Faversham, William

Faversham, William (1868–1940), actor, director, and producer. Born and trained in London, he made his New York debut as Dick in Pen and Ink (1887), which was a quick failure, so he found himself stranded in America. But Faversham's boyish, curly‐haired good looks and his patent dramatic abilities caught Daniel Frohman's attention, and he quickly won acceptance in Frohman's productions and later playing opposite Mrs. Fiske. In 1893 he signed with Charles Frohman and for the next eight years assumed a variety of parts for him, including Algernon in the first American production of The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Romeo to Maude Adams's Juliet, as well as leading roles in Under the Red Robe, The Conquerors, Phroso, and Lord and Lady Algy. Subsequent performances of note included the dissolute yet noble Don Caesar de Bazan in A Royal Rival (1901), the exiled Englishman Capt. James Wynngate in The Squaw Man (1905), the title role in the tragedy Herod (1909), and the demigod who becomes a human prince in The Faun (1911), producing and staging the last two. Two high points in his career followed when he staged Julius Caesar (1912) and Othello (1914), playing Marc Antony and Iago. Walter Prichard Eaton wrote of the latter, “Where his ‘Othello’ differs from tradition is chiefly in Mr. Faversham's own interpretation of Iago, and the consequent hue that gives to the entire play. It is a novel, refreshing, stimulating impersonation, and it gives the drama a new vitality, a new holding power. . . . The keynote of his Iago is humor.” Faversham scored another hit when he played the Bishop of Chelsea in Shaw's Getting Married (1916), which he produced and directed. Thereafter, his career faltered, and much of it was spent in revivals of earlier successes. His final Broadway appearances were as the exiled King George in Her Friend, the King (1929) and in some 1931 Shakespearean revivals. The public last saw him when he toured as Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road in 1934.