Editing Wilson Barrett (section)

===1890s: ''The Sign of the Cross''===
[[File:BARRETT(1899) p009.jpg|200px|thumb|Wilson Barrett and [[Maud Jeffries]]: ''The Sign of the Cross'' (1895)]]
By the 1890s, the London stage was already coming under new influences, and Wilson Barrett's vogue in melodrama had waned, leaving him in financial difficulties. From 1894 he toured the United States, including the ''[[American Music Hall|American]]'' and ''[[Knickerbocker Theatre (Broadway)|Knickerbocker]]'' theatres of [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]].

Still there in 1895, Barrett found fortune again with a production <ref name="losttheaters" /> which would effectively become his most successful, the historical [[tragedy]] ''[[The Sign of the Cross (play)|The Sign of the Cross]]''—which was originally produced in the United States at the Grand Opera House, [[St. Louis|St. Louis, Missouri]] on 28 March 1895;<ref>[http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86063624/1895-03-29/ed-1/seq-2.pdf Wilson Barrett’s New Play, ''Kansas City Daily Journal'', (Friday, 29 March 1895), p.2].</ref> in the United Kingdom, at the [[Grand Theatre, Leeds]], on 26 August 1895;<ref>"The Sign of the Cross", ''The Era'', (31 August 1895), p.11.</ref> in London, at the [[Lyric Theatre, London]] on 4 January 1896;<ref>Lyric Theatre: "The Sign of the Cross", ''The (London) Sunday Times'', (Sunday, 4 January 1896), p.5.</ref> and in Australia, at [[Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney]] on 8 May 1897<ref>[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article126249375 Before the Curtain, ''The (Sydney) Sunday Times'', (Sunday, 9 May 1897), p.2].</ref>—in which Barrett played Marcus Superbus, an old [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]] of the years of [[Nero]], who falls in love with a young woman, Mercia (originally played by [[Maud Jeffries]]) and converts to Christianity for her, both sacrificing their lives in the [[Amphitheatre|arena]] to the [[lion]]s. The plot in some ways strongly resembles the contemporary novel ''[[Quo Vadis (novel)|Quo Vadis]]'', and it may have been an unofficial adaptation of it, though Barrett never acknowledged this.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}

The theatre was crowded with audiences largely composed of people outside the ordinary circle of playgoers, shepherded by enthusiastic local clergymen.<ref name="losttheaters" /> Barrett tried to repeat this success with more plays of a religious type, though not with equal effect, and several of his later attempts were failures.

At the turn of the century he co-founded the company which became [[Waddingtons]], originally as a theatre-focused printing firm.<ref>David Thornton, ''Leeds: A Historical Dictionary of People, Places and Events'' (Huddersfield: Northern Heritage Publications, 2013), s.v. ''WADDINGTONS''.</ref>