Early stage career
Neilson met the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, who cast her in her first professional stage appearance in March 1888. She played Cynisca in a charity matinée of his play, Pygmalion and Galatea, at the Lyceum Theatre, and later that year, in the same play, she was the lead character, Galatea, in a similar matinée at the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert suggested that the statuesque young woman concentrate her career on acting rather than singing, and he coached her on acting. Her next role was Lady Hilda in a revival of Gilbert's Broken Hearts. Gilbert wrote the lyrics to a short song for her to sing during Act I, and she proposed that a fellow student of hers at the Royal Academy, Edward German, should set it to music. She then played Selene in a revival of Gilbert's The Wicked World. In November 1888, she created the role of Ruth Redmayne in Rutland Barrington's production of Gilbert's Brantinghame Hall.
These roles led to an invitation for Neilson to join Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company, in which she toured in Captain Swift, The Red Lamp and The Merry Wives of Windsor. She remained with Tree's company for five years at the Haymarket Theatre as a tragedienne, beginning with the role of Julie de Noirville in A Man's Shadow, which opened in September 1889.
In 1891, Neilson married another actor in the company, Fred Terry, the brother of Gilbert's former protégée, Marion Terry (and the actresses Kate, Ellen and Florence Terry). Neilson and her husband appeared together in Sydney Grundy's translation of the French play A Village Priest and numerous other productions together with Tree's company, including Beau Austin, Hamlet, Peril and Gilbert's Comedy and Tragedy (1890). She also played Drusilla Ives in The Dancing Girl (1891) by Henry Arthur Jones, and Terry and Neilson's daughter Phyllis was born in 1892. Neilson was soon back on stage as Lady Isobel in Jones's The Tempter (1893), and created the role of Hester Worsley in Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (1893).
A review of Neilson's performance in the play Ballad Monger in 1890 declared:
Miss Neilson's really wonderful singing took the curtain up on the very keynote of the beautiful and pathetic play. And to her singing no higher tribute can be paid. One of these days, we do not doubt, it will be possible to write in the same strain about her acting. In that there is splendid promise. And the promise will come the more near to performance when she is a trifle less conscious of her remarkable physical beauty, and of the fact that she has been to some extent rushed into her present position.
In June 1894, Neilson and Terry appeared together in Shall We Forgive Her? by Frank Harvey at the Adelphi Theatre, with Neilson as Grace. The next year, she played Lady Chiltern in Wilde's comedy An Ideal Husband at the Haymarket under the management of Lewis Waller. She gave birth to her second child, Dennis, in October 1895. Two months later, the family travelled to America to perform with John Hare's company. There they played together in New York in The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith by Arthur Wing Pinero, with Neilson as Agnes.
In 1896, they returned to England where, at the St James's Theatre, Neilson played Princess Flavia in The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, remaining at that theatre for two years. There she played Rosalind in the extremely successful run of As You Like It (in which role she toured North America in 1895 and 1910). She played the title role in Pinero's The Princess and the Butterfly in 1897.
Her husband appeared with her in The Tree of Knowledge and other plays from October 1897 until the summer of 1898; her roles included Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Next, they appeared in The Gipsy Earl. Again with Tree's company, now at Her Majesty's Theatre, Neilson was Constance in King John (1899) (and appeared in an early short silent movie recreating King John's death scene at the end of the play) and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1900). They then toured in As You Like It.
