Sir Francis Robert Benson (4 November 1858 – 31 December 1939) was an English tennis player and an actor-manager. He founded his own company in 1883 and produced all but two of William Shakespeare's plays. His thirty-year association with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the annual Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon laid down foundations for the creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company after his death.

Benson's company toured widely, with few London seasons, and became a training ground for several generations of young performers, including Henry Ainley, Oscar Asche, Lilian Braithwaite, Isadora Duncan, Nigel Playfair, Nancy Price, Harcourt Williams and Moffat Johnston.

Benson was the older cousin of the Oscar-nominated and Tony-winning actor Basil Rathbone, to whom he bore a strong resemblance.

Benson was born at Eden House, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on 4 November 1858, the third son and fourth child of William Benson (1816–1887), a barrister, and his wife, Elizabeth, née Soulsby Smith (1830–1892). Their eldest son, William Arthur Smith Benson, became a well-known architect and designer, and the youngest, Godfrey Rathbone Benson, later Baron Charnwood, was a Liberal politician. In 1871 Benson went to Winchester College, where a master inspired him with a love of Shakespeare. From there he went to New College, Oxford in 1878, where he distinguished himself as an athlete (winning the Inter-university three miles) and as an amateur actor. In 1880 he mounted a successful production of Aeschylus's Agamemnon, given in the original Greek; Benson played Clytemnestra. This was followed by Euripides's Alcestis the following year, in which Benson played Apollo.

From 1880 to 1882, Benson had a brief career as a tennis player. He won his only title at the Bournemouth Open Tournament in 1880, and was a semifinalist at the 1882 Wimbledon Championship.

In July 1881, Benson and his Oxford Agamemnon Society took the Imperial Theatre, London, for a single performance of Romeo and Juliet. The performance was not admired; The Stage found it "one of the very worst it has been our misfortune to witness", and commented that Benson's Romeo resembled George Grossmith's Bunthorne in Patience. Benson then studied with Hermann Vezin and was encouraged by Ellen Terry, who persuaded Henry Irving to take Benson on to play Paris in Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum in 1882. Irving was unimpressed and did not extend the young actor's contract. Terry suggested that Benson should join a touring company where he could gain more experience and better parts than in London. He joined first Miss Alleyne's company, and then that of Walter Bentley, which performed Shakespeare and classic comedies in the north of England and Scotland. The Times described the circumstances in which Benson came to take over the company in 1883:

Helped by further subsidies from his father, Benson built up his company and extended its touring range to the whole of the country and beyond. In 1886, he married a member of his company, Constance Featherstonhaugh. They had two children, Eric William (1887–1916, killed at the battle of the Somme), and Brynhild Lucy (1888–1974).

In 1886, Charles Flower, the philanthropist behind the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, invited Benson and his company to open that year's Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon. From then until 1919 Benson presented all but five of the annual Stratford seasons, having taken the role of manager from 1888. The critic James Agate said that Benson's company "was the nursery of modern Shakespearean acting", and both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre have some of their roots in his company and productions.