Edith Evans

Edith Mary Evans was born on 8 February 1888 in Pimlico, London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a junior civil servant at the General Post Office, and his wife, Caroline Ellen née Foster. She had one sibling, a brother who died at age four. Evans attended St Michael's Church of England School in Pimlico before being apprenticed as a milliner at the age of 15 in 1903. While working in a milliner's shop in the City, she began attending drama classes in Victoria, which developed into an amateur performing group called the Streatham Shakespeare Players. Her first stage appearance came in October 1910, when she played Viola in Twelfth Night with that group.

In 1912, while playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Evans was noticed by producer William Poel, who gave her her first professional engagement in Cambridge in August of that year. She played Gautami in the 6th-century Hindu classic Sakuntalá, in a cast that included the young Nigel Playfair. Poel subsequently cast her as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, first in London and then at Stratford-upon-Avon. Her West End debut followed in 1913, in George Moore's Elizabeth Cooper, where she was singled out for praise despite the production receiving poor notices. In January 1914 she made her professional Shakespearean debut as Gertrude in Hamlet, and later that year was given a year's contract by the Royalty Theatre in Soho, where she played character roles in comedies alongside performers including Gladys Cooper and Lynn Fontanne.

Evans appeared in two silent films in 1915, A Welsh Singer and A Honeymoon for Three, and in East is East in 1917, after which she made no further films for more than thirty years. She toured in Shakespeare with Ellen Terry's company in 1918 and appeared in light comedy alongside the young Noël Coward in Polly With a Past in 1921. That same year she played Lady Utterword in the British premiere of Shaw's Heartbreak House, and in 1923 she took on four roles in the British premiere of Back to Methuselah, playing the Serpent, the Oracle, the She-Ancient, and the ghost of the Serpent. In 1922 she earned what critic J. T. Grein described in The Illustrated London News as a personal triumph in Alfred Sutro's comedy The Laughing Lady.

Evans achieved wide public recognition for the first time with her performance as Millamant in Nigel Playfair's 1924 revival of Congreve's The Way of the World at the Lyric Hammersmith. Critic James Agate wrote that she was the most accomplished of living and practising English actresses, and Arnold Bennett recorded in his journals that the performance was the finest comedy acting he had ever seen. John Gielgud recalled that she took the town by storm, describing her use of a fan, her shifting angles of head and neck, and the balance of her phrasing and diction. In the 1925–26 season Evans joined the Old Vic company, playing Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, Rosalind in As You Like It, Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, a role she would go on to play in four productions between 1926 and 1961. During that season she also married George Booth, an engineer she had known for more than twenty years; the couple had no children. Booth died suddenly in London in the 1930s while Evans was in New York.

Over the two decades following her success as Millamant, Evans accumulated a wide range of notable stage performances. The Times later counted among her performances of absolute assurance in that period those in Tiger Cats (1924), The Beaux' Stratagem (1927), The Lady with a Lamp (1929), and The Apple Cart (1929), in which she created the role of Orinthia, the king's mistress, written for her by Shaw. She created a second Shavian role, Epifania, in The Millionairess in 1940. Her stage career ultimately spanned sixty years and encompassed more than 100 roles, in works by Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry, and Noël Coward.

Evans's Broadway career extended from 1931 to 1950. She appeared in Romeo and Juliet, the revue Tattle Tales, and the play Evensong, in which she played the role of Irela. She also starred in Daphne Laureola during her Broadway years. Her notable stage roles of the 1930s included Gwenny in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), and in 1939 she took on the role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, a part with which she became particularly identified. Her elongated delivery of the line "A handbag" in that role became synonymous with the Oscar Wilde play.

Evans became widely known for portraying haughty aristocratic women, though she also demonstrated considerable range in contrasting parts, including a downtrodden maid in The Late Christopher Bean and an eccentric, impoverished old woman in The Whisperers (1967). She returned to film work later in her career, and between 1964 and 1968 received three Academy Award nominations. Among her film roles was Miss Western in the 1963 adaptation of Tom Jones. Evans died on 14 October 1976.