Mona Limerick

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Mona Limerick, from a 1914 publication.
Mona Limerick, from a 1909 publication.

Mona Limerick (born Mary Charlotte Louise Gadney;[1] 1882-1968) was an Irish stage actress. She was the wife of actor Ben Iden Payne.

Early life[]

Mona Limerick was born to Irish parents, possibly in South America.[2] In another version of her story, she mentioned being born in India and raised in Germany, as the daughter of Irish missionaries.[3][4]

Career[]

Limerick had her acting debut in 1902, in Bristol. She was a member of the Abbey Players in Dublin, and a member of Annie Horniman's repertory company of the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester.[5] In 1909 George Bernard Shaw chose Limerick for the role of Hypatia in his play Misalliance, but she had to refuse the role to play Beatrice in her husband's production of Much Ado About Nothing in Manchester. Shaw wrote to her about his disappointment: "I solemnly curse Iden Payne. I curse Miss Horniman. I curse the Gaiety Theatre. I curse Manchester. I curse destiny. I lay a blight on every theatrical enterprise in England until you do your duty and come play for me."[6] In 1910 she appeared in Shaw's The Dark Lady of the Sonnets,[7] and toured in Shaw's Man and Superman.[2]

Limerick had a reputation for being "strange, haunting, puzzling" in her stage persona.[8][9] Caricaturist Max Beerbohm drew a severe figure of Limerick in 1909, and described her as having "a barbaric air, and yet an air of being over-civilized."[10] Joseph Conrad described Limerick in a 1917 letter as having "a quality which gets home every time and if she may exasperate her audience I am certain she will never bore it or leave it indifferent."[11]

Limerick and Ben Iden Payne left the Manchester troupe in 1911, and toured the United States in 1913.[12][13] She starred in Cicely Hamilton's play Phyl and Harriet Monroe's play The Man-Eagle in Chicago in 1914.[14] She also acted in Rabindranath Tagore's Chitra in Boston in 1915, and made plans to appear in vaudeville in The Woman in Red.[15]

Personal life[]

Mona Limerick married fellow actor Ben Iden Payne in 1906.[2] They had three children, Sara (1907-1993) who became a dancer,[16] Rosalind (1911-1990) who became an actress,[17][18] and son Paget. Limerick and Payne divorced in 1950.[19] Mona Limerick died in 1968, aged 86 years.[20]

References[]

  1. ^ "Ben Iden Payne" Oxford Dictionary of Biography (2004).
  2. ^ a b c Who's who in the Theatre (Pitman 1922): 499.
  3. ^ Mae Tinee, "Miss Mona Limerick is a Personality, Says Interviewer" Chicago Tribune (November 23, 1913): 56. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  4. ^ "Miss Mona Limerick Has Wide Experience" Decatur Herald (February 15, 1914): 15. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  5. ^ "The Stage" Field Illustrated (2 August 1913): 17.
  6. ^ George Bernard Shaw to Mona Limerick (24 November 1909), in Theatrics (University of Toronto Press 1995): 101-102. ISBN 9780802030009
  7. ^ Gale K. Larson, Shaw and History (Penn State Press 1999): 79. ISBN 9780271019185
  8. ^ "Little Theatre: The Spanish Lovers" The Observer (26 May 1912): 5. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  9. ^ "Snow White, a Fairy Play" The Guardian (27 December 1911): 10. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  10. ^ N. John Hall, Max Beerbohm Caricatures (Yale University Press 1997): 109. ISBN 9780300072174
  11. ^ Joseph Conrad to B. Macdonald Hastings (19 March 1917), in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad (Cambridge University Press 1983): 47. ISBN 9780521561952
  12. ^ Who's who in the Theatre (Pitman 1922): 638.
  13. ^ "The Three Arts" The Evening Sun (August 11, 1913): 7. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  14. ^ "Feminism in Drama" Inter Ocean (January 28, 1914): 6. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  15. ^ "Pretty Dramatic Artiste in Vaudeville" Camden Daily Courier (May 12, 1915): 10. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  16. ^ The Sara Payne Papers, The National Dance Archive of Ireland, University of Limerick.
  17. ^ Ronald Ossory Dunlop, "Rosalind Iden, as Ophelia" (1940), at the Tate Gallery.
  18. ^ "Rosalind Iden" The Guardian (November 20, 1990): 39. via Newspapers.comicon of an open green padlock
  19. ^ Alice J. Rhoades, "Ben Iden Payne" Handbook of Texas Online (Texas State Historical Association 2010).
  20. ^ Albin Krebst, "B. Iden Payne, Shakespearean, Actor, Director, Teacher, Dies" New York Times (April 7, 1976): 39. via ProQuest

External links[]

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