operatic version of Rip Van Winkle, and then, in Baltimore, sang the Chancellor in Iolanthe. But a sprained ankle forced his resignation, and he returned to New York determined to break into the spoken drama. He was engaged by A. M. Palmer for the rôle of Baron Chevrial in A Parisian Romance, solely because J. H. Stoddart refused to play the part, and he spent hectic hours in lonely rehearsal. With a touch of arrogance that annoyed the older actors, he announced the day before the opening, "Tomorrow night I shall be famous. " And he was! Few débuts of an unknown actor have been more sensational. The driveling death of this lecherous old baron was so vivid that the audience could watch nothing else, talk about nothing else. Mansfield toured with the Palmer company across the Continent till the fall of 1883 and then bought the play and with an access of ambition launched himself as an independent star. But he soon found that one success does not make a star.
Very early in 1884 he had to disband his company in Cincinnati and borrow money to get back to New York. He at once joined the Madison Square Company, playing von Dornfeld in Alpine Roses, and remained there till summer. In January 1885 he was engaged for Wallack's stock company but remained only a month, going back for a time to operetta. In June he dashed to London and acted Louis XI for a single performance, but nothing came of it. In September 1885 he was back in New York supporting Minnie Maddern (later Mrs. Fiske) in In Spite of All. Then, in January 1886 he was reluctantly persuaded back into operetta by John Stetson of Boston, and sang Koko in The Mikado at the Hollis Street Theatre there--a most solemnly hilarious and perfectly Gilbertian performance it was, too. But his ambition knew no rest; he was determined to be a star in legitimate drama, or nothing, and on Apr. 5, 1886, he appeared at the Boston Museum as Prince Karl, in a play of that name by Archibald C. Gunter. This drama gave him the opportunity to display the romantic side of his art, and was very successful. He took it to New York May 3, where it ran all summer, and that run was followed by a tour of the East and Middle West which lasted until April 25, 1887. He was finally established in the ranks where he had always declared he belonged, and thereafter, to the end of his life, was his own master and manager, whatever the burden and cost.
On May 9, 1887, at the Boston Museum, Mansfield first acted the role which was always the favorite with a large element of his public, and which was certainly his most spectacular performance the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a play made by Thomas Russell Sullivan, from Stevenson's story. There was a considerable element of trickery in his transformations from one character to the other, in view of the audience, as well as considerable physical strain. But the changes were gruesomely spectacular, and the public never tired of staring at them. In August 1888 he took the play to London (Lyceum Theatre), and later acted Prince Karl and Chevrial. In March 1889, at the Globe, London, he made his Shakespearian début as Richard III, and in the autumn brought the production to America. It was always one of his most popular roles thereafter. His next important production was Beau Brummell, by Clyde Fitch, after suggestions by William Winter, at the Madison Square, New York, May 19, 1890. This added a vivid character role to his growing repertoire. In May 1891, at the Garden Theatre, New York, he produced Don Juan, written by himself. It was not successful, nor was Nero, by Thomas Sullivan, produced the next September. In September 1892, his next important production was made a dramatization by Joseph Hatton of The Scarlet Letter. In 1893 he enriched his repertoire by adding Shylock, and now toured the country with at least half a dozen plays, alternately acted. In 1894, September 17, at the Herald Square Theatre, New York, he produced Arms and the Man, the first play by George Bernard Shaw ever seen in America. It considerably puzzled his audiences, accustomed to romantic drama. But when, in April 1895, he opened the Harrigan Theatre, on Thirty-fifth Street, New York (rechristened the Garrick), which he had rented and renovated, he chose the Shaw play for his first bill.
The task of keeping open his own theatre was severe, and in midsummer he was stricken with typhoid and narrowly escaped death. He retained the management of the house only till the next December. On October 1, 1897, at Albany, he produced The Devil's Disciple, the second Shaw play seen in America, and acted it, as the major item in his repertory, through the country, adding a production of The First Violin in the spring. In October 1898, at the Garden, New York, he produced, in an English version by Howard Thayer Kingsbury, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, then the theatrical sensation of Europe. The same night, in Philadelphia, August in Daly's company produced another version. But Mansfield's Cyrano held the field and became so popular that he acted nothing else for a year. For romantic gusto and tragic pathos, it was a landmark of its era. At the Garden Theatre, October 3, 1900, he produced very elaborately Henry V, and acted it for a year. The care and expense of the company and production, especially on tour, was a severe drain, and the following October he produced Booth Tarkington's pleasant romance, M. Beaucaire, with enormous popular success, played it for a year, and recouped his fortunes. The next season, October 1902, found him again engaged in large undertakings Julius Cæsar, with himself as Brutus. This, in 1903, was in turn followed by a light romance, Old Heidelberg, in which he gave an astonishing illusion of youth, and then in 1904 (March 1), by another ample tragedy Alexis Tolstoi's Ivan the Terrible. After a year in repertoire, he added (April 1905) Molière's Alceste to his rôles, and in October of the same year Don Carlos, in his own version of Schiller's play. His repertoire of parts on tour the following year consisted of Jekyll and Hyde, Shylock, Arthur Dimmesdale, Gloster, Alceste, Ivan the Terrible, and Baron Chevrial. In October 1906, he began his season in Chicago with the first American production of Peer Gynt a difficult and baffling work into which he put every ounce of his strength and spirit. The play was warmly received in Chicago, and in February reached New York. Mansfield was warned that he was overtaxing his strength, but continued to act. On March 23, he played Peer in the afternoon, and Chevrial in the evening and that was his last appearance on the stage. He was taken ill the next day, when starting on a tour, and the tour was canceled. In May he was able to sail for England, but gained nothing by the change, and in July returned to his summer home in New London, Connecticut, where he died on August 30, 1907. He had, almost literally, burned up his nervous energies.
Achievements
Personality
The passing of Richard Mansfield was felt to be almost the passing of an era, because he had represented more brilliantly and persistently than any actor of his day in America the romantic tradition, the "grand style" in plays and playing, and the tradition, as well, of repertoire. In but few seasons had he devoted all his time to a single play; more often he acted a different part every night; and the plays included the works of Shakespeare, Molière, Rostand, and character roles of striking picturesqueness or vivid appeal. On the other hand, while he thus represented the theatre of a grander past, he was the first to recognize the genius of Shaw, his performances in the Shaw plays were as mordantly modern as the comedies themselves, and his last work was a devoted production of Ibsen. If he was at the end of a great romantic era in acting, he also helped to usher in a new and different era. Had he lived, it is highly probable that he would have moved forward eagerly with the age. At any rate, the mounting costs of travel and production, and the changing tastes of the public, would have compelled him to abandon his tours with large companies and scenery for half a dozen plays. As it was, he practically killed himself at fifty-three, trying to carry the burden of his ambitious programs. As actor, Mansfield was highly individual. He had a splendid voice, under perfect command, yet his inflections of speech were eccentric in the extreme. His listeners thought they were going to be annoying but instead they were curiously thrilling. His face was one of those comparatively rare masks which can, with little artificial aid, look like anybody, and his body was under unusual control. Hence, with his natural mimetic faculty, he was able to play a wide variety of character parts and give to each a superficial verisimilitude which pleased the crowd, though he never could, or tried to, conceal his own vivid personality behind the mask. What made his art unique was a certain electric quality; it gave off sparks, it was strangely exciting. He had no old timer's rant, nor did he follow the new cult of repression. His acting was not entirely naturalistic, even in modern plays. He never forgot the theatre, and in a sense foreshadowed the revolt from naturalism of a later generation. And when the play was poetic, as in Shakespeare or Peer Gynt, he could strike the chords of passionate music with sure hand. There was never a dull moment in his acting, least of all when whimsical or ironic or macabre humor was called for. The story of Mansfield's life is largely confined to his professional career, because his driving and perhaps egocentric ambition kept him at his huge task of production and management. He was not a clubable man, which partly accounted for the acrimonious comments about him frequently made by other actors. And his temper, his outbursts of "temperament, " became, before his death, a legend of the American stage. Without question he knew his capacities, and did not meekly minimize them; and, at the same time, he was driven by a deep, artistic urge to realize them fully in his art, and had small place in his mind for other matters. What often seemed arrogance was actually indifference. His temper, also, was really part of the same quality in the man. Highstrung, nervous, always carrying the whole weight of a production, and plunged in agony if anything went wrong, he was a hair trigger in the theatre, and his famous outbursts were not in the least a sign of unkindliness of disposition, but of sensibilities on edge. Actually he was a generous, gracious, and kindly man. In this paradox, he strongly resembled Macready. It is amusing to record that on one occasion, at least, he got a Roland for his Oliver. When he produced The Devil's Disciple, he converted Essie into a young girl. Shaw protested that this meant loss of heart interest. "Heart interest be damned, " wrote Mansfield. "The same to you, " Shaw cabled back. The wonder is that even in those early days, Shaw did not withdraw the play. Mansfield's stature was below the normal height, a difficulty which he triumphantly overcame by pose and fire, as well as high heels. He always wore his scant hair cropped, displaying a broad and high forehead. His eyes were brown, his jaw aggressive, his neck large, his shoulders broad, and his whole figure athletic and sturdy. When playing young men, he kept his chin up, his face alert, and his heels almost off the ground, giving him a quality of expectation and vitality difficult to suggest, but very appealing. And he ranged from the young prince in Old Heidelberg, with his wistful renunciation of youth and happiness, to the horrible evil of Mr. Hyde, or the haunted, half-insane Brutus, after the murder of Cæsar (one of Mansfield's finest studies in psychology), making his face, his postures, even the very aspect of his body, conform to each role. It used to be his frequent custom, on the last night of an engagement, to present an act from five different plays, and these exhibitions of versatility were greatly enjoyed. His tastes were quiet, artistic, and fastidious, and centered largely, outside the theatre, about his estate at New London, Connecticut, and the playing and composition of music. Once, in 1891, in Washington, a concert of his songs was given during his engagement there.
Quotes from others about the person
"There are good actors, bad actors, and Richard Mansfield. "
Connections
On September 15, 1892, he was married in New York to Beatrice Cameron (Susan Hegeman) who had been for some time his leading lady. This marriage was an ideally happy one, and his domestic life absorbed most of his time when he was not professionally engaged. There was one child of the union, a son, who died in training camp when a member of the American Expeditionary Force in 1918.