WILLIAM

See also:

• HUNTER, JOHN (1728-1793)
• HUNTER, ROBERT MERCER TALIAFERRO (r8o9-1887)
• HUNTER, SIR WILLIAM WILSON (1840-19oo)
• HUNTER, WILLIAM (1718–1783)
• HUNTER, WILLIAM ALEXANDER (1844-1898)

HUNTER

See also:

• KENDAL
• KENDAL, DUKEDOM OF
• WILLIAM HUNTER KENDAL (1843– )

KENDAL (1843– )  , English actor, whose family name was Grimston, was born in London on the 16th of December 1843, the son of a painter . He made his first stage appearance at Glasgow in 1862 as Louis XIV., in A Life's Revenge, billed as " Mr Kendall." After some experience at Birmingham and elsewhere, he joined the Haymarket company in London in 1866, acting everything from burlesque to Romeo . In 1869 he married Margaret (Madge) Shafto Robertson (b . 1849), sister of the dramatist, T . W . Robertson . As " Mr and Mrs Kendal " their professional careers then became inseparable . Mrs Kendal's first stage appearance was as Marie, " a child," in The Orphan of the Frozen Sea in 1854 in London . She soon showed such talent both as actress and singer that she secured numerous engagements, and by 1865 was playing Ophelia and Desdemona . She was Mary Meredith in Our American Cousin with Sothern, and Pauline to his Claud Melnotte . But her real triumphs were at the Haymarket in Shakespearian revivals and the old English comedies . While Mr Kendal played Orlando; Charles Surface, Jack Absolute and Young Marlowe, his wife made the combination perfect with her Rosalind, Lady Teazle, Lydia Languish and Kate Hardcastle; and she created Galatea in Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea (1871) .

Short seasons followed at the Court theatre and at the Prince of Wales's, at the latter of which they joined the Bancrofts in Diplomacy and other plays . Then in 1879 began a long association with Mr (afterwards Sir John) Hare as joint-managers of the St James's theatre, some of their notable successes being in The Squire, Impulse, The Ironmaster and A Scrap of Paper . In 1888, however, the Hare and Kendal regime came to an end . From that time Mr and Mrs Kendal chiefly toured in the provinces and in America, with an occasional season at rare intervals in London .