Thomas William Robertson (9 January 1829 – 3 February 1871) was an English dramatist and stage director. Born to a theatrical family, Robertson began as an actor, but he was not a success and gave up acting in his late 20s. After earning a modest living writing articles for the press, translating and adapting foreign plays and writing several of his own plays he achieved success in 1865 with his play Society, which the actor-manager Marie Wilton presented at a small London theatre, the Prince of Wales's. Over the next five years Robertson wrote five more plays for the Prince of Wales's. Their naturalistic style and treatment of contemporary social issues was in strong contrast to the melodramas and exaggerated theatricality to which the public had been accustomed, and Robertson's plays were box-office and critical successes. Robertson supervised their productions and was a pioneer of modern stage directing. Among later theatrical figures influenced by Robertson's Prince of Wales's plays and productions were W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Wing Pinero, Bernard Shaw and Harley Granville-Barker. Robertson wrote numerous plays for other theatres, and adapted many foreign plays for the English stage, but few of these made a strong or lasting impression. He strove successfully to improve the financial condition of dramatists, securing payment per performance, a basis that became the norm after his death. Robertson suffered from heart disease and died at the age of 42 at the height of his fame and popularity. Life and career Early years Robertson was born in Newark-upon-Trent, Nottinghamshire on 9 January 1829. He came from a long-established theatrical family, active on the English stage since the early 18th century, and was the eldest son of William Shaftoe Robertson and his wife, Margharetta Elisabetta (née Marinus), a Danish-born actress. Robertson senior had been articled to a lawyer, but abandoned the law to become an actor, and was taken on by his uncle's Lincoln Circuit Company, of which he afterwards became manager. Many of Robertson's large family of siblings went on the stage, including his brothers Frederick and Edward, and his sisters Fanny, Elizabeth and Margaret, the last subsequently famous as Madge Kendal. He made his first appearance on the stage in June 1834 at the age of five as Hamish, the son of the title character in Rob Roy, and played roles including Cora's child in Sheridan's Pizarro and the Count's child in Kotzebue's The Stranger.