Ellen Terry, Shakespeare, and Suffrage in Australia and New Zealand

Summary

While the life and career of Ellen Terry (1847–1928) has attracted decades of attention from theatre historians and feminist biographers, one chapter remains hidden: Terry's tour of her solo 'Shakespeare lectures' to Australia and New Zealand in 1914. This bold venture, made at the age of sixty-six, has been interpreted as an indication of Terry's declining physical and mental health following her 1906 Jubilee. Yet Terry claimed that 'while in Australia, although a woman, I am permitted to be a person', testifying affinity with the geopolitical region in which women had already achieved the right to vote in federal elections and to run for parliament. This Element undertakes the first comprehensive examination of the 1914 tour to reveal Terry's professional agency, her creative autonomy, her skilful navigation of ageist sexism, her eager receptivity to new natural environments, and her friendship with international opera star, Nellie Melba.