 Brookfield achieved success in a 20-year acting career, including with the company of Squire Bancroft at London's Haymarket Theatre in the 1880s.After he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, in 1898, Brookfield focused on writing plays and musical theatre.In his last years, he was Britain's Examiner of Plays, even though he had been criticised as biased against various playwrights and also for writing a particularly risqué comedy in 1908.