Ashley Dukes

Ashley Dukes (29 May 1885 – 4 May 1959) was an English playwright, critic, and theatre manager.

Life

Ashley Dukes was born one of five children in 1885. He was the son of the Congregationalist clergyman, Rev. Edwin Joshua Dukes (1847-1930), of Kingsland, London, and his wife, the former Edith Mary Pope (1863-1898), of Sandford, Devon.

He met Marie Rambert, a dancer, at a dinner party in 1917. In Rambert's autobiography she says "after four days of personal meetings, and seven months of correspondence we were married on 3 March 1918."[1]

In 1933, he founded the Mercury Theatre, London and wrote plays that appeared in the West End and on Broadway. The Ashley Dukes Company was an important interwar promoter of serious drama, and a training ground for actors.[2]

Dukes mounted the first theatrical performance of Murder in the Cathedral at the Mercury, driving down to Canterbury with Eliot to collect scenery and costumes. (He rejected W. B. Yeats' dramatic oeuvre for the same stage much to Yeats' annoyance.)

He was the older brother of MI6 spy Paul Dukes and pathologist Cuthbert Dukes, and grandfather of poet Aidan Andrew Dun.

References

  1. ↑ Marie Rambert, "Quicksilver: Autobiography" (London: St Martin's Press, 1972), p. 94. ISBN 978-0333347119
  2. ↑ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970707/ai_n14126957


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