Elizabeth Barry - Later Career

Later Career

Barry worked for the Duke's Company from 1675 to 1682, taking the role of Cordelia opposite Thomas Betterton's Lear in Nahum Tate'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, 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, and when the United Company fell under the mismanagement of Christopher Rich (theatre manager) in the 1690s, "as sly a Tyrant as ever was at the Head of a Theatre," the senior actors including Barry, Betterton and Anne Bracegirdle left to form their own collaborative company. 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.

Barry achieved remarkable public approval and business success for a single woman in London in the late 17th century, especially considering that she was generally known to have a daughter by Rochester and another by the playwright George Etherege. Many actresses at this time achieved the prize of respectability by being married, usually to actors, but Barry never married. In 1709 she retired from the stage.