SIR

See also:

• ARTHUR (Fr. Arius)
• ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN (1830 – 1886)

ARTHUR WING

See also:

• SIR ARTHUR WING PINERO (1855– )

PINERO (1855– )  , English dramatist, was born in London on the 24th of May 1855, the son of John Daniel Pinero, a Jewish solicitor, whose family was of Portuguese origin, long established in London . A . W . Pinero was engaged in 1874 as an actor at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, and came to London in 1876, to play at the Globe Theatre . Later in the year he joined the Lyceum company, of which he remained a member for five years . The first piece of his to see the footlights was 1200 a year, played in October 1877 at the Globe Theatre for the benefit of Mr F . H . Macklin . The first play to make a hit was The Money Spinner (Theatre Royal, Manchester, Nov . 1880); but in The Squire (St James's Theatre, Dec . 1881) he attempted serious drama, and gave promise of the qualities of his later work . In 1883 and 1884 Pinero produced seven pieces, but the most important of his works at this period were the successful farces produced at the Court Theatre: The Magistrate (March 1885), which ran for more than a year; The School-mistress (March 1886) ; Dandy Dick (Jan .

1887), revived in

February 1900; The Cabinet Minister (April 1890), and The Amazons (March 1893) . Two comedies of sentiment, Sweet Lavender (Terry's, March 1888) and The Weaker Sex (Theatre Royal, Manchester, Sept . 1888), met with success, and Sweet Lavender has enjoyed numerous revivals . With The Profligate (Garrick, April 1889) he returned to the serious drama which he had already touched on in The Squire . Out of deference to the wishes of John Hare the play was fitted with the conventional " happy ending," but the original denouement was restored, with great advantage to the unity of the play, in the printed version . The Second Mrs Tanqueray (St James's, May 27, 1893) dealt with the converse of the question propounded in The Profligate, but with more art and more courage . The piece aroused great discussion, and placed Pinero in the front rank of living dramatists (see DRAMA: Recent English) . It was translated into French, German and Italian, and the part of Paula Tanqueray, created in the first place by Mrs Patrick Campbell, attracted many actresses, among others Eleonora Duse . His later plays were The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith (Garrick, March 13, 1895), The Benefit of the Doubt (Comedy, Oct . 1895), The Princess and the Butterfly (St James's, April 7, 1897), Trelawney of the Wells (Court, Jan . 30, 1898), The Gay Lord Quex (Globe, April 8, 1899), Iris (Garrick, Sept . 21, 1901), Lefty (Duke of York's, Oct .

8, 1903), A Wife Without a Smile (

Wyndham's, Oct . 9, 1904), His House in Order (St James's, Feb . 1, 1906), The Thunderbolt (St James's, May 9, 1908) and Mid-Channel (St James's, Sept . 2, 1909) . Pinero was knighted in 1909 . His Plays (It vols . 1891—1895) have prefaces by M . C . Salaman . See also H . Hamilton Fyfe, A . W .

Pinero (1902) .