"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)Doran, Dr. (John)
History
"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)
Doran, Dr. (John)
Actors -- Great Britain; Theater -- Great Britain -- History
Of Barry's wardrobe, he seems to have parted only with the "bonnet,
bow, and quiver, for Douglas;" but Mrs. Barry's was left in Crow
Street. It consisted of a black velvet dress and train; nine silk and
satin dresses, of various hues, all trained; numerous other dresses,
of inferior material; and "a pair of shepherd's breeches," which
Boaden thinks were designed "for the dear woman's own Rosalind, no
doubt."
The only known portraits of Barry represent him as Timon and
Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years,
in London;--years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like
Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but,
like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them
both,--he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing
over matter.
On the 8th of October 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of
Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. He was then only fifty-seven
years of age; but there was a wreck of all his qualities,--save
indomitable will. The noble vessel only existed in ruins, but it
presented a majestic spectacle still. Barry, on the stage, was almost
as effective as he had ever been; but, off the charmed ground, he
succumbed to infirmity and lay insensible, or struggling, or waiting
mournfully for renewal of strength between the acts. He continued ill
for many weeks, during which his chief characters passed into the
hands of Lewis, the great-grandson of Harley's secretary, Erasmus
Lewis, but himself the son of a London linendraper. Lewis, who had
now been three years on the London stage, played Hamlet, and Norval,
Chamont, Mirabel, Young Bevil, and Lord Townley; but on the 28th of
November, Barry roused himself, as if unwilling that the young actor,
who had excelled Mossop in Dublin, should overcome, in London, the
player who had competed, not always vainly, with Garrick. On that
night, as I have already recorded, he played Evander to his wife's
Euphrasia, in the "Grecian Daughter;" but he never played or spoke on
the stage again. On January 10th, 1777, he died, to the great regret
of a world of friends and admirers, and to the awakening of much
poetry of various quality. One of the anonymous sons of the Muse, in
a quarto poem, remarks:--
"Scarcely recovered from the stroke severe,
When Garrick fled from our admiring eyes,
Resolv'd no more the Drama's sons to cheer,
To make that stroke more fatal,--Barry dies.
He dies: and with him sense and taste retreat;
For, who can now conceive the Poet's fire?
Express the just? the natural? the great?
The fervid transport? or the soft desire?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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