Robin de la Condamine

Who was Robin de la Condamine?

Robert "Robin" de la Condamine was an actor who used the stage name Robert Farquharson. Harold Acton wrote that he was "our last great actor" in the tradition of Henry Irving and that he was known for his "emphatic stammer" and his dandyish ways.

Condamine was born in London and attended the Rugby School. He studied under actor F.H. Macklin and made his stage debut in two plays by Henrik Ibsen at the age of 21.

In 1905, he played Herod in the English premiere of Oscar Wilde's Salomé, directed by Florence Farr, impressing critics Max Beerbohm and Robbie Ross. On the basis of this success, he was cast by Farr as Foragel in William Butler Yeats' The Shadowy Waters. Yeats disliked his performance, complaining that Condamine was "over-emphatic and shoots his voice up and down the scale in a perfectly accidental way" and that "You cannot play Foragel without nobility or any of my verse without pride & he has neither." Yeats wrote "I long to get him by myself and make him speak on a note day after day till he had got rid of accidental variety" but since Condamine and the other actors were performing without pay as a favor to Farr, Yeats could not have him removed from the play.