Edgardo Colona

Who was Edgardo Colona?

Don Edgardo Colona was the stage name of Edgar Chalmers, a hard-working lesser tragedian in British theater.

Colona grew up in Mexico, the son of a Scots mining engineer. He first appeared on a British stage at the age of eighteen, in a performance of Hamlet, and soon joined the Drury Lane company. Other Shakespearian roles included Richard the Third, Othello, and, in the eighteen-nineties, a disastrous Macbeth at the Old Vic. Colona also wrote or adapted a number of plays, the most successful of which were Crime and Atonement and Don John of Seville, a blank verse work first performed at the Elephant and Castle Theater in 1876.