William Gill (dramatist)

Born William Bain Gill on May 10, 1842 at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, Gill was the son of William Robert Gill and Janet Bird Gill (née Bain).[3] His father was a surgeon who had earned a place in the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in 1835,[4] and at some point in time prior to 1841 had settled in Newfoundland and established a surgical practice.[5] Janet Bird Gill was the daughter of Scottish Royal Navy officer and steamship inventor and captain Sir William Bain who was knighted by Queen Victoria on 20 March 1844.[4] Janet and William Robert were married in Cramond, Scotland on 21 August 1841 just nine month's before William's birth.[6]

William was still living with his parents in Newfoundland as late as 1846, but the whereabouts of the family are not known until an 1852 ship record lists William and his parents as passengers on the Hope bound for Australia from Liverpool, England. William's father was also listed as the ship's doctor of record, and he oversaw 17 deaths and five births during the ships 92 day voyage.[6] Upon arrival, the family settled in Castlemaine, Victoria with the intent of getting rich through gold speculation during the 1852 Australian gold rush.[6]

William Gill spent the early part of his career as an actor in Australia and Asia.[2] The first record of his work as an actor was in July 1862 at the Theatre Royal, Ballarat portraying small roles in a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal with his fellow cast mates including the actors T. S. Bellair, Henry Edwards, and William Hoskins and actresses Julia Harland and Anne Lockhart.[7] William's mother, using the stage name Mrs. Gill, was also an actress in this production in the role of Mrs. Candour.[7]

William Hoskins was the manager of the Theatre Royal, Ballarat at this times and both William and his mother were members of his professional company of actors. Hoskins departed from this post in December 1862, but in the five previous months that William and his mother performed in Hoskin's troupe they shared the stage with several well known performers of the 19th century; including Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, Shiel Barry, and multiple members of the Howson family; including Emma Howson and John Jerome Howson.[8]

After the Hoskins company disbanded, both William and his mother were hired into the acting company of George Fawcett Rowe at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne; making their debuts at that theatre in 1853 in supporting roles in Fawcett's American Civil War drama North and South in 1862, or the War in Virginia.[9] William appeared in mainly small roles in Fawcett's company that season, but did tackle his first larger part as François de Noailles in Fawcett's The Tower of London in October 1853. After the conclusion this season William and his mother once again joined the roster of players at the Theatre Royal, Ballarat in 1854 after the return of Hoskins. With this group they toured to the Lyceum Theatre in Bendigo.[10] Among the company was the celebrated English Shakespearean actor Charles Kean, and the season included a production of Macbeth with Kean in the title role and William Gill as Seaton; a role which gained Gill his first positive reviews as a comedic actor in the press.[10]

While William and his mother were performing in Bendigo, his father died on 11 April 1864 from “hepatitis and fatty degeneration of the heart.”[11] Shortly thereafter, economic depression in Australia led to a downturn in theatre work in that nation, and the Gills ended up leaving Australia for Asia in the touring company of G. B. W. Lewis. This tour was financially very profitable, and the company began its tour in Shanghai in 1864; and continued to perform through the end of 1865 in such locations as Hong Kong, Japan, and India. The company was notably the first theatrical group to perform a pantomime, Bell’s Life in Victoria, in China.[12]

In early 1865 William left the company of his mother to join a theatre group in South Adelaide whose company of players included the seventeen year old actress "Waddy" Deering ; the daughter of actress Eliza Mossenton and the British born theatre manager and actor Henry Deering (b. 1814, London) who had a prominent career in Australia.[13] Waddy, who was already on her second marriage and had one child, became romantically involved with William soon after they met, and it is likely that he was the biological father of her second child, Horatio Ernest Fieldwick Smith (born 6 December 1866).[14] Shortly after the death of her second husband, Mr. Smith, William and Waddy married in Calcutta, India at the Great Eastern Hotel on 20 December 1868.[15]

Prior to his marriage, William's career as a celebrated actor in Australia blossomed, particularly in comedies, between 1865 and 1868. This started with several critical triumphs at George Coppin's Haymarket Theatre, Melbourne. His roles there included the Vizier in Lord Byron’s Aladdin; Winterbottom in the Australia premiere of Dion Boucicault's Arrah-na-Pogue; Lord Buckhurst in Court and Stage; Zimple Zimon in the Christmas pantomime The Four Champions of Beautee; David in The Rivals, and Sam in The Ticket of Leave Man.[16] After this he performed in a minstrel show at a music hall in Melbourne called the Varieties organized by Edward Harvey that was a starring vehicle for the American actress Rollin Howard. He then returned to the Haymarket, now under the management of Hoskins, where he starred in several Shakespeare productions alongside the actor James Robertson Anderson. Gill had particular success as Rodrigo in Othello with Anderson in the title role and Robert Heir as Iago.[17] This was followed by leading roles in several comedies, including Captain Crosstree in Black-Eyed Susan (with Kate Denin in the title role), the hairdresser in Thomas Egerton Wilks' comedy How’s Your Uncle?, and the Demon Dwarf in the Christmas pantomime Harlequin Rumpelstiltskin, or the Demon Dwarf of the Goblin Gold Mine and the Prince and Miller’s Daughter.[17]

In 1867 Gill's first known work, the four page monograph A Comic History of Victoria, was premiered by the author in Melbourne. Inspired by the humorist Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's A Comic History of England, the work is very reminiscent of Beckett's style of writing[18] In 1868 he became the manager of the Princess Theatre, Melbourne. He continued to perform at both the Princess and Haymarket Theatres in such roles as Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea, Caleb Plummer in The Cricket on the Hearth, Widow Twankay in Aladdin, Joe Smith in The Water Witches, and, his most celebrated part, the title role in Rip Van Winkle.[19] Both theaters ended up closing by the summer of 1868 due to financial difficulties;[20] a recurring problem at the vast majority of theaters in Australia at this time in history.[21]

In June 1868 Gill departed for India; once again with a company managed by G. B. W. Lewis. Among the company of actors was Gill's soon to be bride "Waddy" Deering; Tilly Earl; Lewis's wife, the actress "Mrs. Lewis"; Lizzie Naylor; and brothers John & Charles Edouin.[22] The company spent the remainder of 1868 in residence in Calcutta where they were financially very successful.[22] The company's repertoire in this first season included Caste, The Green Bushes, Black-Eyed Susan, Leah, The Child of the Regiment, The Octoroon, Aladdin, Arrah-na-Pogue, The Ticket of Leave Man, and The Flying Scud (with Gill as Nat Grosling).[23] The city of Calcutta did not have a permanent theatre built at this point and time, so the company used a temporary structure built from corrugated wood and iron that could seat up to 6,000 people which they could dismantle to avoid damage during inclement weather.[24]

The company remained in Calcutta for the first several months of 1869;[25] presenting a second season of works which included the plays The Merchant of Venice (with William as Shylock), Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, London Assurance (with William as Meddle), Caste, The School for Scandal, Mary Turner, Fraud and its Victims, or The Streets of London, Richielu, The Little Devil, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Mountain Sylph, Lend me Five Shillings, The Sea of Ice, Cure for the Fidgets, and Rip Van Winkle (William in the title role).[26] This season also included the first known play penned by William Gill; the farce That Dear John Timothy, with Gill portraying the title character; a work which was well received in the Calcutta press.[24]

In May 1869 Gill and the rest of Lewis's company embarked on the beginning of a five month long tour of India. Beginning in Shimla, the company made stops in both larger cities like Bombay, and more smaller remote locations such as the hill station Mussoorie. Most of the tour took place in India's Northwestern provinces where the company traveling more than 1,700 miles along their tour.[27] While overall financially successful, the troupe endured difficult weather with first an unprecedented heat wave and then a challenging rainy season.[28] By the time the company returned to Calcutta in September 1869 they were relieved to be finished with the tour.[29] After this the company presented two more seasons in Calcutta; one in the autumn of 1869, and the other in the spring of 1870.[30]

In April 1870 Lewis announced he would not be continuing with the enterprise in India, and the troupe of actors elected William Gill to replace him as manager.[31][32] They continued to perform in India for one more year under Gill's management but failed to continue with the success they had achieved under Lewis's leadership. This was largely due to Gill's hiring mainly Australian actors for the season, and foregoing the hiring of top British talent. While the actors were just as skilled, critics and audiences complained that the actors lacked the British pedigree that they had become accustomed to when Lewis was in charge.[33]

No longer able to sustain the company financially, the Calcutta troupe disbanded in October 1871, and Gill and his wife returned to Australia; this time residing in Sydney. In that city the couple appeared in productions of Laughing Faces and Flights of Fancy at the Sydney School of Arts in the first few months of 1872.[34] However, their stay in Sydney was brief, and in March 1872 the couple relocated to Hill End, New South Wales, then another Gold Rush boom town, where Gill established a theatre of sorts entitled the 'Great Varieties Hall'. In actuality, this "theatre" was housed in a non-permanent structure canvas tent. While the prospective theatre company started off well, the venture ultimately failed when the gold boom dried up, and the town shrank back to its normal size in a matter of months.[35]

Gill and his family returned to Sydney and he quickly gained work in 1872 managing the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney.[36] There he befriended the Irish-American actor James Carden (1837-c.1917) who was the leading talent at that theatre. When Carden decided to depart the theatre just two months after Gill arrived, Gill decided to go with him and the two began a residence at the Theatre Royal, Brisbane. There Gill and Waddie gained a high degree of popularity with the public, and became the main entertainment attraction in the city; eclipsing Carden as the stars.[37]

The couple departed the Royal Victoria three months later to begin a residence at the Royal Lyceum, Sydney with Gill as the new manager.[38] The newly remodeled theatre was renamed the Queen's Theatre at this time and re-opened on 25 October 1873 with performances of The Farmyard of Grove Farm and The Goldfield on the Macquarie; local plays with no accredited authors. The theatre's season included many popular contemporary plays of the period, and also a well-received original Christmas pantomime penned by Gill, Harlequin Man in the Moon, or Luna the Lovely, Phaeton the Fair and the Haggravating Hag of the Hupper Hatmosphere, which utilized music taken from Offenbach's Geneviève de Brabant and contained a great deal of local humor parodying Sydney's politicians and other contemporary public figures of this city.[39] In this work Gill starred as Larrikinos, the comical Man in the Moon, and Waddy portrayed the roles of both 'Prince Phaeton' and 'Olly as the evil “dame” Malignata'.[40] This is one of the few plays by Gill to have survived, as the Sydney publishing house Gorman & Riordan published the work in 1873.[39]

Following the success of this play, Gill oversaw the Queen's Theatre for one more season in the Spring of 1874. During this season the theatre staged two more original plays by Gill: the comedy Ups and Downs, or Uncle Thomas’s Money and the burlesque Mephistopheles DDD, or Faust and his Fair Marguerite. The latter production, which closed 28 April 1874, was Gill's last appearance in Australia before his relocation to the United States.[41]

William Gill and his wife and children left Australia for California on 12 May 1874; boarding a vessel operated by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,[42] and ultimately arriving in the United States via the port city of San Francisco.[43] Waddie adopted the stage name Rose Bain when she and William made their United States stage debut at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City, Nevada on 28 September 1874 starring in a production of Watts Phillips’ A golden fetter.[44] After this William took over the management of Piper's Opera House, where the couple spent the next several months performing in plays.[45]

The Gills left Piper's Opera House and spent a brief time performing and managing a repertory theatre company in Salt Lake City in 1875. A scandal over copyright infringement erupted during this time, and brought William Gill's names into news headlines for negative reasons in February 1875. William had announced as part of the Salt Lake season a stage adaptation of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's 1873 novel The Gilded Age, but had not obtained permission from the authors to adapt the work. Twain, who was highly protective of any public performances of his works and had already made plans for the actor John T. Raymond to perform a stage version, took William Gill and the Piper's Opera House to court and obtained an injunction barring the theatre's performances. When audiences arrived for the opening night of the planned performances of The Guilded Age, Deputy U.S. Marshall A. K. Smith enforced the court's injunction and the event was canceled at the very last moment.[46][47]

After this embarrassing event, William obtained periodic employment working as a correspondent for the The Clipper in 1876-1877; writing mainly as theatre critic and entertainment reporter but also on the events of the Black Hills Gold Rush. During this time, William and his family moved to the city of Laramie in Wyoming Territory where the Gills were employed at the National Theatre. In Laramie the Gill's daughter Rose was born and she was christened at the Episcopal Church in that city in October 1876. In 1877, William's writings for The Clipper indicate that he was in Cheyenne, Wyoming and its surrounding region for his eye witness coverage of the events of the gold rush during its peak. William also contributed several humorous short stories which were published in The Clipper and other American periodicals in the late 1870s.[48]

By September 1877, the Gills had left Wyoming and were appearing in a musical burletta at the Metropolitan Theater in Newark, New Jersey.[49] The following November they were performing at Henry Ward Beecher's Newark Opera House.[50] The following month, William but not Waddie, had been offered a place in Colville’s Folly Company with whom he made his New York City and Broadway debut as the lead male comic in Oxygen, or Gas in a burlesque metre at the Eagle Theater, on 15 December 1877.[51] This was followed by the Babes In The Wood, or Who Killed Cock Robin?; a pastiche work co-adapted by William Gill and Willie Edouin which premiered on Broadway on Christmas Eve 1877; playing for a total of 25 performance at the Eagle Theatre. The work contained excerpts of materials from a variety of sources by other writers but put together in an original way. While neither writer claimed authorship, it was Gill's first stage work where he was a primary creative presence staged on Broadway.[52]

After this, Babes in the Woods went on tour where it had an enthusiastic reception at the Globe Theatre in Boston; with the management of the theatre extending the show's run beyond what had initially been planned.[53] The tour also included performances of other repertoire; notably a new adaptation of Henry James Byron's Cinderella penned by Gill entitled Our Cinderella. Other stops along the tour included the Grand Opera House, New York, the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, and the Adelphi Theater in Chicago.[54] During the tour, Waddy joined the cast of this production in the role of the governess; this time using the stage name Elinor Deering (the name she would use for the rest of her career).[55] Gill succeeded Edouin as the leading male talent in the production after leaving Boston when Edouin was poached by a rival Boston based theatre impresario Edward E. Rice.[55]

While the Gills were starring with the Colville Company on tour, Rice's theatre troupe presented the world premiere of a new burlesque written by William Gill entitled Horrors, or the Rajah of Zogobad. The work starred Willie Edouin and it premiered on 10 October 1878 at the Milwaukee Opera House.[56] Rice's troop then toured the work to Haverly's Theatre in Chicago, followed by performances in San Francisco and Philadelphia before it reached Broadway’s Union Square Theater on 28 May 1879 where it was received favorably if not enthusiastically by the New York press.[57] It ran on Broadway for 48 performances before Rice's company continued on their tour elsewhere. The work remained in the Rice company's repertoire for several years.[58]

Gill's early plays in America were met with mixed critical reviews, until he penned Adonis.[2] Gill's Adonis began playing on Broadway in 1884 and ran for an unprecedented 603 performances, becoming the longest running show in Broadway history up until that time and the first Broadway show to run for at least 500 performances.[2] At its peak, Adonis earned approximately $7,000 per week in box office sales (the equivalent of over $250,000 in 2011 dollars).[59]

In addition to Adonis, he penned the Broadway plays The Alderman (1897), The Honest Blacksmith (1901), and Mrs. 'Mac,' The Mayor (1905).[1]

• Fisher, James (2015). "Gill, William B. (1842–1919)". Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Beginnings. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 193. ISBN 9780810878334.
• Ganzl, Kurt (2002). William B. Gill: From the Goldfields to Broadway. Routledge. ISBN 9780415937672.

• TNYT (1885-11-22). "The Stage and Box Office" (PDF). New York Times. Retrieved 19 November 2011.

William Gill at the Internet Broadway Database