Thorndike was born on 24 October 1882 in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the eldest of the four children of the Rev Arthur John Webster Thorndike (1853–1917) and his wife Agnes Macdonald, née Bowers (1857–1933), th… 展开

Between November 1914 and May 1918 Thorndike played in four seasons at the Old Vic (and one at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1916) with a mostly Shakespearean repertory. According to her biographer … 展开

In early 1920 Thorndike successfully repeated her Hecuba and played the title roles in Shaw's Candida and in another Euripides play, Medea. The critic J. T. Grein wrote of the latter, "It is a great example of tragic acting, an… 展开