The American actress Katherine Cornell (1893-1974) as Countess Ellen Olenska in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence .

In a role seemingly less bold than the sophisticated one above, Shaw's Candida deals with an outwardly conventional wife who proves a far better mistress of her social situation, like many of Shakespeare's comic heroines: Portia, Rosalind, and Viola. Cornell had great success in Shaw's Candida (written 1898) in five productions in the twentieth century. However, Cornell also excelled as Shakespeare's Juliet, in 1934: Grebanier considered that production one of the best ever of the play. Picture and some data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).