William Archer

William Archer 1856-1924, English author, critic, and translator, b. Scotland. Throughout his life he worked as drama critic on several London newspapers. He influenced the direction of English and American drama through his active interest in the work of the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. He translated Ibsen's Pillars of Society, and largely through his efforts the play was the first Ibsen play to be produced (1880) in London. Archer's writings include Masks or Faces (1888), The Old Drama and the New (1923), and several plays, including the highly successful melodrama The Green Goddess (1923).

Bibliography: See biography by his brother, Charles Archer (1931).

Archer, William (1856–1924), became a drama critic in London in 1879 (see theatre criticism). The establishment of Ibsen and of G. B. Shaw owed much to his encouragement. His five-volume edition of Ibsen's prose dramas in translation (some with collaboration) appeared in 1891, the collected works of Ibsen in 1906–7, and in 1907 Archer's proposals, with Granville-Barker, for a National Theatre. In 1919 he assisted with the establishment of the New Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon. In The Old Drama and the New (1923) he pressed the merits of Ibsen, Shaw, and Galsworthy, among others. His own play, The Green Goddess, was produced with great success in 1923.

Archer, William (1856–1924), Scottish critic and playwright, who had some experience of journalism before migrating to London. From 1894 to 1898 he was dramatic critic of the World, reissuing his criticisms in annual volumes. Of his many books on the theatre, the most important was Masks or Faces (1888). He was the first to introduce the plays of Ibsen to the London public with Quicksands; or, The Pillars of Society in 1880; A Doll's House in 1889; Ghosts in 1891; The Master Builder in 1893; Little Eyolf in 1896; and John Gabriel Borkman in 1897. In 1906–8 he published the complete works of Ibsen in English in II volumes. Archer, like his friend Bernard Shaw, was antagonistic to Irving who, he maintained, had done nothing for the modern British dramatist. He always protested at the critical over-valuation of older plays and the under-valuation of modern ones and upheld the supremacy of the author's script. In 1923 Archer's own play, The Green Goddess, an improbable melodrama which had already been seen in New York, was produced in London, running for 416 performances.