Rediscovering Nora Charrington, Actress and Fabian

The life and stage career of Nora Charrington has not been studied previously. She was the only child of two already celebrated actors, Janet Achurch and Charles Charrington, pioneers of the performance of the plays of Henrik Ibsen and the 'New Drama' movement of the late nineteenth century. Not only did this artistic inheritance confer obvious advantages, but also of additional significance was her parents' association with George Bernard Shaw, their friend, mentor, and her godfather. Shaw's unorthodox socialism, expressed through his writing and dramatic works, profoundly influenced the Charringtons in different ways, and to differing degrees. In this respect, it is relevant with regards to their daughter's story to briefly recall several key earlier works that discuss the Charringtons. In the earliest piece (in 1928) on the Ibsenite duo, the late playwright and dramatic critic Ashley Dukes, an ardent collector of Charringtoniana, critiqued them as "dimly remembered names, shadows flitting across the luminous page of a Shavian preface", a now "tragically extinct" race of "theatrical pioneers of Ibsenism" (Dukes, "A Doll's House" 21-38). In 1959 Tullah Innis Hanley published her biographical novel The Strange Triangle of G.B.S. on the Charringtons and Shaw. The Shavian bibliographer Dan H. Laurence however, perhaps expecting less trivialised handling of the subject, dismissed Hanley's book as "Fictional treatment, much exaggerated and distorted" (Laurence, Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography 908). A more learned perspective on the Charringtons appeared in 1980 as part of Margot Peters's study of Shaw and his involvement with notable actresses, including Janet Achurch, which further illuminated their relationship by drawing on Shaw's letters.

Although they were once subjects of great interest - for activities both on and off the stage - it would be fair to say that the Charringtons are now not so much "dimly remembered" as largely forgotten. It is therefore unsurprising to find that in all the many references to them, with Shaw more often than not driving the conversation, only fleeting allusions to Nora Charrington are to be found. Moreover, where these occur, they relate more to the child than the adult, a situation which has contributed in large measure to her marginalisation, and disregard of her acting career. In this essay I therefore take her beyond childhood into adulthood, repositioning Nora instead as the focus of the conversation, while moving the Shaw vortex from centre stage. Aside from the biographical details presented, the central questions I pose relate firstly to how Nora compared with the other actresses she worked with in repertory and on tour, and secondly the extent to which her career profile conformed to, or deviated from, what was typical for repertory actresses of this period. Overall, my analysis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role female actors in particular played in the emerging repertory theatre movement of the early twentieth century.

The Early Years

Nora Charrington Martin was born during her parents' widely-publicised tour of Australia and New Zealand (1889-91), a venture already well documented (Angel). This was a time in Britain which according to Mary Jean Corbett witnessed "a tremendous flux in arguments about what constituted 'woman', with the late Victorian theatre serving as a primary cultural site for debating the parameters of the category" (16; see also Davis). Affectionately referred to by her godfather Shaw in a letter of 30 March 1891 as the "lesser Nora" (Laurence, Collected Letters I 286-91), her birth occurred on Thursday 29 May 1890 at 15 Spring Street in the Latrobe Ward of Melbourne ("Register of Births" number 24996; Melbourne Argus 30 May 1890: 1). This is close to the Princess's Theatre where her parents' tour opened with Ibsen's A Doll's House on Saturday 14 September 1889, concluding with the same at the Theatre Royal, Brisbane on 13 November 1891. On their return to England in the Spring of 1892 they immediately revived A Doll's House at the Avenue Theatre, London, on 14 April 1892, but much had happened in the so-called Ibsen Campaign during their absence, and much written of these events...