A well-cut pebble may pass for a diamond till a fine brilliant is placed near it
(Thomas Sheridan)
Many of the eighteenth-century actors who starred on the London stage were either born in Ireland or of Irish ancestry. These included Spranger Barry, George Anne Bellamy (a woman despite her first name), Kitty Clive, Charles Macklin, and Peg Woffington. To this list must be added Thomas Sheridan, actor, theatre manager, and lecturer. Sheridan was born near Dublin in 1719, the son of a prominent schoolteacher and the godson of Jonathan Swift. He was educated at Westminster School, London, the training ground for Britain’s elite, and at Trinity College, Dublin;1 but at the age of 22 he dropped out of the university to pursue an acting career. As actor-manager of Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre for thirteen years, Sheridan would turn that theatre into a respected rival of London’s Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He shared Garrick’s love of Shakespeare and was happy to cater to his audiences’ appetite for the Bard’s plays; twice each season, Sheridan would stage a series of six Shakespearean plays, each given once a week. Hamlet, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice were the most frequently performed.2
Sheridan seemed an unlikely candidate to be an actor: his stature was short, his voice inaudible when lowered and rasping when raised.3 But his ambition and talents overcame these obstacles, and, like David Garrick, he exuded a self-confidence that bordered on vanity. Charles Churchill, a poet and ardent theatregoer, wrote of him:
Where he falls short, ‘tis nature’s fault alone;
Where he succeeds, the merit’s all his own.4
When Garrick and Peg Woffington played at Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre in the summer of 1742, the youthful Sheridan attended every performance and made a point getting himself introduced to the two stars. He made his acting debut at Smock Alley the next January as Shakespeare’s Richard III, the same role in which Garrick had transfixed London audiences fifteen months earlier. Like Garrick, Sheridan became a star overnight.
The two diminutive actors evidently felt a mutual bond, for in April Garrick invited Sheridan to alternate Shakespearean roles with him at Drury Lane. Sheridan declined, writing with unwonted modesty that he could not shine in Garrick’s presence: “a well-cut pebble may pass for a diamond till a fine brilliant is placed near it” and added that he would have little opportunity to play his favorite characters—Richard III, Hamlet, Lear—because they were Garrick’s roles too.5 Sheridan suggested they play together on alternate winters, one in Dublin and the next in London, but Garrick was not interested.6 These early approaches fell through, but Sheridan did go to England, performing to enthusiastic audiences at Covent Garden in the spring of 1744 and as a guest star at Drury Lane that fall.7
Garrick regarded any good actor as a potential rival; Sheridan’s success in London aroused his jealousy and inevitably cooled their friendship. Garrick hungered for fame, and Sheridan’s rising popularity disturbed him.8 But they continued to respect each other’s abilities. In early 1745, while Sheridan was still in London, the owners of Smock Alley appointed him to be its manager. Before returning to Dublin to take up his new duties, he asked Garrick to join him as actor and co-manager for the 1745–46 season.
Garrick was ready for a stint away from London. Audiences at the theatres were thin, because the public was terrified by the Jacobite rebellion that had broken out in Scotland and threatened for a while to topple the British government. Garrick volunteered to serve in the militia force being recruited to suppress the rebellion but they turned him down, perhaps because of his small stature.9 Also unhappy with the salary James Lacy, the Drury Lane manager, offered him for the 1745–46 season, Garrick accepted Sheridan’s invitation and left for Ireland in November 1745.
By then another Irish actor, Spranger Barry, had established himself on the Smock Alley stage.Born in 1719 into a genteel family, Barry was tall and handsome, with blue eyes, golden hair, and natural bearing of grace and dignity.10 He made his debut in 1743 as Othello, a role that virtually became his theatrical property for the span of his career.11 A critic wrote:
The harmony of his voice, and the manly beauty of his person, spoke him alike the hero and the lover; and those who before doubted of the poet’s consistency in forming a mutual passion between such characters as the black Othello and the fair Desdemona, were now convinced of his propriety.12
A theatregoer opined, “in the softer scenes of dramatic woe, conjugal tenderness, and agonizing distress, Barry was Garrick’s master.”13
Sheridan, Garrick, and Barry made the 1745–46 season at Smock Alley one to remember. It was the only time that the three actors played together as members of the same company, and Dublin was delighted.14 The six-foot Barry offered a startling contrast to the diminutive Garrick and Sheridan. But it was Garrick who made the season noteworthy. A month after his arrival, he wrote to his brother Peter: “I am got safe in Ireland, where [I] had success equal to that in England.”15 That winter, Garrick played nineteen different roles, including Richard III and Hamlet; he and Sheridan alternated the roles of the King and Philip the Bastard in Shakespeare’s King John;16 while Barry had a great success as Othello.17
When Garrick returned to England in May 1746, he did not rejoin the Drury Lane company, probably because of a continuing dispute with Lacy over his salary. Instead, he signed up at Covent Garden for the winter season. Although the two patent theatres shared a practical monopoly of the London stage, there was intense rivalry between them. They competed for the leading actors and actresses; usually Drury Lane was in the ascendant, but in the fall of 1746 Covent Garden had the edge. Rich had assembled a cast that included not only Garrick, but also the veteran actor James Quin and two accomplished actresses, Hannah Pritchard and Susannah Cibber; while Drury Lane had Barry, Charles Macklin, and Garrick’s future wife, the Viennese dancer Eva Maria (Violette) Veigel. Like the previous season at Smock Alley, Garrick’s 1746–47 season at Covent Garden was a great success. It was immediately followed by a turning point in his career and in the history of the London stage.
In 1747, the Drury Lane’s patent had only six more years to run. In order to secure a renewal of the patent, Lacy made friends with the Lord Chamberlain by going hunting with him. He was successful, and he quickly offered a one-half interest in the renewed patent to Garrick for £12,000.18 Under the agreement between them, Garrick would join the Drury Lane company at the end of the 1746–47 season and would receive one-half of the theatre’s profits and an annual salary of 500 guineas (£525) for his performances as an actor, an annual benefit night, and additional amounts for any plays he wrote that were performed at Drury Lane.19 Although Garrick’s terms were tough, it was a smart move by Lacy. The deal tied the rising star, sure to fill the house whenever he took the stage, to Drury Lane indefinitely. For Garrick, it was the beginning of a long and successful combined career as actor, theatre manager, and playwright.
When he returned to Drury Lane from Covent Garden, Garrick brought Susannah Cibber and Hannah Pritchard with him. He and Lacy had assembled a dream cast, which also included Kitty Clive and the Irish actors Peg Woffington, Spranger Barry, and Charles Macklin.20 The Drury Lane season opened on September 15 with The Merchant of Venice, with Macklin as Shylock.21 Soon afterwards, Garrick revived Shakespeare’s Henry V, with Barry playing the King and Garrick the Chorus.22 It was the beginning of a golden era of London theatre, the Age of Garrick.
Notes
1 Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley, 3–11.
2 Ibid., 111, 155–56.
3 Dunbar, Peg Woffington and Her World, 87.
4 Churchill, The Rosciad, 31.
5 Dunbar, Peg Woffington and Her World, 123–25.
6 Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley, 39.
7 Ibid., 51–53.
8 Ibid., 262.
9 Woods, Garrick Claims the Stage, 86.
10 Dunbar, Peg Woffington and Her World, 137.
11 Goring, Lives of Shakespearean Actors: Macklin, 157.
12 Cooke, Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian, 155, 158.
13 Mrs. Mary Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany [First Series] (London: R. Bentley, 1861), ii, 424 n. 1.
14 Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley, 61–62.
15 Garrick to Peter Garrick, June 23, 1745. Garrick Memorial (GC), 21.
16 Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley, 63–65.
17 Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, i, 87–88.
18 McIntyre, Garrick, 132–33; Little and Kahrl, Letters of David Garrick, iii, 1344–52.
19 Private Correspondence of Garrick (V&A), xix; Garrick Memorial (GC), 32; Dougald Macmillan, “David Garrick, Manager: Notes of the Theatre as a Cultural Institution in England in the Eighteenth Century,” Studies in Philology 45.4 (Oct. 1948), 639.
20 Dunbar, Peg Woffington and Her World, 149.
21 Macklin’s biographer states that Macklin was in the title role, but surely he means Macklin’s signature role of Shylock, not the title role of Antonio, the eponymous merchant of Venice. Appleton, Charles Macklin: An Actor’s Life, 84.
22 Private Correspondence of Garrick (V&A), xx.