Ada Dyas

The Irish actress, Ada Dyas, as character Claire Folliott in the Broadway show, The Shaughraun. Circa 1874.

Ada Dyas (July 28, 1843 - March 12, 1908) was an Irish actress. She made her London debut in 1861 in Henry IV, and became famous in the 1871 play based on Wilkie Collins's novel The Woman in White.

Career Ada Dyas was the daughter of Mrs. Edward Dyas, "an actress of some ability attached to the London theatres". Ada Dyas made her London debut in 1861 in Henry IV, playing "Prince John of Lancaster".

Dyas gained a degree of popularity while touring with "Miss Marie Wilton's London Comedy Company", where she played as "Esther Eccles" in Thomas William Robertson's Caste. In 1871 she was in the original cast of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White which opened at the Olympic Theatre on October 9, playing both "Laura Fairlie" and "Anne Caherick".

Later, at Wallack's, her most successful roles were those of Kate Hardcastle, Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal, Lady Gay Spanker, Lydia Languish, and especially that of Claire Ffolliott in Boucicault's The Shaughraun. After Wallack's she became a member of the Madison Square Company.

Albert Ellery Berg said of Dyas, she "...has a crisp, bright style which she uses with fine intelligence".

She toured as Mrs. Ralston in Jim the Penman and as Mrs. Seabrooke in Captain Swift. In 1892 she played Goneril in Sir Henry Irving's revival of King Lear at the London Lyceum.

Her performance in The Shaughraun is mentioned in Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence.

Ada Dyas died in Seaton, England in 1908.