Life
1719-1777, b. Dublin; b. 20 Nov., Skinner Row; son of silversmith
who mismanaged his business; appeared Smock Alley, 15 Feb. 1744; moved
to London on the invitation of David Garrick, 1746; considered outstanding
as young lover, appeared as Young Norval in Home’s Douglas,
opp. Peg Woffington as Lady Randolph; played Othello to Macklin’s
Iago at Drury Lane, Oct. 1746; remained at Drury Lane till 1747, alternating
with Garrick in such parts as Jaffeir and Pierre in Otway’s Venice
Preserv’d, likewise sharing Chamont and Castalio in Otway’s
The Orphan, Hastings and Dumont in Rowe’s Jane Shore,
and Lothario and Horatio in Rowe’s The Fair Penitent; went
to Covent Garden in 1750; appeared at Haymarket, Drury Lane, and Covent
Garden playing Romeo, Lear and Richard III in open rivalry with Garrick;
returned to Ireland 1798; opened Crow Street theatre with Henry Woodward,
1759, and another in Cork, 1761, playing Hamlet at opening of the latter;
wasted theatrical revenue through magnificent private parties; Woodward
withdrew 1761; Barry returned to Drury Lane 1767, ruined through speculative
building in Dublin; on death of first wife m. Ann Dancer (née Street,
1734-1801), in 1768; d. 10 Jan.; bur. Westminster; called ‘Harmonious
Barry’ by Arthur Murphy and the ‘wonder and darling of every
audience’ by London critics, he was finally considered to have had
the voice and figure but not the intellect of a great actor; a lengthy
biography of Barry appears in in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica,
Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. I, p.44-58. RR DNB DIB
OXTH OCIL FDA
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Notes
The Crow Street Theatre was erected by Spranger Barry and Henry
Woodward on the site of a music hall in 1758, it became the Theatre Royal
when Barry acquired the patent of Master of Revels in 1759. Raised at
a cost of £22,000, it matched the contemporary playhouse at Drury Lane
in London, with a stage 90 feet deep and 36 feet wide and a capacity for
audiences of a thousand.
Sir John Gilbert gives an extensive account of the founding of Crow Street and Barry’s carriage as an actor, including satiric lines upon him by Churchill: ‘What man, like Barry, with such pains can err / In elocution, action, character [... .] Who else can speak so very, very fine, / That sense may kindly end with every line [...]. No flame from Nature ever yet he caught; / nor knew a feeling that he was not taught.’ (See Gilbert, History of Dublin [1854-59], rep. edn., Shannon IUP 1972, Vol. 2, p.184.)
Portrait: An engraving of Barry as Timon in Act V of Shakespeare’s (Timon of Athens) play appeared in Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (1776) and is reproduced in Brian de Breffny, gen. ed., Encyclopaedia of Ireland (1968), p.40. Another portrait of Barry by E. Harding, from original by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is held in the Harvard Theatre Collection and is reproduced in Jane Dunbar, Peg Woffington (1968), facing p.182.
Excellent Mrs Barry: Mrs. Dancer excelled as Millant and Angelica in Congreve’s The Way of the World and Love for Love, and as Mrs Sullen in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem; retired in 1798.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)