MR. WILSON BARRETT, who is the son of a gentleman who farmed his own
estate in Essex, received his education at a private school. During
his school-days, at the age of thirteen, he one night spent his only
sixpence in visiting the gallery of the Princess's Theatre, where
Charles Kean was playing _Hamlet_; and he has himself described how he
was therewith fired with two ambitions--to play _Hamlet_, and to marry
Miss Heath, a charming actress who was appearing in the piece--and
how he afterwards achieved both objects. His first appearance as the
Prince of Denmark took place in 1884, on the very stage on which he
had first seen the character performed. At twenty-two, the age of
our first portrait, Mr. Wilson Barrett was studying his art in that
great school for actors--the provincial stage. At the present day, as
represented in our second portrait, his fine features are well known to
every playgoer, as equally adapted to the picturesque melancholy of the
_Silver King_, the classical countenance of _Claudian_, or the boyish
and pathetic beauty of the _Chatterton_ of seventeen.
[Illustration: _From a Photo. by_| AGE 22. |_Window & Grove._]
[Illustration: _From a Photo._| PRESENT DAY. |_by J. Thomson._]
For these portraits we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Wilson
Barrett.