Lacy+Ryan

= = = = =Biography = Lacy Ryan is most commonly believed to have been born in Westminster 1694, the son of a tailor: though different dates for his birth have been given in other accounts (Biographical Dictionary). He was groomed by his father for a career in law, but quickly jettisoned that for acting at the age of 16 (Batty). In 1713, he originated the role of Marcus—the impulsive, emotional son of the stoic title character in Joseph Addison’s Cato. The role gained him a great deal of recognition, and he quickly became a well billed actor for the next thirty years of his life (Batty). His life was significantly altered by no less than three violent altercations with other men (Biographical Dictionary). As a result of these, his “naturally handsome features” became distorted throughout his life, as well as the voice with which he performed. He died in 1760 (Batty). Little is known about his family besides his marriage in 1719 to a grocer’s daughter and their one of their sons, Anthony Ryan, had a brief acting career before his own death in 1740.

=As a performer = Ryan’s first recorded role was that of Rosencrantz in Hamlet in 1710, although he is known to have been seen playing Seyton in Macbeth at an earlier date. If there is a common theme in the roles that he played, it would be “high class—powerful men.” He played both comic and tragic roles, with the tragic roles being slightly more common. Mark Batty describes Ryan’s reputation as “villains and lovers in tragedy and fine gentlemen in comedy” (Batty). As the various injuries he had accrued throughout his life (particularly one to his jaw) began to take their toll, Ryan’s voice changed into a “ drawling, croaking accent” (Batty), “‘tho’ not disaggreeable” (Biographical Dictionary). This suggests that Ryan was able to somehow adapt his performances to compensate for his physical deformities, which would require an acute awareness of how audiences had responded to him in the first place.

David Garrick described him as “a man whose temper was remarkably mild and inoffensive, but at the same time, brave and intrepid” (Examiner 256). Of the the three incidences of violence in Ryan’s life, none were instigated by the man himself. All were unrelated attempts on his life for his wealth or property. One of these ended with Ryan slaying his attacker in self defense, and another involved his attacker putting a pistol loaded only with gunpowder into his mouth and firing, shattering his jawbone and permanently damaging his face and voice (Biographical Dictionary). However the first notable injury Ryan suffered was during his original run as Marcus in Cato in 1713, when he was punched in the nose on the Thames waterfront by a gang of watermen (Biographical Dictionary), which also affected the tone of his voice. This instance was significant, as that night, during the performance, when Ryan’s body was brought out after Marcus’s offstage death, his nose reportedly started to bleed again and was described to have “gush’d out with Violence” (Biographical Dictionary).
 * Public persona **

Ryan seems to have been well liked in the London theatrical scene. On the occasion of a benefit he was to receive on March 20th, 1735, shortly after the incident that had damaged his jaw, he wrote the editor of the London Daily Post, saying it was “uncertain” (Biographical Dictionary) he would ever return to the stage, and apologizing for not being able to appear or perform at his own benefit. The benefit was a huge success, with the Prince of Wales reportedly donating 10 guineas to the actor, who later thanked everyone involved and decided to return to performing after all (Biographical Dictionary).

Ryan is briefly discussed in Memoirs of the life of David Garrick, where he is described as having been surprisingly competent as a young man, being chosen as a replacement for a more experienced actor playing Seyton in Macbeth, and reportedly receiving a commendation from the actor playing the title character before he would go on to chide their director for hiring a sixteen year old (Davies 21). Garrick’s account includes a mention of Ryan’s role originating Marcus in Cato:
 * Ryan’s performances **

//“The first dawn of his good fortune was the distinction paid him by Mr. Addison, who selected him from the tribe of young actors, to play the role of Marcus in Cato. The author and his friend Steel invited him to a tavern some time before the play was acted, and instructed him in his part.” //(Davies 21)

The secondhand nature of this anecdote makes it hard to know what Addison saw in Ryan. Garrick continues on to describe him as “very useful, playing a great variety of roles,” and that he “acted from his remembrance of Powell (sic), was spirited and impassioned throughout” (Davies 22). Ryan had acted beside George Powel in Cato, with the latter playing Portius, Marcus’ brother. Of Ryan’s body, Garrick recalls:

//“In his person, Ryan was something above the middle size; in his action and deportment, rather easy than graceful; he was often awkward in the management of his head, by raising his chin and stretching out his neck; his voice was very powerful, but harsh and dissonant.” // (Davies 22)

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">It is important to remember that Ryan’s appearance and sonic quality would have changed somewhat as he aged due to his numerous run-ins with the less desirable persons of London.

=<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Scholarly Discussions = <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">There is a noticeable lack of scholarly discussion centered around how Ryan played his roles, or how he influenced future portrayals of the character of Marcus. However, the details of his life show that it was this role that cemented his place in the London Theatre, and the few scholarly discussions that mention him in passing, as well as discussions of the play that mention Marcus may allow for some speculation over how the role would have been played in order to make it as successful as it was for the actor and the production.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">For one thing, Ryan’s ability to interact with his fellow actors seems to have been a major factor in his castings. In his article “Cowley's Revisions in ‘Cutter of Coleman Street,’” Robert Coltrane suggests that in a different play, the director was able to emphasise the relationship between two characters simply by exploiting the audience’s familiarity with the two actors in their previous work, saying, “we can assume the comic Cutter-Tabitha subplot was given more importance in this later production because Cutter was played by Lacy Ryan, often Quin's antagonist on stage. Ryan's Hamlet and Macduff had opposed Quin's Claudius and Macbeth, for example” (Coltrane 72). Ryan’s pairing with George Powel, the significantly older man who played Portius in the original production of Cato (Biographical Dictionary), would have helped him accentuate Marcus’s passion and emotional immaturity.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Additionally, Ryan’s onstage nosebleed incident may have worked in his favor, as far as future scholarly research has to suggest. In “The Meaning of Addison’s Cato,” M.M. Kelasall posits that the body of Marcus is a symbol for something being lost, saying that “the 'bloody coarse' of Marcus, fresh with the wounds of battle, no longer represents the body of Cato's son, but rather the body politic of departing Rome” (Kelsall 158). Though unintentional, the sight of real blood spouting from Ryan’s nose certainly evoked the spirit of Cato and company as the only, fleeting (or spilling) life left in the ideal of a Roman Republic.

=<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">How he may have acted = <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Ryan seems to have made up for what he lacked in grace or poise (and later in life, physical aesthetic presentation) with power and enthusiasm. These characteristics may have been exactly what Addison sought in the first incarnation of Marcus: a very young man whose sheer passion exceeded his ability to contain it. Garrick suggested that Ryan’s voice had always been loud and unsettling and had only been harshened by the traumas its owner suffered (Davies 23), so Addison may have wanted someone who could express the intense, powerful emotions of Marcus, but with just enough distortion in the externalization of those to imply an immaturity that ultimately leads to Marcus’s undoing in the play. The awkward physicality Garrick mentions Ryan having could’ve also contributed to this, since Marcus’s blind rage in battle was enough for him to kill Syphax, but it failed to save him from the blade of another, unseen sword.

=<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Works Cited = <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Batty, Mark. “Ryan, Lacy.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24386. Accessed 11 April 2018.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Coltrane, Robert. “Cowley's Revisions in "Cutter of Coleman Street." Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, Vol. 13, No. 2. Fall 1989, pp. 68-75. University of Tennessee Press.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Davies, Thomas. Memoirs of the life of David Garrick, vol. 1. London, 1780.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Kelsall, M.M.”The Meaning of Addison's Cato.” The Review of English Studies, Vol. 17, No. 66. May, 1966, pp. 149-162. Oxford University Press.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">“Powel, George.” Eighteenth Century Drama: Biographical Dictionary. http://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/BiographicalDictionary. Accessed 12 April 2018.

<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ryan, Lacy.” Eighteenth Century Drama: Biographical Dictionary. <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/BiographicalDictionary#. Accessed 11 April 2018