Who dated Ellen Terry?

Dame Alice Ellen Terry (27 February 1847 – 21 July 1928) was an English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens. At 16, she married the 46-year-old artist George Frederic Watts, but they separated within a year. She soon returned to the stage but began a relationship with the architect Edward William Godwin and retired from the stage for six years. She resumed acting in 1874 and was immediately acclaimed for her portrayal of roles in Shakespeare and other classics.

In 1878 she joined Henry Irving's company as his leading lady, and for more than the next two decades she was considered the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Two of her most famous roles were Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. She and Irving also toured with great success in America and Britain.

At the urging of George Bernard Shaw, Terry took over management of London's Imperial Theatre in 1903, opening a new play by Henrik Ibsen. The venture was a financial failure, and Terry turned to touring. She continued to find success on stage until 1920 and especial success in lecture tours discussing the Shakespeare heroines. She also appeared in several films from 1916 to 1922. Her career lasted nearly seven decades.

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Edward William Godwin (26 May 1833 – 6 October 1886) was a progressive English architect-designer, who began his career working in the strongly polychromatic "Ruskinian Gothic" style of mid-Victorian Britain, inspired by The Stones of Venice, then moved on to provide designs in the "Anglo-Japanese taste" of the Aesthetic movement in the 1870s, after coming into contact with Japanese culture in the 1862 International Exhibition in London. Godwin's influence can be detected in the later Arts and Crafts movement.

His best known early works include The Guild Hall, Northampton, which was his first notable public commission, and Congleton Town Hall, as well as restorations and neo-Gothic additions to Dromore Castle, Limerick and Castle Ashby.

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