War brought some odd sights to London’s streets. One of these was a Shakespearean actor recruiting in a suit of armour on Charing Cross Road
Norman Wrighton was born in Staffordshire and came to London to act in the West End. In the 1911 census, he gave his occupation as ‘Actor, dramatist and poet’ and his employer as Seymour Hicks – a prominent London performer and theatre manager.
Wrighton was keen on making Shakespeare accessible to the public – including through open-air recitals in Hyde Park, and through recitals in the Music Halls (about which he wrote to the Times in 1910). He also wrote invasion plays – a genre designed to alert the British public to the threat of war in Europe and possible invasion of their country. The Stage Yearbook 1910 lists his sketch ‘Wake Up England’ being performed at the Empire in Leeds in February 1909. The previous year, his play Britain’s Awakening (in which he also starred) appeared in the West End in London.
Quite why he felt the need to dress in armour to deliver his recruiting speech in December is not clear, although he undoubtedly attracted greater attention that way (judging by a wider-angled photo of the scene, the crowd were mainly soldiers, though, which may have defeated the point somewhat). The statue in front of which he spoke is of Sir Henry Irving at the bottom of Charing Cross Road, behind the National Portrait Gallery.
Earlier that year, another of his plays ‘Kultur’ was reportedly used by recruiting sergeants in the capital. Perhaps that is was what Wrighton was reciting in front of Irving’s stature, clad in armour.