Richard Daly
Richard Daly was an Irish actor and theatrical manager who, between 1786 and 1797, held the Royal patent for staging dramatic productions in Dublin and became such a dominant figure in Irish theatre that he was referred to as "King Daly".
Birth and family background
Richard Daly was born in County Westmeath in 1758, the third son of Joseph and Frances Daly of Castle Daly, Kilcleagh, near Athlone. His family were descendants of Bryan O’Dailaigh who, at the time of his death in 1619, possessed the castle and demesne of Kilcleagh. Ownership of that property was confirmed to the family at the Restoration, and they converted to Protestantism during the Williamite confiscations. By the 19th century their estate exceeded 3,000 acres.Trinity College and the Middle Temple
Daly entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of fifteen and was a turbulent student. The playwright John O'Keeffe remembered him as "so given to riot and commotion that he was the terror of all public places". O'Keeffe was present when, at the head of a party of undergraduates, Daly forced his way through the stage-door of the Smock Alley Theatre, assaulted the doorkeepers, and rushed into the green room, causing the actress Jane Pope to be "greatly terrified".The judge Sir Jonah Barrington, his contemporary at Trinity College, later recalled Daly's appetite for single combat. Before the pair had even spoken to one another, Daly sent Barrington a written challenge to a duel. Barrington, who had not previously fought, was somewhat intimidated on beholding his opponent's striking figure, turnout and distinctive squint when they met at Donnybrook – an encounter which ended without Daly discharging his gun, but saw him sustain minor injury when Barrington's shot was deflected. According to Barrington this was one of sixteen duels fought by Daly at Trinity in the space of two years, three with swords and thirteen with pistols.
The circumstances in which Daly quit Trinity in 1776 and lived in London until 1779 are not clear. A claim that he fled Dublin after killing a billiard-table marker was among several allegations that prompted him to bring libel proceedings in 1789. More probable is the explanation that he left to pursue legal studies in London where he was admitted a student of the Middle Temple in November 1776. Jonah Barrington spoke of him as a fellow Templar, and there is later reference to his commencing practice at the English Bar but finding few clients. Other sources report a London meeting with the celebrated Irish actor Charles Macklin who encouraged Daly to seek his fortune on the stage, following which he made an anonymous debut in the role of Othello at Covent Garden in March 1779. His performance on that occasion is said to have been poorly received, but in the following month his benefit night was successful, and shortly afterwards he returned to Ireland in the company of Thomas and Ann Crawford who had also been playing at Covent Garden.
Marriage and early career in theatre
He made his Dublin stage debut in May 1779 when, at the Crow Street Theatre, he appeared in the role of Lord Townly in The Provok'd Husband, playing opposite Mrs Crawford who had inherited the theatre from her previous husband, Spranger Barry.Soon afterwards Daly married the "beautiful and fashionable" actress Jenny Barsanti, a daughter of the musician Francesco Barsanti. She was the widow of John Richard Kirwan Lyster, who had died in January that year, and brought Daly both a stepdaughter and an annuity. She had made her stage debut at Covent Garden seven years earlier, had delivered the Epilogue when George Colman retired as manager there, and had been the original Lydia Languish in Sheridan's The Rivals. She possessed talent which her friend Frances Burney was "sure will in time raise her to the highest pitch of fame".
Mrs Daly immediately devoted herself to instructing her new husband "in the mechanical and technical points of the dramatic art and succeeded in rendering him a respectable actor". The couple made their first stage appearance together in November 1779 as Beverly and Belinda in the Crow Street production of Arthur Murphy's All in the Wrong, and in the following February they played in George Farquhar's The Inconstant. In April 1780 they appeared in John Burgoyne's The Maid of the Oaks and Sheridan's The School for Scandal.
These productions were staged under the management of Thomas Ryder who, while leasing Crow Street from Ann Crawford, also occupied the Smock Alley Theatre. Although "esteemed the best hearing house in Europe", Smock Alley stood idle and was rented by Ryder simply to prevent it falling into a competitor's hands. In order to escape this double burden, Ryder elected to give up the Smock Alley tenancy when his landlord offered to release him from liability for rent arrears of £3,615 if he surrendered the premises. Unknown to Ryder, Daly had been in negotiation with the landlord and had agreed to assume responsibility for the arrears on being granted possession of the playhouse. By "stratagem and inducements" he then persuaded the best of Ryder's players to join him in a new company at Smock Alley.
Manager of Smock Alley
Early success
Under Daly's management the redecorated Smock Alley Theatre opened in November 1780 with a prelude bearing the title "Smock Alley Secrets" followed by Richard Cumberland's comedy The West Indian and Isaac Bickerstaffe's farce The Sultan, Daly and his wife playing in the first two of these. A week later they appeared in a production of The School for Scandal, in which Daly's performance was reckoned by the critic for the Hibernian Journal to be "all the Author intended or the Audience could wish. He is a most promising young Actor and receives the Applause his Merit justly Claims". In the following month the couple featured in the first Irish production of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem, which had been the major success of that year's London theatre season and was staged by Daly "with magnificence not at all inferior to Covent Garden".Daly's management of Smock Alley was quickly rewarded with commercial success: "he not only had the best company Ireland could then produce but engaged the principal London stars and got up the most celebrated pieces as soon as they were established in London". To increase interest in his productions he sometimes reversed gender in comedies and light opera, having men play female characters and vice versa – though when he cast his wife in male roles she refused to wear men's clothing.
Early members of his company included the actress Sarah Hitchcock and her husband Robert who became prompter and afterward deputy manager at Smock Alley. Robert Hitchcock recruited others to the troupe and was instrumental in the engagement of John Philip Kemble who, in 1781, made his first appearance for Daly in the role of Hamlet. When subsequently miscast as Sir George Touchwood in The Belle's Stratagem, Kemble's "negligent delivery and heaviness of deportment" resulted in Daly urging him to exert himself more; Kemble took offence and refused to continue in the part until Daly apologised. However, Kemble's "wonderful strength" in the title-role of Robert Jephson's The Count of Narbonne won much acclaim; in this he was supported by Daly in the character of Theodore, while "Miss Francis" played the part of Adelaide. Jephson himself attended rehearsals; the play ran for thirty very profitable nights, and Daly was praised as a "rising theatrical genius".
Elizabeth Inchbald performed for Daly in 1782 and in the following January he brought Elizabeth Fitzhenry out of retirement to reprise six of her best-known portrayals "prior to taking her final leave of the stage". In February he travelled to London and engaged Sarah Siddons for a limited number of performances in the summer, when she duly appeared at Smock Alley alongside her brother John Kemble and sister Elizabeth Whitlock. The theatre was "crowded to suffocation" to see Siddons in the title role in Isabella, and she afterwards appeared as Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and as Jane Shore in Nicholas Rowe's tragedy of that name. Her engagement was sufficiently successful that Daly renewed it for the following season, for a reported fee of one thousand guineas. Also in 1784 he engaged John Henderson, Alexander Pope, Elizabeth Younge and Joseph George Holman, and he had Kemble, Henderson, Pope and Holman play Hamlet on alternate nights in the same week.