RICHARD

See also:

• MANSFIELD
• RICHARD MANSFIELD (1857-1907)
• MANSFIELD, WILLIAM MURRAY, 1ST EARL

MANSFIELD (1857-1907)  , American actor, was born on the 24th of May 1857, in Berlin, his mother being Madame [Erminia] Rudersdorff (1822-1882), the singer, and his father, Maurice Mansfield (d . 1861), a London wine merchant . He first appeared on the stage at St George's Hall, London, and then drifted into light opera, playing the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance, and the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, both in the English provinces and in America . In 1883 he joined A.M . Palmer's Union Square theatre company in New York, and made a great hit as Baron Chevrial in A Parisian Romance . He appeared successfully in several plays adapted from well-known stories, and his rendering (1887) of the doubled title-parts in R . L . Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde created a profound impression . It was with this play that he made his London reputation during a season (1888) at the Lyceum theatre, by invitation of Henry Irving . He produced Richard III. the next. year, at the Globe . Among his other chief successes were Prince Karl, Cyrano de Bergerac and Monsieur Beaucaire . He was one of the earliest to produce G .

Bernard Shaw's plays in America, appearing in 1894 as Bluntschli in Arms and the Man, and as Dick Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple in 1897 . As a manager and producer of plays Mansfield was remarkable for his lavish staging . He died in New London, Connecticut, on the 3oth of August, 1907 . ;See the lives by Paul Wilstach (1908) and William Winter (1910) .