EDWARD

See also:

• ASKEW

ASKEW

See also:

• EDWARD ASKEW SOTHERN (1826-1881)

SOTHERN (1826-1881)  , English actor, was born in Liverpool on the 1st of April 1826, the son of a merchant . He began acting as an amateur, and in 1849 drifted into a professional engagement with a dramatic company at St Heliers in Jersey, where he appeared as Claude Melnotte in Bulwer Lytton's Lady of Lyons . Between then and 1858 he played in various companies without particular success, in Birmingham and in America, where he went in 1852 . On the 12th of May 1858 Tom Taylor's Our American Cousin, a play of no special merit, was brought out in New York, with Sothern in the small part of Lord Dundreary, a caricature of an English nobleman . He gradually worked up the humour of this part so that it became the central figure of the play . In 1861, when it was produced at the Haymarket Theatre, in London, he made such a hit that the piece ran for nearly five hundred nights: "Dundreary whiskers " became the fashion, and Dundreary this, that or the other made its appearance on every side . At various times Sothern revived the character, which retained its popularity in spite of all the extravagances to which he developed its amusing features; and his name will always be famous in connexion with this role . In T . W . Robertson's David Garrick (1864) he again had a great success, his acting in the title-part, which he created, being wonderfully effective . He won wide popularity also from his interpretation of Sam Slingsby in Oxenford's Brother Sam (1865) . Sothern was a born comedian, and off the stage had a passion for practical joking that amounted almost to a mania .

His

house in Kensington was a resort for people of fashion, and he was as much a favourite in America as in the United Kingdom . He died in London on the 21st of January 1881 . Sothern had three sons, all actors, the second of them, EDWARD H . SOTHERN (b . 1859), being prominent on the American stage .