Sir Henry Irving, the Actor Knight From Nowhere

Sir Henry Irving, photographed by Lock & Whitfield, London, 1870

The first actor ever knighted was considered too tall and skinny to ever make any success of the dramatic roles in theatre repertoire.

So, how did a twenty-two-year-old actor, heckled so viciously during a run in Dublin that he broke character and asked the audience for mercy, eventually become Sir Henry Irving?