Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing

born May 24, 1855, London, Eng.

died Nov. 23, 1934, London

British playwright.

He entered the theatrical world as an actor with Henry Irving's theatre company. His first play, £200 a Year, was produced in 1877. He wrote a series of successful farces such as The Magistrate (1885) before turning to dramas of social issues. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), the first of his plays depicting women confronting their situation in society, established his reputation, and he followed it with works such as The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (1895) and Trelawny of the "Wells" (1898), becoming the most successful playwright of his time.

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▪ British dramatist

born May 24, 1855, London

died Nov. 23, 1934, London

 a leading playwright of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras in England who made an important contribution toward creating a self-respecting theatre by helping to found a “social” drama that drew a fashionable audience. It is his farces—literate, superbly constructed, with a precise, clockwork inevitability of plot and a brilliant use of coincidence—that have proved to be of lasting value.

      Born into an English family descended from Portuguese Jews, Pinero abandoned legal studies at age 19 to become an actor; and, though still a young man, he played older character parts for the leading theatre company headed by Henry Irving (Irving, Sir Henry). His first play, £200 a Year, was produced in 1877. His best farces, such as The Magistrate (1885), The Schoolmistress (1886), and Dandy Dick (1887), were written for the Royal Court Theatre in London. They combine wildly improbable events with likable characters and a consistently amusing style. Pinero was at the same time studying serious drama by adapting plays from the French (including The Iron Master, 1884, and Mayfair, 1885) and also mining a profitable vein of sentiment of his own, as in The Squire (1881) and Sweet Lavender (1888). Seriousness and sentiment fused in The Profligate (1889) and—most sensationally—in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), which established Pinero as an important playwright. This was the first of several plays depicting women battling with their situation in society. These plays not only created good parts for actresses but also demanded sympathy for women, who were judged by stricter standards than men in Victorian society. In a less serious vein, Trelawny of the “Wells” (written for the Royal Court Theatre and produced in 1898) portrayed theatrical company life in the old style of the 1860s—already then a vanishing tradition—and The Gay Lord Quex (1899) was about a theatrical rake of no placeable period but having great panache. Pinero was knighted in 1909.

Additional Reading

John Dawick, Pinero: A Theatrical Life (1993); Penny Griffin, Arthur Wing Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones (1991).

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