![Elizabeth Barry after Sir Godfrey Kneller](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Elizabeth_Barry_after_Sir_Godfrey_Kneller.jpg)
Elizabeth Barry (1658 – 7 November 1713) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
actress of the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
period.
Elizabeth Barry's biggest influence on Restoration drama was her presentation of performing as the tragic actress. She worked in large, prestigious
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
theatre companies throughout her successful career: from 1675 in the
Duke's Company
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During hats period, theatres b ...
, 1682 – 1695 in the monopoly
United Company
The United Company was a London theatre company formed in 1682 with the merger of the King's Company and the Duke's Company.
Both the Duke's and King's Companies suffered poor attendance during the turmoil of the Popish Plot period, 1678&ndas ...
, and from 1695 onwards as a member of the actors' cooperative usually known as
Betterton's Company, of which she was one of the original shareholders. Her stage career began 15 years after the first-ever professional actresses had replaced
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's boy heroines on the London stage.
The actor
Thomas Betterton
Thomas Patrick Betterton (August 1635 – 28 April 1710), the leading male actor and theatre manager during Restoration England, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.
Apprentice and actor
Betterton was born in August 16 ...
said that her acting gave "success to plays that would disgust the most patient reader", and the critic and playwright
John Dennis John Dennis may refer to:
*John Dennis (dramatist) (1658–1734), English dramatist
* John Dennis (1771–1806), Maryland congressman
*John Dennis (1807–1859), his son, Maryland congressman
*John Stoughton Dennis (1820–1885), Canadian surveyor
...
described her as "that incomparable Actress changing like Nature which she represents, from Passion to Passion, from Extream to Extream, with piercing Force and with easy Grace".
Early career
Barry's first performance was at the age of 17 in
Thomas Otway
Thomas Otway (3 March 165214 April 1685) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for '' Venice Preserv'd'', or ''A Plot Discover'd'' (1682).
Life
Otway was born at Trotton near Midhurst, the parish of which his fathe ...
's ''
Alcibiades
Alcibiades ( ; grc-gre, Ἀλκιβιάδης; 450 – 404 BC) was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last of the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War. He played a major role in t ...
''. Her performance was so poor that she was fired from the Duke's Company. She then met
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680) was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court. The Restoration reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodie ...
. Their relationship grew from professional colleagues to lovers. They had one child named Elizabeth, who was born in 1677 and died in 1689.
Barry drew on her relationship with Rochester for many of her sexual performances. While multiple sources confirm that Rochester was Barry's lover, the only source for the coaching story is a ''Life'' of Barry published in 1741 – 65 years after the events – by
Edmund Curll
Edmund Curll (''c.'' 1675 – 11 December 1747) was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealt ...
, well known for his fanciful and inaccurate biographies.
Barry was a successful comedian who created a variety of
Restoration comedy heroines throughout her career, but her greatest impact on
Restoration drama was as a
tragic
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
actress. Her capacity for projecting pathos was an inspiration to playwrights
Thomas Otway
Thomas Otway (3 March 165214 April 1685) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for '' Venice Preserv'd'', or ''A Plot Discover'd'' (1682).
Life
Otway was born at Trotton near Midhurst, the parish of which his fathe ...
and
Thomas Southerne
Thomas Southerne (12 February 166026 May 1746) was an Irish dramatist.
Biography
Thomas Southerne, born on 12 February 1660, in Oxmantown, near Dublin, was an Irish dramatist. He was the son of Francis Southerne (a Dublin brewer) and Margaret ...
in the three famous tragic roles they wrote for her: Monimia in Otway's ''
The Orphan'' (1680), Belvidera in Otway's ''
Venice Preserved
''Venice Preserv'd'' is an English Restoration play written by Thomas Otway, and the most significant tragedy of the English stage in the 1680s. It was first staged in 1682, with Thomas Betterton as Jaffeir and Elizabeth Barry as Belvidera. The ...
'' (1682), and Isabella in Southerne's ''
The Fatal Marriage
''The Fatal Marriage; Or, The Innocent Adultery'' is a 1694 tragicomedy by the Anglo-Irish writer Thomas Southerne. It was part of the tradition of She-tragedy which flourished at the time. Incidental music for the work was composed by Henry P ...
'' (1694). These three roles, wrote the prompter
John Downes, "gain'd her the Name of Famous Mrs. Barry, both at Court and City, for whenever She Acted any of these three Parts, she forc'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory, especially those who have any Sense of Pity for the Distress't."
![Dorset Gardens riverfront](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Dorset_Gardens_riverfront.jpg)
In his autobiography, many years later,
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir ''Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber'' (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling ...
recalled the power of her voice: "When distress of Tenderness possess'd her, she subsided into the most affecting Melody and Softness. In the Art of exciting Pity, she had a Power beyond all the Actresses I have yet seen, or what your Imagination can conceive." Elizabeth Howe has argued that it was Barry's success in the role of Monimia that "clinched the movement away from
heroic drama
Heroic drama is a type of play popular during the Restoration era in England, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. The subgenre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660s; John Dryden's ...
and started the establishment of '
she-tragedy
The term she-tragedy, also known as pathetic tragedy refers to a vogue in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for tragic plays focused on the sufferings of a woman, sometimes innocent and virtuous but often a woman who had committed some sort o ...
' as a popular genre." Also known as pathetic tragedy, innocent women were represented as sexual objects and as victims of male lust.
Barry was always described as being a plain woman. Portraits suggest intelligence but heavy features and the playwright Thomas Shadwell writes in a letter in 1692 that it would have been better to have staged Nicholas Brady's ''The Rape'' in Roman dress, "and then w'th a Mantle to have covered her hips Mrs Barry would have acted ye part." Apparently, none of this mattered to contemporaries. Even though Barry was "the ugliest Woman" in the world off stage, wrote an anonymous author in ''A Comparison Between the Two Stages'' (1702), she was "the finest Woman in the World upon the Stage."
Barry's acting style was embedded in the influences from her own personality and life. Elizabeth as a person was seen to be beautiful and virtuous. Although many of the characters she played were virgins, it was known about her relationship with Rochester. It has also been known that she channeled her sexual relationship with Rochester through many of her performances. Also during this time, it was seen that Barry's body had metaphorical meaning to the description of her character. When Barry starred in ''The Orphan'', it was implied that "the trope of the female breast to represent innocence or ruin (consider the many references to Monimia’s "swelling breasts" or "white breasts"). Thus Otway uses the dismemberment of the female body, expressed through the "mangled breasts besmeared with blood", to signify the ruin of the state".
Later career
Later into Barry’s career, she was given more roles of a motherhood figure than a sexual object. Barry worked for the
Duke's Company
The Duke's Company was a theatre company chartered by King Charles II at the start of the Restoration era, 1660. Sir William Davenant was manager of the company under the patronage of Prince James, Duke of York. During hats period, theatres b ...
from 1675 to 1682, taking the role of Cordelia opposite
Thomas Betterton
Thomas Patrick Betterton (August 1635 – 28 April 1710), the leading male actor and theatre manager during Restoration England, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.
Apprentice and actor
Betterton was born in August 16 ...
's Lear in
Nahum Tate
Nahum Tate ( ; 1652 – 30 July 1715) was an Irish poet, hymnist and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for ''The History of King Lear'', his 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's ''King Lear'', and for his libretto for ...
's 1681
adaptation of Shakespeare's ''King Lear''. After the Duke's and the King's companies were amalgamated in 1682, she continued as one of the star performers of the new
United Company
The United Company was a London theatre company formed in 1682 with the merger of the King's Company and the Duke's Company.
Both the Duke's and King's Companies suffered poor attendance during the turmoil of the Popish Plot period, 1678&ndas ...
, which remained for 12 years the only theatrical company in London. The absence of rival companies left the actors in a weak bargaining position in relation to management.
One year after her performance in The Fatal Marriage, Barry decided to leave the United Company due to a salary dispute in 1695. She then proceeded to work for a new company with actor
Thomas Betterton
Thomas Patrick Betterton (August 1635 – 28 April 1710), the leading male actor and theatre manager during Restoration England, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.
Apprentice and actor
Betterton was born in August 16 ...
and actress
Anne Bracegirdle. Barry was one of the original patent-holders of the actors' company, which opened at Lincoln's Inn Fields with the smash hit of
William Congreve's ''Love For Love'' in 1695 and continued to successfully challenge Rich's United Company.There was a huge wage gap between men and woman performers as Betterton was paid £4 and 20s per week and Barry received only £2 and 10s shillings.
Barry officially retired from the stage in 1710 at 52 years old; her acting career lasted a total of 35 years. Her retirement fell short as she died three years later at the age of 55 due to a fever.
Selected list of plays and roles
Fictional portrayals
Barry is a supporting character in ''
The Libertine'',
Stephen Jeffreys' play about John Wilmot's life, as well as its
2004 film adaptation, in which she is portrayed by
Samantha Morton
Samantha Jane Morton (born 13 May 1977) is an English actress and director. Known for her work in independent cinema, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two ...
. Barry also appears as a character in the 2015 play ''
xit Mrs Behnor, The Leo Play'' by Christopher vanDer Ark.
Notes
References
*Cibber, Colley (first published 1740, Everyman's Library ed. 1976). ''An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber''. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
*Drougge, Helga. "Love, Death, and Mrs. Barry in Thomas Southerne’s Plays". Comparative Drama, vol. 27, no. 4, 1994, pp. 408–425.
*Hamilton, Kate. "The 'Famous Mrs. Barry': Elizabeth Barry and Restoration Celebrity". Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 42, 2013, pp. 291-320.
*Highfill, Philip Jr, Burnim, Kalman A., and Langhans, Edward (1973–93). ''Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800''. 16 volumes. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
*Howe, Elizabeth (1992). ''The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660–1700''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Hume, Robert. "Elizabeth Barry’s First Roles and the Cast of "The Man of Mode". Theatre History Studies, vol. 5, 1 Jan. 1985.
*Milhous, Judith (1979). ''Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields 1695–1708''. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press.
*Hartley, Jimmy(2014), ''The Dramatic Life of Elizabeth Barry''. London: Amazon.
*Milling, J. et al. (eds) The Cambridge History of British Theatre 1660 to 1895, Vol. 2, Cambridge, Short Run Press, p. 78.
* Joseph Donohue (ed.) (2004), ''The Cambridge History of British Theatre'', Vol. 2: 1660 to 1895
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barry, Elizabeth
1658 births
1713 deaths
English stage actresses
17th-century English actresses
18th-century English actresses