| The Lovers | |
|---|---|
| John wilmot, Earl of Rochester
(1647-80) was born in Ditchley, Oxforshire, the son of a Puritan mother and a Royalist father. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Rochester was rewarded with a royal pension of £500 a year for his father's loyalty to Charles I. From 1662 to 1664 he traveled on the Continent with is tutor, the Scottish physician Sir Andrew Balfour. In 1665, after a failed attempt to abduct the heiress, Elizabeth Malet, he was appointed a commander in the navy and distinguished himself in battle. In 1667 he married Elizabeth Malet and began to write a series of love lyrics, ostensibly addressed to her. Within a few years Rochester's reckless personality involved him in a series of escapades. Though his poetry and satires were much admired and he became a leading literary figure, he gradually sank into illness and depression. On his deathbed he experienced a religious conversion and repented his lifelong excesses. |
Elizabeth Barry
(1658-1713) was brought up by Sir William Davenant, a friend of the earl of Rochester. When she first met the young earl in 1675 she had just started her acting career. To win a bet, Rochester undertook her training for the stage and promoted her in fashionable society, in return for which she became his mistress from 1675 to 1677. Her first success was as Leonora in Aphra Behn's Abdelazar (July 1676), after which she played a number of leading roles including Hellena in Aphra Behn's The Rover, Emillia in D'Urfey's A Fond Husband, and Philisides in The Constant Nymph. In December 1677 she bore Rochester a daughter, Elizabeth Clarke, whom he took out of her care, possibly in the summer of 1678, and who died when she was 12 or 13 years old. Elizabeth Barry went on to have a prolonged and brilliant career, establishing her reputation as England's leading actress in her performance of Monimia in Otway's The Orphan. She died at age 55. |
