1. Cicely Hamilton is best known for the feminist play How the Vote was Won, which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike.
11 Facts About Cicely Hamilton
1. 2.
Cicely Hamilton was educated in Malvern, Worcestershire and in Bad Homburg vor der Hohe.
3.
Cicely Hamilton took the pseudonym "Cicely Hamilton" out of consideration for her family.
4.
Cicely Hamilton was praised for her acting in a performance of Fanny's First Play by George Bernard Shaw.
5.
Cicely Hamilton supplied the lyrics of "The March of the Women", the song which Ethel Smyth composed in 1910 for the Women's Social and Political Union, was first performed at an 'At Home' in Suffolk Street Galleries, Pall Mall to celebrate the release of women violently arrested on Black Friday; it had suitably stirring lyrics for such an occasion:.
6.
Cicely Hamilton wrote "A Pageant of Great Women", a highly successful women's suffrage play based on the ideas of her friend, the theatre director Edith Craig.
7.
Cicely Hamilton played 'Woman' while Craig played the painter Rosa Bonheur, one of the 50 or so great women in the play.
8.
Cicely Hamilton was a member of Craig's theatre society, the Pioneer Players.
9.
Cicely Hamilton inspired young schoolgirls, supportive of suffrage, like Winifred Starbuck, who had Cicely Hamilton and other leaders' pictures on her desk in purple, white and green frames and later herself protested by school disorder, such as graffiti and hiding the school registers and handbell, as a milder form of resistance to authority for women's suffrage.
10.
When Lena Ashwell Players Ltd was formed in 1923, Cicely Hamilton was one of the directors.
11.
Cicely Hamilton was a regular contributor to Time and Tide magazine, and an active member of the feminist Six Point Group, campaigning for the rights of children, widows and unmarried mothers; equal guardianship of children, and equal pay in teaching and civil service.