Charles Brookfield

Charles Hallam Elton Brookfield (19 May 1857 – 20 October 1913) was a British actor, playwright and journalist, including at The Saturday Review. His most famous work for the theatre was the Edwardian Musical Comedy The Belle of Mayfair.

Brookfield had an early interest in theatre and joined the acting profession despite family opposition. He achieved success in a 20-year acting career, including with the company of Squire Bancroft at London's Haymarket Theatre in the 1880s. In 1893, he was the first actor known to have played Sherlock Holmes, in his own musical parody. He was educated at Westminster School, from 1871 to 1873, and over the next two years attended lectures at King's College London, while also studying French theatre and becoming a reviewer of novels for The Examiner and a member of the Savile Club at the early age of seventeen. There he earned the Winchester Reading Prize in 1878. After this, he tried studying law but disliked it. He also wrote To-day in 1892 and The Twilight of Love in 1893. a musical parody of Holmes and Watson written with Seymour Hicks, who played Watson. Lottie Venne played Hannah, a maid of all-work. The piece angered Arthur Conan Doyle. His play I Pagliacci ran on Broadway in 1908. Brookfield's work as a journalist included several years on the staff of The Saturday Review. In 1902, Edward Arnold published Brookfield's volume of Random Reminiscences.

One of his later works, Dear Old Charley, another French adaptation, was produced at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1908 starring Charles Hawtrey. Though the critics admitted that the play was funny, it "caused a storm of controversy and became a synonym for the extremest stage naughtiness" and was criticised as unsuitable for the stage. It therefore amazed the public, and amused The New York Times, that Brookfield became the Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain's office in 1911. He also was attacked in the press as hostile to the "New Drama", such as Ibsen and Shaw, and also to Oscar Wilde, helping to gather evidence against Wilde in his trial of 1895. Brookfield, however, ignored public criticism and performed his duties, although his health continued to fail.

Brookfield succumbed to tuberculosis in 1913 at his home in London, aged 56. He is buried at Stratton on the Fosse, Somerset, in the Catholic Church.