William Lugg

William Lugg (4 June 1852 – 5 December 1939) was an English actor and singer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He had a long stage career beginning with roles in several Gilbert and Sullivan operas

Lugg then appeared in small roles in three Arthur Wing Pinero plays at the Royal Court Theatre: The Magistrate, The Schoolmistress and Dandy Dick. Also in 1888, he appeared at the Olympic Theatre in Christina and at the Strand Theatre in Run Wild, Kleptomania and Aladdin. In 1889 at the Comedy Theatre, he played in Aesop's Fables, The Pink Dominos, Queen's Counsel and Domestic Economy. He was then back at the Strand as Nathaniel Glover in Our Flat. In 1891, he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in A Sailor's Knot.

Lugg then joined the theatre company of William Hunter Kendal and Madge Kendal, where he remained for several years. With the Kendals, among other plays, he appeared in The Queen's Shilling as Colonel Daunt, Clancarty as the Earl of Portland and A Scrap of Paper as Sir John Ingram. After this, at the Lyceum Theatre with Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Lugg played as Polonius in Hamlet and as Duncan in Macbeth. He joined the company of Henry Irving in 1899, where his roles included Benjamin Vaughan in Robespierre, Titus Lartius in Coriolanus, Lambert in The Lyons Mail, Ireton in King Charles I, Franois de Paule in Louis XI, Salanio in The Merchant of Venice, the Witch of the Kitchen in Faust, Ruggieri in Dante and Roger in Tennyson's Becket, among others. In 1907, he appeared with them as Andrew Quainton in The Gay Gordons. In April 1908 he toured with Terriss in Sweet and Twenty. In 1910, he was at the Prince of Wales's Theatre as Count Boethy in another musical, The Balkan Princess. At the Royalty Theatre in 1922 he played Simeon Ristitch in Mr. Budd (of Kennington), and at the Lyceum in 1924 he was Father Pius in Under His Protection. His last known stage performance was at the Gaiety Theatre in 1924, as Judge Delafield, J.P., in Poppy. and as Simon Ingot in David Garrick (1913), both of which he appeared in with Seymour Hicks and Ellaline Terriss. His other film roles were Andrew Vernon in Daddy (1917), Sir John Haviland in Ave Maria (1918), Grandfather in The Old Curiosity Shop (1921), Down Under Donovan (1922), Soames in The Three Students (1923), Baron de Clifford in The Mistletoe Bough (1923), and John of Oxford in Becket (1923).

Lugg and his wife Ellen Florence, née Smith, had a son, Alfred (born 1889), who also became an actor. Lugg retired in 1927 and died in Norwood, London, aged 87.