The photograph album shows Hamo Thornycroft dressed as Proteus for "The two gentlemen of Verona", a romantic comedy by Shakespeare. In the play he acted with Johnstone Forbes Robertson as Valentine. The Valentine turned into one of the most impressive professional Hamlets later on in his life. At the time of the photograph Hamo was actually working on a marble figure of Shakespeare but very little is know about this piece. Edmund Gosse, art critic and Hamo Thornycroft's close friend, is on the next page of the album. Although it shows Edmund dressed up for the comedy he does not seem to have had a role in it, as the invitation card held in the archive shows. Perhaps he was just, like many Victorians, keen on dressing up. Quite remarkable is that Edmund could remember from whom he had heard the name Shakespeare for the first time - James Sheridan Knowles. The invitation card for the play lists all the actors, one of them is the architect John Belcher. He was later instrumental in gaining Hamo the Institute of Chartered Accountants Building commission, (1889-1893).