Baylis, Lilian Mary

Baylis, Lilian Mary (1874–1937), English theatre manageress, and one of the outstanding women of the British theatre, being only the second woman outside the university to be given an Hon. MA at Oxford (in 1924, for her services to Shakespeare). Born in London, of a musical family, she accompanied her parents and sister to South Africa, with the intention of establishing herself there as a music teacher. Under parental pressure, however, she returned to London in 1895 to help her aunt, Emma Cons, run the old Victoria Theatre as a temperance hall. It later became the Old Vic. In 1912, on her aunt's death, she took over the management of the theatre, and devoted the rest of her life to it. When the popularity of Shakespeare threatened to engulf that of opera, she leased and renovated Sadler's Wells in 1931, hoping to run the two theatres in tandem. When this proved impossible, owing to the rapid advance in popularity of the ballet company for which Lilian Baylis, with her usual acumen, had chosen Ninette de Valois as ballet mistress at the Vic in 1928, the two houses divided, the Old Vic thriving on drama, Sadler's Wells on ballet, with opera once again ousted from its original pre-eminence. The history of both theatres bears witness to the strength and tenacity of Lilian Baylis's vision of places where impecunious Londoners could find ‘good theatre at reasonable prices’, and drama and ballet profited by what opera had lost.