Arthur Wing Pinero: His Life and Plays

Abstract

Arthur Wing Pinero was born on 24 May 1855, four years after Henry Arthur Jones, and a year before George Bernard Shaw. His early childhood was spent at 21, Dalby Terrace, Islington, in north London, a respectable middle-class area. His parents were quite well-off when he was born, as his father and grandfather before him were solicitors. The family, originally of Portuguese Jewish extraction, by name Pinheiro, had migrated to England in the eighteenth century and, anglicising their name to Pinero, were soon comfortably established. His father, John, was past middle age when Pinero was born, and his law practice was declining. When Pinero was ten, he was taken away from school, and put to work in his father’s offices in South Square, Gray’s Inn, and in Prince Street (now called Bedford Square). It was assumed that he would follow the family tradition and become a lawyer. There was nothing that the young lad wanted to do less. He disliked the law, and wanted to become an actor. He had become stage-struck at an early age, because his parents were keen theatre-goers, and frequently took their young son with them.