Rutland Barrington (15 January 1853 – 31 May 1922) was an English singer, actor, comedian, Edwardian musical comedy star and playwright. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades. He also wrote at least a dozen works for the stage.Walters, p. 21, fn. 25
After two years with a comic touring company, Barrington joined Richard D'Oyly Carte's opera company in 1877 and, over the next two decades, created a number of memorable comic opera roles, including Captain Corcoran in H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance (1880), and Pooh Bah in The Mikado (1885), among many others in the Savoy operas. Failing in an 1888 attempt to become a theatrical manager, Barrington refocused his energies on acting and writing plays.
Beginning in 1896 and continuing for ten years, Barrington played in a series of very successful musical comedies under the management of George Edwardes at Daly's Theatre, specialising in comic portrayals of pompous rulers or other persons of authority. One of the most popular features of his performances was his insertion of topical songs, or verses of songs, into these musical comedies. After leaving Daly's he continued to appear in musical comedy roles and performed in music hall. He also essayed a few Shakespeare and other dramatic roles and appeared in a few silent films. His career ended in 1918, after which he suffered a stroke and lived the last few years of his life in poverty.
Life and career Barrington was born George Rutland Fleet at Penge, England, the fourth son of John George Fleet (1818–1902), a wholesale dealer in London importing goods from the colonies.The Times, 2 June 1922, p. 16"John G. Fleet", 1861 London Census, England and Wales, Parish of Battersea, p. 10 His mother was the former Esther Faithfull (1823–1908) of Headley, Surrey, England.Parker, J. "Barrington, Rutland (1853–1922)", rev. Nilanjana Banerji, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006, accessed 22 September 2008, He was educated at Headley rectory and then at the Merchant Taylors' School in London.Ayre, p. 48 His six brothers included the Indologist John Faithfull Fleet (1847–1917), Vice-Admiral Henry Louis Fleet (1850–1923),FreeBMD Birth Index 1837–1915, Vol. 3, p. 252; England & Wales National Calendar (Index of Wills & Administration) 1861–1941Vice-Admiral Fleet wrote a memoir called My Life, and a Few Yarns (1922) The Reverend Ferdinand Francis Fleet (1857–1940)FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837–1915, Vol. 2a, p. 139; England & Wales National Calendar (Index of Wills & Administration) 1861–1941 and actor Duncan James Fleet (1860–1909).FreeBDM, Death Index 1837–1915, Vol. 2a, p. 175 He also had two sisters, one named Esther (one boy and one girl died in infancy). Barrington was employed in a bank for eighteen months as a young man, but had no enthusiasm for such work, as he had ambitions to be an actor. Barrington's father did not want his son to go on the stage and forbade him to do so until he came of age.Barrington (1908), p. 32 His aunt, the activist and dramatic reader Emily Faithfull, helped him to make his first connections in the theatre.Barrington (1908), p. 15 Barrington was a keen football player in the mid-1870sSee, e.g., Morning Post for 1 February 1873, 10 November 1873 and 30 October 1874. He discusses this in several places in his 1908 memoir. and played for the original Crystal Palace FC.
In 1880, Barrington married Ellen Louisa "Louie" Jane Stainer (1851–1922), from Woolwich in Kent, the daughter of William Stainer and the former Lucy Mary Wheeler. Barrington and his wife had no children.See London GRO marriage register in Q4 1880. In the 1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses, the couple are named as living together in London with no children. In the 1911 census, they are not listed as living together, and there is a notation that the marriage lasted for 36 years. They were living together again later, however, and spent their last years together; Mrs. Barrington was an alcoholic and died of cirrhosis of the liver in October 1922.Daniels, Vincent. "Rutland Barrington, the last years", Gilbert and Sullivan News, Vol. V, No. 7, Spring 2015, London: The Gilbert and Sullivan Society, pp. 11–14The Times, 7 June 1922, p. 9
Early career; joining D'Oyly Carte's company
Barrington adopted his stage name by 1874"Rutland Barrington in The Two Orphans: Olympic Theatre", The Era, 4 October 1874 and made his professional debut with Henry Neville's company at the Olympic Theatre that year, playing the role of Sir George Barclay in Tom Taylor's Lady Clancarty, and then in The Ticket-of-Leave Man (by Taylor) and as LaFleur in The Two Orphans, among others. In July 1875, Barrington was playing Jules Frantz in Lessons in Harmony at St. George's Hall, London. A review in The Era reviewed the young actor's performance: "A good figure and expressive face were known to be among his advantages, but it was, perhaps, not suspected that he was a capital vocalist, a skilled musician, and an actor of remarkable ease and animation."The Era, 4 July 1875 Later that year, he was hired to appear in the touring company of Mr and Mrs Howard Paul.Mrs Paul left her husband (Howard Paul, 1830–1905) around 1877, as he was having an affair with the actress-dancer Letty Lind, with whom he sired two illegitimate children. However, she continued performing under this name, often humorously impersonating the famous tenor Sims Reeves. See Barrington (1908), p. 21 The company played a hectic schedule of entertainments.Barrington (1908), pp. 21–22
In 1877 the producer Richard D'Oyly Carte approached Mrs Paul to play the part of Lady Sangazure in the new Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Sorcerer, which he was presenting. She accepted, provided her 24-year-old protégé, Barrington, was given a part, and he was cast in the role of Dr Daly, the vicar.Stone, David. "Rutland Barrington", Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 27 July 2002, accessed 1 January 2018 When he auditioned before W. S. Gilbert, the young actor questioned his own suitability for comic opera, but Gilbert, who required that his actors play their sometimes-absurd lines in all earnestness, explained the casting choice: "He's a staid, solid swine, and that's what I want."
In his 1908 autobiography, Barrington repeats a line from a first night review of his performance as Dr Daly in The Sorcerer: "Mr Barrington is wonderful. He always manages to sing one-sixteenth of a tone flat; it's so like a vicar."Barrington (1908), p. 30 Barrington went on to say that producer Richard D'Oyly Carte later asked him, "[W]hat's the matter? ... some one has just come out of the stalls to tell me you are singing in tune. It will never do." Barrington wrote that "This pleased me so much that I have never sung flat since, except, of course, when I wished".Barrington (1908), p. 31 Several contemporaries did find Barrington's singing occasionally flat, including Francois Cellier.Cellier and Bridgeman, p. 158 Many years later, in her memoir, Ellaline Terriss wrote: "[D]ear old Rutland scarcely ever did sing in tune – but how grand he was. ... He had a beautifully clear diction and a marvellous sense of timing – and was one of the finest singers of the then popular topical songs that our stage ever knew."Excerpt from Terris, Ellaline. "Curtain Up at the Gaiety" in Just a Little Bit of String, pp. 113–15 (1955) Hutchinson & Co., London , accessed 9 March 2008 Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald wrote of Barrington in his 1899 book, The Savoy Opera, "His peculiar tranquil or impassive style has always exactly suited the characters allotted to him, and it would now be difficult to imagine a Savoy opera without him.Fitzgerald, Percy Hetherington. The Savoy Opera (1899) Chatto & Windus, p. 38, accessed 9 March 2008 However, Barrington's performance as Dr Daly impressed the critics and audiences, and he won a permanent place in D'Oyly Carte's company.Walters, p. 16
Pinafore to Ruddigore
From 1877 to 1896, except for a foray into the business of theatrical management in 1888–89, Barrington remained with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, creating comic lyric baritone roles in all of Gilbert and Sullivan's new operas with the exception of The Yeomen of the Guard (1888). In 1878, he created the role of Lord Chamberlain in Albery and Cellier's curtain raiser, The Spectre Knight, played the Counsel for the Plaintiff in the revival of Trial by Jury,Rollins and Witts, p. 5 and created the role of Captain Corcoran in Gilbert and Sullivan's first smash hit, H.M.S. Pinafore. Barrington was a big man, which led to one of Gilbert's famous quips in a rehearsal for Pinafore. Gilbert asked Barrington to sit "pensively" on one of the ship's skylights. Barrington lowered himself into position, and the hastily sewn set piece collapsed under his weight. Gilbert remarked, "No, that's ex-pensively."
Barrington also created the role of Pennyfather in Desprez and Cellier's curtain raiser, After All! (1878).After All!, The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (2007) Barrington played Mr. Cox in Carte's revival of Cox and Box (1879) and created the role of the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance in London (1880). Barrington was proud that the Sergeant's song generally received two encores. Eventually, he asked Gilbert to write an "encore verse" for the song. Gilbert replied that "encore" means "sing it again."Barrington (1908), p. 39 Also around this time, Barrington's short play entitled Quid Pro Quo, written with Cunningham Bridgeman and composed by Wilfred Bendall, was first produced.Described as "a vaudeville", Quid Pro Quo played at the Dilettantes Circle, a private club, in March 1881 with Barrington and fellow Savoyard Emily Cross playing the two roles. See The Theatre, April 1881 and Clarence, Reginald, The Stage Cyclopaedia – a bibliography of plays, p. 374 (Burt, Franklin New York, 1909; 1970 reprint). The piece played at the Opera Comique under the management of John Hollingshead from October to December 1881 as a forepiece to Gilbert and Clay's opera, Princess Toto, and then in March 1882 as a forepiece to The Mother-in-law, in both cases starring Emily Cross again as Lady Ethel, and George Temple as Lord Arthur. See Kurt Gänzl's The British Musical Theatre, vol. l 1865–1914, p. 191 (Macmillan Press, 1986). It was revived, with revisions, at St George's Hall in 1886 (Clarence, p. 374) and again in 1889 (The Musical Times, 1 August 1889, p. 486).Barrington, Rutland. Script of Quid Pro Quo at Amazon, accessed 9 March 2008
The next role that Barrington created was Archibald Grosvenor in Patience (1881). Casting the large Barrington as the "perfect" and "infallible" incarnation of manly beauty mirrored a joke in Gilbert's earlier A Sensation Novel, in which he cast the large, ungainly Corney Grain, in a similar role. This was followed by the role of Earl Mountararat in Iolanthe (1882; he also appeared in Margate, Kent in an 1882 Christmas pantomime of Robin Hood written by George Thorne), and King Hildebrand in Princess Ida (1884). This role was Barrington's least favourite of the series, and he attributed Ida'''s relatively short run, at least in part, to the lack of prominence of this role in the opera.Barrington (1908), p. 54 During the run of Princess Ida, a comedy written by Barrington and called Bartonmere Towers was first presented at a matinee.