Arthur Williams (actor)

Arthur Williams (9 December 1844 – 15 September 1915) was an English actor, singer and playwright best remembered for his roles in comic operas, musical burlesques and Edwardian musical comedies. As a playwright, Williams wrote several farces as well as some dramas.

Born in Islington, London, Williams initially went into business as a law stationer but soon left to take up acting in 1861 when he was 17. He travelled to Gravesend, Kent, where he made his stage début as Alfred Martelli in "The Corsican Brothers". He made his London stage debut at the St James's Theatre in 1868, where his roles included Thomas in The Secret, Baron Factotum in a burlesque of Sleeping Beauty, and Moses in The School for Scandal. After playing in dramas in the 1870s, he appeared in comic operas in the 1880s, in which he created the roles Sir Mincing Lane in Billee Taylor, Sir Whiffle Whaffle in Claude Duval, Amaranth CVIII in Lord Bateman, his most famous role, Lurcher in Dorothy and Corporal Bundy in The Red Hussar.

In the last decade of the century, he appeared in The Shop Girl, The Circus Girl and A Message from Mars, by Richard Ganthony, among others. In 1902, he began a long association with the hit musical A Chinese Honeymoon and went on to appear in a further six musicals and plays including The Belle of Mayfair (1906) and A Waltz Dream (1908). Later roles included Cornelius Scroop in The Girl in the Train in 1910 and Touchstone in As You Like It the following year. One of his last roles was in 1914 as Perkyn Middlewick in Our Boys. He died the following year at the age of 70.

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