Bancroft, Sir Squire

Bancroft, Sir Squire (1841–1926), English actor-manager, who, with his wife Marie Effie (née Wilton) (1839–1921), introduced a number of reforms on the British stage and started the vogue for drawing-room comedy and drama in place of melodrama. Marie Wilton, the daughter of provincial actors, was on the stage from early childhood. She first appeared in London in 1856, scoring a great success as Perdita in Brough's burlesque on The Winter's Tale. She continued to play in burlesque, notably at the Strand in H. K. Byron's plays, until she decided to go into management on her own account. On a borrowed capital of £1,000, of which little remained when the curtain went up, she opened an old and dilapidated theatre nicknamed the ‘Dust Hole’—later the Scala Theatre. Renamed the Prince of Wales's, charmingly decorated, and excellently run, it opened in 1865. In the company was Squire Bancroft, who had made his first appearance in Birmingham in 1861, and had played with Marie Wilton in Liverpool. The new venture was a success, and the despised ‘Dust Hole’ became one of the most popular theatres in London, where the Bancrofts (who had married in 1867) presented and played in the plays of Tom Robertson, Bancroft giving one of his finest performances in Caste (1867). The Bancrofts did much to raise the economic status of actors, paying higher salaries than elsewhere and providing the actresses' wardrobes. Among other innovations, they adopted Mme Vestris's idea of practicable scenery (see BOX-SET). In 1880 they moved to the Haymarket and continued their successful career, retiring in 1885.