Life
1580-1629 [‘Lo: Barry’ on title-page; var. Lo. Barrey;
now taken as abbrev. for ‘Lord’ or ‘Lording’], bapt.
7 April, Putney, London, the younger son of fishmonger of St. Lawrence,
reputedly of Irish family prob. associated with Cork; wrote of Ram
Alley, or Merry Tricks, a bawdy verse comedy play about the gulling
of Widow Taffeta into marriage by William Small-Shanks, constructd with
a moral ending to placate ‘the Puritans [who] in public preach/That
players such lewd doctrines teach’ (Prologue). performed in London
in 1608 and reprinted in 1638; contains no Irish material but thought
to be the first play in English by an Irish writer apart from John Bale’s
Mystery plays; incurred debts as a theatre owner at Whitefriars; escaped
from prison to Ireland; tried and acquitted of piracy as Lodowicke Barry
in Cork; sailed to Guiana with Sir Walter
Ralegh, 1617; Ram Alley revived at Drury Lane in 1720, with Robert Wilks
in the lead role; the play was reprinted reprinted in Dodsley’s A
Select Collection of Old English Plays (1744 & Edns.). CAB
DNB PI DIW OCIL
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Criticism
Estrange
Ewan, Lording Barry, Poet and Pirate (1938). See also Irish
Book Lover, Vol. 7.
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Notes
Charles Read, A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78),
selects the Prologue to Ram Alley, remarking that it was anthologised
by Charles Lamb in his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. Further,
‘The play itself was reprinted in 1638, and is contained in Dodsley’s
collection of old plays. Barry is ranked among the English dramatic poets
by Langbaine [Biog. Dramatica], and in Harris’s [edition of the
Works of Sir James] Ware, it is said that "Anthony
Wood hath complimented him with the title of Lord Barry".’ (Cabinet,
I, p.21) Note that the DNB follows Dodsley in citing Anthony Wood
as Anthony à Wood, Norman-style.)
Stephen Brown (Guide to Books on Ireland, 1912), and D. J. O’Donoghue (Poets of Ireland, 1912), both speak of him as the first Irish dramatist in English as author of Ram Alley (1611). William Bergquist (Checklist of English and American Plays, 1963) cites the author as David Barrey. Dictionary of National Biography, “Corrections” [appendix vol.], contains amended information as supra.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)