/ • 1/ J'/ / ,- 'r / / L(y[:'J /i A (;/ ~lfuthionio ^^ci^ui/uj/ COWARD BAKKR, U.V 1.1J""N IliiUiUl .'illir.P:!, lllii.\llN(.IIAM, liNl.l.ANll. BYi y 2 7 -?^ EMINENT ACTORS EDITED BY WIILIAM ARCHER WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY WILLIAM CHARLES iM ACREADY BY WILLIAM ARCHER (0 .» o '» ■* .* • • • • « > • OJ J 3 J « o o - ' * "" !; • = »« ^** '•'-' *-^ '> - ' J ^^^ - Bq * O « « V ' LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRU15NER & CO., Lt' 1890 « « ^ *■ t- K ^ ' {The rights 0/ hnfts/aiion and of rcfreHudiofi are resefied.) <^^^%s iu-gravcd JyEXAGE from an. oTi^Tiallaip ti ■ AS S ''y ' ' S PREFACE. The chief authority for a Life of Macready is, of course, his J^ef/iinisct'nccs, Diaries, and Letters, edited by Sir Frederick Pollock. His Reminiscences, unfortunately, ^come to an abrupt end at the close of the year 1826. N Up to that point, my main task has been to check his ^ statements (which I find surprisingly accurate, even where he had only childish memories to draw upon), and tcj supplement them by extracts from contemporary docu- ments. From 1826 onwards — that is to say, during the last twenty-five years of Macready 's life as an actor — the yZ>iary affords only fragmentary information. It is valuable ^ rather as an expression of character than as a record \) of events. In the following pages, then, the story of '^j Macready's whole career is told for the first time, with, I hope, reasonable fulness and accuracy. My guiding principle has been to avoid vague and second-hand statements, and, as far as possible, to give precise information founded on first-hand evidence. For instance, 1 have examined every London play-bill on 38S814 vi PREFACE. which Macready's name appears, except those belonging to one or two seasons at the very close of his career, which are absent from the British Museum collection. His performances during these years are fully recorded in the newspapers, to which I have also referred for details as to his rare visits to suburban theatres. I have naturally given special attention to his four seasons of management. They form, as it were, the central point in the stage-history of this century; in them the traditions of the " palmy days " and the tendencies of our own time met, and clashed. Therefore I have tried to write their annals at large, in the spirit of the painstaking Genest. In the course of my inquiries I have incurred many obligations. With a generosity not always characteristic of collectors, Mr. E. Y. Lowne, a warm admirer and personal friend of Macready, gave me free access to his vast store of Macreadiana, now in the possession of Mr. Henry Irving. Mr. Lowne's unwearying kindness at once lightened my labour and placed within my reach much interesting material not otherwise accessible. My thanks are also due to the late Mr. Robert Browning, for some very valuable notes as to his relations with Macready ; to Mr. George Scharf, F.S. A., Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and Mr. Henry Howe of the Lyceum Theatre, who have favoured me with interesting personal reminiscences ; to Mr. Joseph N. Ireland, the learned historian of the New York stage ; to Mr. Samuel Timmins, and the officials of the Birmingliam Public Library ; to Mr. F. W. Dendy of Newcastle, and Mr. W. E. Adams, editor of the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle ; to PREFACE vii Mr. James Mucready Chute, of the Prince's Theatre, Bristol ; to the editor of the Bath Chronicle ; to Mr. J. Evans of Manchester, and Mr. E. R. Dibdin of Liverpool, who were good enough to make some researches on my behalf into the early history of Macready's parents ; to Mr. Sketchley of the Dyce and Forster Libraries ; and last, not least, to the ever-obliging ofificials of the British Museum Library. WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD. 1793-1808. When Charles Macklin paid his last visit to Dublin, in 1785, Daly, the manager of the Smock Alley Theatre, was to have played Egerton to his Sir Pertinax McSyco- phant. He took offence, however, at the veteran's overbearing manner of directing the rehearsals, and recalled a young actor from Waterford to take his place. The actor's name was William Macready. He was the son of a well-to-do Dublin upholsterer, who afterwards became " Father of the Commons " (a municipal dignity, I take it), and, dying, left ;j{^2o,ooo to be frittered away in a Chancery suit. Before taking to the stage, young Macready is said to have served an apprentice- ship to his father's craft. He now held a respectable position in the Smock Alley company, and "had figured in many first-rate parts" in the Irish provinces. In selecting him for Egerton, Daly may have had the intention of pitting Turk against Turk, for Macready's 2 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. temper was of the hottest. The experiment, in any case, succeeded, for Macklin was much pleased with his Egerton. In a letter, preserved in the British Museum, he writes to Macready at Waterford (August 1.8, 1785)- "Dear Sir, " I am obliged to you for your civility, by your journey to Dublin, and your kind attention. . . . Mr. Mat- tocks, of the Liverpool company, desired me to learn whether there was any young man that would play Gentlemen Fops and Tragedy for his company at Liverpool and Manchester — were there such to be had, I think it might be a step towards his being introduced to Covent Garden Theatre. I play four nights at Liverpool, and such a person might travel with me thither." The old man (he was at least eighty-six) evidently had Macready himself in his eye, desiring, perhaps, to secure an attentive travelling-companion. In this he seems to have succeeded. Macready did not appear along with him in Liverpool, where his performances took place between the 7th and the 17th of October; but in the following month we find " Mr. M'Cready " a member of the Liverpool company. In the course of the winter he played in Liverpool such parts as Trueman in George Barnwell^ Altamont in The Fair Peniioit, Pjlades in The Distrest Mother, and Stephano in The Tetnpest. In Manchester, where Mattocks also reigned, he made the acquaintance of a Miss Christina Ann Birch, who played such parts as Goncril in Lear, the Queen in Hamlet, Mrs. Dangle in The Critic, and Lady Mcdway in Mrs. Sheridan's comedy The Discovery, at the Theatre Royal, Spring Gardens. How this young lady became an actress wc do not know. The traditions of her family went back to the Civil War, when her great-grandfather BOYHOOD. ^ 3 is said to have been disinherited for espousing the Cavalier cause. Her grandfather, Jonathan Birch, was Vicar of Bakewell, in Derbyshire; two of her paternal uncles were clergymen ; her father was a surgeon ; her mother was a daughter of Edward Frye, Governor of Montserrat; so that all her antecedents were at least "genteel." Her birthp'ace was Repton, near Derby, where her father died, overwhelmed by pecuniary disaster, before she was three years old. She was now in her twenty-first year, and an attachment soon sprang up between her and Macready, who was ten years her senior. We find them taking a joint benefit on April 7, 1786, Macready playing Bob Acres, and Miss Birch Julia, in The Rivals. At the close of the season they were married, the ceremony taking place at the Collegiate Church, Manchester, on Sunday, June 18, 1786. Macklin was as .good as his word in procuring Macready a London engagement. On September 18, 1786, just three months after his marriage, he made his first appearance at Covent Garden, as Flutter in The Belle's SfrafaQ-ei/i. For ten consecutive seasons he remained a useful, but not a brilliant member of Harris's company. A list of his chief Shakespearian parts will show the estimation in which he was held. I'hey were Gratiano (to Macklin's Shylock), Paris (to Holman's Romeo), Fenton, Borachio, Malcolm, Cassio, Le Beau (or, as it was then spelt and pronounced, " I-e Beu"), Edmund, Antonio [Merchant of Ve?iice), Poins, Page, and others of even less importance. He made no advance in status or authority. Edmund, indeed, is a good part ; but as we find him cast for Guildenstern in the same season, we can only conclude that he was regarded as an actor-of-all-work. Among his non-Shake- spearian parts were Young Marlow, Figaro, Fag in The 4 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. Rivals, and Tattle in Love for Love. He also tried his hand at authorship, producing, in 1792, a farce named The Lrishman in London, and in 1795 a comedy named The Batik-Note, — both mere adaptations of older plays. At the close of the season 1796-97 he quarrelled with the management over a question of salary, and resigned his position. He left behind him a reputation summed up in the following couplet : — " Tho' than Macready there are many better, Who, pray, like him, so perfect to a letter ? " In other words, painstaking, but mediocre. His wife, so far as I can ascertain, did not appear on the London stage. Three children were born to them, who died in infancy ; then a daughter who lived to reach her seventh year, and dwelt in the memory of her younger brother as an "angelic influence," intervening "between his infant will and the evil it purposed." The child whose precocious depravity she thus restrained was William Charles Macready, born on Sunday, March 3, 1793, in Mary Street (now part of Stanhope Street), Euston Road, As this is Macready's own state- ment, apparently on the authority of an entry in his mother's Prayer-book, it may be taken as conclusive. He was baptized at St. Pancras Parish Church, January 21 1796, the date of his birth being given in the register as 1792 ; but this he explicitly declares to be a mistake. London remained his parents' head-quarters long enough for the boy to be sent to a preparatory school in Ken- sington, but he cannot have been more than six wlicn the scene of his life changed to Birmingham. Two years before his secession from Covent Garden, the elder Macready had become a provincial manager. Here is his first manifesto - BO YHOOD. 5 "Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, June ii, 1795. "Mr. M'CREADV, with profound Respect, begs Leave to acquaint the Ladies and Gentlemen of Birmingham and its Vicinage that ... he purposes opening the spacious THEATRE erected [after an incendiary fire] in New Street, on Monday, the 22nd inst., with A PLAY AND ENTERTAINMENTS . . . Mr. M'Cready respectfully pledges himself to have a succession of the most capital Performers on the London Stage during the Summer ; — for he will only presume to solicit encouragement from the Public so long as his Exer- tions shall prove that it is his greatest Ambition to merit their Favour and Protection." The name of Mrs. M'Cready appears in a subordinate place among the company. If not a great actress, she was certainly versatile. In the course of seven seasons, besides playing pretty constantly in farce, she supported almost all the "capital Performers" whom her husband, in pursuance of his promise, brought to Birmingham. She played Char- lotte in The Gamester, to Mrs. Siddons's Mrs. Beverley, Celia to her Rosalind, Andromache to her Hermione, Elizabeth to her Mary Queen of Scots. She played Blanche to Elliston's Sir Edward Mortimer, and Countess Wintersen to Kemble's Stranger. Among her other parts were the Queen in Hamlet^ the Countess Almaviva, Evelina (the Spectre) in The Castle Spectre^ Betty in The Clandestine Marriage^ and Lucy in The Rivals. She never, even for her benefit, attempted a leading part, and whenever the company included another actress who was competent to undertake " seconds," the man- ager's wife at once resigned in her favour. From this, and from the absolute silence of all records as to the merit of her performances, I conclude that she was a "utility" actress in the strict sense of the word. Her son does not mention that she was on the stage at all. 6 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. The Birmingham season lasted from June to Sep- tember, In the winter of 1797, after his quarrel with the Covent Garden management, Macready made an attempt to run the Royalty Theatre, in Well Street, Wellclose Square, Whitechapel, as a sort of music-hall. Faihng in this, he shook the mud of London off his feet, and devoted himself to his Midland circuit, which he extended, in the winter months, so as to include Sheffield and other northern towns. In all probability, then, it was early in 1798 that William Charles was taken from his Kensington school and handed over to an irascible pedagogue named Edgell, in St. Paul's Square, Birming- ham. Here he distinguished himself chiefly in recitation, learning by heart long extracts from Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Young, "which," he says, "have been of some service to me in accustoming my ear to the enjoyment of the melody of rhythm." His mother had great diffi- culty in teaching him to use, without abusing, the letter //. "The line, "Appy, 'appy, 'appy pair !' was for some time an insuperable obstacle to progress." In the holi- days he hung about his father's theatre, observing and remembering much. He was awed by Mrs. Siddons, who visited Birmingham almost every year ; he saw King, the original Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, dressed for the latter part ; and Gentleman Lewas, the great Mercutio, left his face engraven on the boy's me- mory. He remembered, too, the appearance, in 1802, of the beautiful I\Irs. Billington. The same season left another vision still more deeply impressed on his mind. During the Peace of Amiens, the Hero of the Nile made a triumphal tour of the provinces. On August 30, 1802, he reached Birmingham, and went to the theatre in the evening, where one Blisset, an actor of provincial fame, was playing Falstaff in The Merry Wives. 'Hie per- BOYHOOD. 7 foimance must have pleased him, for the next day's play- bill announced, " By desire of the Right Honourable Lord Nelson, King Henry IV. ; or, The Humours of Sir John Falstaff." The theatre was crowded with hero- worshippers, and Macready records their frantic enthu- siasm. An improvised act of homage to the popular idol included the singing of a song with this refrain — " We'll shake hands and be friends ; if they won't, why, , what then ? We'll send our brave Nelson to thrash 'cm again ! " which I.ady Hamilton applauded with uplifted hands, kicking with her heels against the foot-board of her seat. It is wholesome to be reminded that the heroes of the glorious past did not escape, and perhaps did not altogether disdain, the homage of the music-hall lyrist. Under the heading of " Midsummer, 1803," the register of new pupils at Rugby School contains the following entry : — ■ " Macready, William Charles, son of Mr. W. Macready, Master of the Birmingham, Leicester, and Stafford Theatres, &c., aged 10. March 3." He boarded with his mother's cousin, William Birch, one of the masters of the school, who treated him with great kindness, and did much to alleviate the trials which, at a public school of that period, must have beset a boy of his temperament. Oddly enough, his schoolfellows do not seem to have bantered him about his father's calling. Had they done so, Macready would have taken care to record the fact. On the contrary, as his school career advanced, he acquired popularity by reason of his father's readiness to lend dresses and properties for the boys' theatricals. His own abilities as an actor and reciter procured him some consideration. He began by 8 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. playing small female characters, but rose eventually to such parts as Zanga in The Revenge. A programme of the Rugby speech-day of 1808 has been preserved, with comments on each recitation by one of the audience. His remarks run the whole gamut of blame and praise, from "Horrible," up to "Surprisingly well indeed" — the last being reserved for the so-called "Closet-Scene" from Hamlet., with Skeeles as the Queen, and Macready major as the Prince of Denmark. (His younger brother, ^^d- ward, had' joined him at Rugby in the previous year.) The Latin prize poem on this occasion was S/iaksJ>earus, by Robinson major (afterwards Master of the Temple), who was Macready's only rival in recitation. It is clear that there was a marked theatrical bias in the Rugby mind. Macready, indeed, declared to Dr. Inglis that he "very much disliked the thought" of the stage, and approved of his father's design of sending him to the bar. But when, speaking of his last recitation at Rugby, he notes what " inward elation he felt in marking, as he rose slowly up, the deep and instant hush that went through the whole assembly," we cannot but recognize the young war-horse scenting the battle afar off. His first home-coming from Rugby was a sad one. He arrived in Sheffield to find that his mother, whom he deeply loved, had died the day before. Her health had been failing for some years. In the season of 1802 she does not seem to have acted at all, though a benefit was given her, at which she spoke an address, louring the following season Mrs. Macready's name is again absent from the bills, and on December 12, 1803, Avis' s Bir- mingliam Gazette contains the following announcement in its list of deaths : — "Saturday sc'nnight [Dec. 3], at Shcflield, aged 38, Mrs. M'Cready, wife of ilic wuriliy manager of our theatre, after no YHOOD. 9 a severe and lingering illness, which she bore wiili ilie most Christian fortitude and resignation, leaving a disconsolate husband and four young children, as well as all who knew her and her exemplary character, to bewail the loss of so amiable and so good a woman." She seems, from the little we know of her, to have been not only an amiable, but a brave and wise woman, and the loss of her counsel probably paved the way for her husband's subsequent misfortunes. Her memory was an abiding influence for good in the life of her son. The elder Macready's day of disaster was distant as yet. The next season, indeed, witnessed his chief managerial triumph, which was thus heralded — " The Ladies and Gentlemen of Birmingham and its Vicinity are respectfully informed that the celebrated YOUNG R O S CI U S, Who has performed with such astonishing Excellence, Attraction, and Applause, at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, ath NOVITIATE. 27 oi Northanger Abbey. Catherine Morland, an assiduous theatre-goer, must certainly have seen Macready. If he was playing on the evening of her tiff with the Tilneys, he probably found her a sadly preoccupied spectator. His first appearance took place on December 29, 1814, when he played Romeo. " The manager paid him the compliment," says Genest, who was no doubt present, "of new-casting Romeo and Juliet to the best advantage, and ensured him a good house by bringing out Aladdin on the same night." There is, perhaps, a touch of malice in Genest's curt comment, '^Aladdin was very success- ful ; " for the clerical critic thought little of Macready. His Romeo, however, was applauded by the public and praised by the press. The Earl of Essex was his next character, and he subsequently appeared as Hamlet, Orestes, Hotspur, Richard H., Beverley, Luke in Riches, and other characters. Genest preferred Macready's arrangement of Richard II. to Wroughton's adaptation, in which Kean appeared at Drury Lane some six weeks later ; but he notes that it was acted only twice, to bad houses. Macready's engagement came to an end on February 18, 1815, but Dimond retained him for the following season, at an increased salary. The news of his success soon reached London, and led to a correspondence with Harris of Covent Garden, which would probably have ended in a three-years' engagement, but for a blundering interference on the part of the elder Macready. During a short visit to town on business connected with this negotiation, Macready saw Kean for the first time since his rise to eminence, and was much impressed by his Richard \1\. He also met him at supper, and records " his unassum- ing manner . . , partaking in some degree of shyness," the " touching grace " of his singing, and the extraordi- 28 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. nary humour of his mimicry. He saw Miss O'Neill, too, in Juliet, and wrote of her in after-years, when he had himself been her Romeo, " Through my whole experi- ence hers was the only representation of Juliet I have seen. . . . 'She is alone the Arabian bird.'" Some time afterwards, a negotiation with the Drury Lane committee likewise fell through, on the question of terms. The Rev. J. Noel, a relation of Lady Byron's, had been commissioned by Macready's Rugby friends to plead his cause with Lord Byron, then the leading spirit of the Drury Lane management. After descanting for some time on the young actor's merits, his clerical advocate wound up, with ingenious infelicity, " And be- sides all this, Mr. Macready is a very moral man." " Ha ! then," replied Byron, " I suppose he asks five pounds a week more for his morality ! " In the early spring of 1815 he played a short engage- ment in Glasgow, rendered memorable to him by his first meeting with his wife, then " a pretty little girl, about nine years of age." She played one of Rosalvi's children to his Felix in The Hunter of the Alps, and he scolded her for being imperfect in her part. In April he made his first appearance in Dublin, being engaged, on the strength of his Bath reputation, at the large salary of ^50 a week. Then came a round of short engagements in England and Scotland, in the course of which (at Newcastle) he added Henry V. to his list of parts, with no great success.. The winter season found him once more at Bath. Gencst notes his reappearance as follows : " Dec. 9. Much Ado. Benedick = W. Macready — very bad." His Benedick, however, gained him the friendship of the Twiss family (Mrs. Twiss was a younger sister of Mrs. Siddons), through whom he obtained an introduc- tion to the best circles in Bath. It was his first ex- NOVITIATE. 29 perience of •' society," in tlie narrower sense of the word. He seems to have entered into it with zest, and with less false sensitiveness than lie sometimes displayed in later life. Among many local notabilities, he encountered one lady of a wider fame — that " lively little lioness," as he calls her, Mrs. Piozzi, her hair still black, and her cheek still (artificially) red, at the age of seventy-five. His principal new parts during tliis season were Mentevolc in Jephson's Italian Lover (which added greatly to his reputation), and Kitely in Every Man in his Hiinwur. For his benefit he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale., and then, towards the end of February, 1 816, set forth to fulfil a thirteen-weeks' engagement in i )ublin. For so long a visit he could not expect the high salary of the previous year, but contented himself with_;;^2o a week. The only part of any importance which he added to his repertory was Lord Townly in The Provoked Htisband. He found the Dublin audience apt to be unruly, but keenly sensitive and warmly sympathetic when once their attention was seized. He played Pierre on one occasion, to the Jaffier of a portly and drawling local actor, who dragged out his dying speech unconscionably. At last, unable to endure it any longer, one of the gods called out loudly, " Ah, now ! die at once ! " to which another immediately re- plied, " Be quiet, ye blackguard !" then, turning to the lingering Jafiier, added encouragingly, " Take your time ! " Meanwhile negotiations had been renewed with Harris of Covent Garden, Macready's friend Fawcett, the stage manager, acting as intermediary. A five-years' engage- ment was the result, at a salary of ^16 a week for the first two seasons, 17 for the second two, and ^18 for the last season of the term. Macready's demand for a veto 30 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. on characters he considered " derogatory " was fortunately not conceded— fortunately, because, if he had had the power, he would certainly have declined several parts which helped to establish his reputation. Starring engagements at Wexford and Galway, and an unprofes- sional tour in Wales, occupied the time between the close of his Dublin engagement and his first appearance in London, which was iixed for September i6, 1816. Macready"s Characters before his Appearance IN London. 1810-1816. [Here, as in subsequent lists, parts which Macready " created " are marked with an asterisk.] Romeo ; Lothair {Adelgif/ia) ; Young Norval ; Zanga ; George Barnwell ; Aclimet {Bafbarossa) ; Osmond {Castle Spectre) ; Rolla ; Alwin {Coioitess of Salisbury) ; Luke {City Madam) ; Hardyknute {IVood Demon) ; Karl of Essex ; Roderick Dhu ; John of Lome {Family Legend) ; Julian {Peasant Boy) ; Hamlet ; Duke Aranza ; Posthumus ; Orestes ; Frederick {Natural Son) ; Phocyas {Siege of Damascus) ; Charles IL (Royal Oak) ; Percy (in Hannah More's tragedy) ; Daran {Exile) ; Chamont ; Edward the Plack Prince ; Alexander the Great ; Fitzharding {Cutfeiu) ; Rover ; Beverley; Rolla {Virgin of t lie Sun); Hastings; Zaphna {Mahomet); Don Felix; Richard H. ; Dorax {Don Sebas- tian); Oroonoko ; Richard III; Antony {Antony and Cleopatra); Captain I'lume ; Tangent {Way to get Mar- ried); Lovemorc {Way to Keep Him); Doricourt ; Puff; ^'oung Marlow ; Antony (fulius Ctesar) ; Count Villars {Kdueation); ls\A^^\cv,\r\ {Aladdin) ; Frederic (Ar^T'tv/ Vo7i's) ; Rostopschin {Burning of Moscow) ; William Wyndham (Royal OalS) ; Edward IV. {Earl of JVarToie/c) ; Faulcon- bridgc ; Nourjaliad {Illusion) ; Aladdin ; Benedick ; *i\Iar- mion ; Gingham {T/ie Rage) ; Lackland {Eontainebleau) ; Beverley {All in the Wrong) ; P.clrour ; ^Bertram {Rokeby) ; NOVITIATE. 31 Pierre ; Colonel Briton ; Captain Absolute ; Wilford {lro)i Chest) ; Alonzo {Revenge) ; Vincent {Educaiioii) ; Stranger ; Othello ; Hotspur ; Gustavus {Hero of the No7'th) ; Cheveril {Deserted Daughter) ; Henry V. ; Leon {R^ile a Wife) ; Mcn- tevole {fielia) ; Kitely ; Leontes ; Lord Townly ; *f2d\vard Gregory {Changes ajid Chances) ; Octavian {Motnitaitieers) ; Bertram : eighty-two characters. Postscript.— Parts played in Newcastle in 1813, not mentioned in Reminiscences: Charles I. {Royal Martyr); *Oswald, the Noble Foundling (Dr, Trotter's tragedy, The Noble Foundling ; or, The Hermit of the Tzveed) ; Dori- court {Belle's Stratagem) ; Frederick {School of Reform). 32 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE ADV. CHAPTER III. FORGING AHEAD. 1S16-1823. Though Macready did not at first (or perhaps at last) recognize the fact, his arrival in London was certainly well-timed. The poetic drama, it is true, was entering upon a period of disruption and decline. Throughout his career, the state of the theatre was a perpetual source of torture to his artistic susceptibilities ; but for his personal fame and fortune the conditions were, on the whole, as favourable as could be desired. In 1816 the stage was rapidly clearing, as though in preparation for a new actor of the first magnitude. Mrs. Siddons had formally retired four years earlier ; John Philip Kemble was entering upon his farewell season ; Miss O'Neill's short and brilliant career had only three more years to run. It was now nearly three years since Edmund Kean had taken London by storm, and he was still at the height of his reputation. His talent and his fame alike may fairly be said to liave culminated in his terrible performance of Sir Giles Overreach, which took place in January, 18 16. He was only six years older than Macready, and was in every way a rival to be feared. But the brandy-bottle was already doing its work, and FORGING AHEAD. 33 though Kean's great name was a power iii the land even to the day of his death, seventeen years later, his genius was a mere wreck before Macready's had reached maturity. Charles Young, cold, stately, estimable, and Charles Kemble, the first-rate actor of second-rate parts, had neither the talent nor the force of character to prove serious obstacles in Macready's path. The unpre- possessing youth of three and twenty could scarcely hoi^e to conquer London at one blow, as Kean and Garrick before him had done. His gifts, as he very well knew, were not of this overwhelming order. But he had not unreasonably long to wait for a fair share of popularity, which gradually increased until he stood with- out a rival at the head of his profession. In what play was the new actor to make his first venture? Kean's parts were barred, the semi-mythical "Wolves" being leagued, it was thought, to fall upon and rend any pretender to their hero's laurels. This put the leading Shakespearian characters out of the question, as well as Massinger's Luke, whom Macready would himself have chosen. A timid policy finally pre- vailed, and Orestes in The Distnsi Mother was fixed upon. The play was a translation of Racine's An- droi/iague, by Ambrose Philips — the poet whose name, satirically corrupted, has given us the term " namby- pamby." It had not been revived for several years, so that Macready, who had acted Orestes with applause in the country, would not have to contend against the vivid recollection of any great predecessor. Charles Kemble would make an admirable Pyrrhus, but the importance of the female parts was a great drawback. Miss O'Neill had not yet returned to town ; Miss Foote and Miss " Sally " Booth were not to be thought of in such heavy characters. There remained Mrs. 34 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE ADV. Egerton, an excellent Meg Merrilies, who was cast for the haughty Hermione ; while Mrs. Glover, one of the first comic actresses of her time, W'as specially engaged to appear as the tearful Andromache. Abbott, a heavy walking-gentleman, played Pylades. The opening of The Disirest Mother is excessively trying for a nervous aspirant. Orestes has to dash upon the stage in high elation the moment the curtain rises, crying— " O Pylades ! what's life without a friend ? At sight of thee my gloomy soul cheers up ! " Macready clasped Abbott's hand convulsively, as, with hyacinthine curls flowing over his shoulders, an ample and most unclassical chlamys streaming behind him, and legs bare to three or four inches above the knee, he hurried to meet his fate, He had not a single personal friend among the audience, and the mere play-bill announcement of '• Mr. Macready, from the Theatre Royal, Dublin," can have aroused no special predispo- sition in his favour. He was cordially received, how- ever, and proceeded nervously with the scene. His first eighty lines or so were heard in silence. It is even stated that a dangerous tittering commenced on the first bench of the pit, which might have been fatal had it extended a little further. But at last the phrase — " O, ye gods ! Give me Hermione, or let me die ! " was greeted with "loud and long plaudits ;" and this applause, by restoring his self-possession, assured his success. The mad-scene at the close — considerably amplified in the I'^nglish version — brought down the house, though the critic of the News thought it " one continued, bustling, incoherent rave." It was not yet FORGING AHEAD. 35 the custom (at Covent Garden, at any rate; to call players before the curtain ; but tlie announcement that the play would be repeated on the following Friday and Monday was received with cheers. Edmund Kean, wlio was " conspicuous in a private box," applauded loudly ; and Harris delighted his new recruit by saying, "Well, my boy, you have done capitally; and if you could carry a play along with such a cast, I don't know what you cannot do." The critics were unanimous in condemning the selec- tion of the play, praising the new actor's power and passion, and declaring his face his misfortune. Hazlitt (in the Exa//ii/ier) moralized in the strain of the Great Marquis — " He cither fears his fate too much Or his desert is small That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all." Orestes he described as "an ambiguous character," in which, if great success was impossible, total failure was unlikely. At the same time, he "had not the slightest hesitation in saying that Mr. Macready was by far the best tragic actor that had come out in his remembrance, with the exception of Mr. Kean." He praised the power, harmony, and modulation of his voice, approved of his declamation, defended him against the accusation of excessive violence and deficient pathos, but had nothing to say for his face. The Times held that he would scarcely supersede Young, and that Charles Kemble, even in tragedy, had little to fear from him ; but allowed him "a large quantity of vocal and brachial force," and admitted that, at the right moments, he knew how to produce his effects with "a speaking eye or a deep and broken murmur." The critic of the A^eros 36 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. had seen Macready " so often and in so many characters in every exhibition of paintings at Somerset House," that he was incHned to class him with the incompetents who " wriggle themselves " forward by means of puffing. The performance of Orestes dissipated this prejudice. " Mr. Macready," the critic proceeded, " is one of the plainest and most awkwardly made men that ever trod the stage. His voice is even coarser than his person. And yet ... he is undoubtedly an actor, . . . and an actor in many points superior to Mr. Kean." The Globe discerned in him " a man of mind," praised his voice, and remarked that his eyes were so " full of fire " as to divert attention, at critical moments, "from the flatness of the features they irradiate." The European Magazine, on the other hand, admitted the gracefulness of his action and the excellence of his voice, but added that, in spite of the fire in his eye, " the vacuity of his counte- nance lessened the illusion." " I'm told he's a capital actor, but a devilish ugly fellow," said a playgoer one evening, little dreaming that Macready was sitting at his elbow ; '' they say he's an ugly likeness of Liston." John Kemble, when his brother Charles prophesied great things of the new actor, took a pinch of snuff, and rejoined with a signifi- cant smile, "Oh Charles! con ijiicl viso I " These testimonies to Macrcady's lack of personal beauty are borne out by the portraits of the period, which show a small but rather scowling mouth, an irregular nose, and a chubbiness of contour which was doubtless apt to seem coarse. His face seems to have been one that improved in aging. The furrows of time and the lines of thought strengthened and ennobled it until, in old age, it became venerable and most impressive. Orestes was repeated twice, and then, on September FORGING AHEAD. 37 30, Jcphson'sy/<'//<7; or, The Italian Lover, was revived, with Macrcady as Mentevole. This tragedy was pro- duced ill 1787, with John Kcmble and Mrs. Siddons in the principal parts. It is well-knit and powerfully written, but intolerably sombre, Mentevole being a lurid and volcanic personage, who sticks at no crime in the pursuit of his desires. The performance increased the new actor's reputation. " It was impossible," the News de- clares, " to look the dark burning slave of passion better than Mr. Macready. . . . Passion quivers at his finger- ends." "Subtlety, terror, rage, despair, and triumph," says the Times, " were successively displayed by him with truth and energy." Hazlitt praised him highly, but thought that his behaviour, when accused of the murder of Claudio, was too obviously that of conscious guilt. The play-bill announced that his Mentevole was "greeted with shouts of rapturous applause ;" but the tragedy was repeated only once. In a sense, it did Macready a disservice, for his personal success in so villainous a part probably helped to procure him that reputation for consummate (theatrical) villainy under which he writhed for so long. A sterner trial was at hand. Weary of exhibiting his recruit in plays that would not draw, Harris announced him to appear alternately with Young in the parts of Othello and lago. Othello was, of all his Shakespearian parts, the one with which he was least familiar, and lago he had never played at all. Nevertheless, he had to make the plunge, playing the Moor on the loth, and his Ancient on the 15th of October. His Othello was sur- prisingly successful, and his lago was not disastrous. The Times was enthusiastic over Othello, especially praising "his practice of employing all his force in passages of noiseless but intense feeling." Several critics 38 IVILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. (Hazlitt among them) found him efifeminate, and, in the pathetic passages, incUned to be " whimpering and lachrymose." His address to the Senate, according to \\-\& Nc7i Roy, reduced to two acts, would be a good afterpiece for my benefit ? " Elliston, no doubt, left the house reassured as to Macready's chances of life. It was more than three months before Macready was able to resume duty, and in the mean time many things had happened. The notorious case of Cox v. Kean had been tried while his illness was at its height ; Kean's ill-advised attempts to outface British pharisaisni had occupied the public mind; and yet another theatrical scandal, the case of Miss Foote v. Hayne, had intervened to divert attention from the drama proper. Reappearing as Romont on April ii, Macready found that the success of three months before had been for- gotten, and the piece was soon witlidrawn. On the other hand, Knowles's William Tell, produced on Ma\' II, survived the insufficient rehearsal of the first per- formance, and proved a lasting success. Though turgid and long-winded even beyond the playwright's wont, it contains some effectively overwrought scenes which TFIE DOLDRUMS. 73 suited Macready's style. Mrs. Bunn played Tell's wife, and tlie infant prodigy, Clara Fisher, created the important part of the boy Albert. For his benefit (June 2) Macready acted Henry V. and Rob Roy (the play- goers of those days likctl to have their money's worth), and for Harley's benefit he resumed his old part of Gambia, for the last time in London. The remainder of the year 1825 and the first three months of 1826 were devoted partly to provincial engagements, partly to rest in a country retreat near Denbigh. An article in Blackwood's Magazine for June, 1825, embittered the commencement of this partial holiday, causing Macready at least as much annoyance as his dispute with t\\e./ohn Bull. It was entitled, A Letter to Charles Koiible, Esq., and R. IV. Ellis ton, Esq., on the Present State of the Stage, the signature of " Philo- Dramaticus " being assumed by the Rev. W. Harness. Inquiring into the depressed state of the national drama, the author laid the fault at the door of "your Great Actors— I mean your soi-disant Great Actors — Messrs. Kean, Young, and Macready." Their refusal to attach themselves permanently to a stock company, their demand for short engagements at high salaries, and their self- seeking tyranny over dramatic authors, constitute tlie head and front of their offending. " They must have tragedies written to suit their personal tricks — I beg pardon, their peculiarities. . . . The history of the lately rejected tragedy of Rienzi [by Harness's intimate friend. Miss Mitford] is strikingly illustrative of the evils that attend the operation of the present system. . . . The play was completed and shown to Mr. Macready. He was delighted with the production. The chief part was very effective both in language and situation, and only required a \cxy few and slight alterations to render it worthy the abilities of any of \\\& great actors. He wislied an entirely 74 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. new first act ; this was indispensable that Rienzi might be introduced striking to the earth an injurious Patrician, . . . because this circumstance had pecuharly pleased Mr. iNIacready's fancy when a boy at school. To make room for the introduction of this new incident, the second and third acts . . . were to be compressed into one. The fifth act, was to be rewritten, that the character of Rienzi might, to the very dropping of the curtain, hold its paramount station on the stage. All these alterations were to be made /// a fortnight ; the authoress was then to . .". superintend in person the rehearsals ^nd geiti/ig up of the piece. ... In a fortnight she called on Mr. Macready with the manuscript. To her utter astonishment he received her with the greatest coolness : ' There was no hurry for her play. The managers had another piece at the theatre which must at all events be produced first ; and it was very improbable her play could be acted at all.' This other piece was The Fatal Dowry of Massinger. . . . " Persons of distinguished talent will cease, as they have ceased, to write for the stage. . . . Who are your successful authors 1 Planche and Arnold, Poole and Kenney ; names so ignoble in the world of literature that they have no circulation beyond the green-room. ... It is no longer, the play, but the actors, that the public are called to see. ... I have seen Mrs. Siddons go through the part of Constance, of Isabella, of Belvidera, of Mrs. Beverley, almost without a single burst of applause ; there have been nothing but tears and sobs to interrupt the silence. . . . But this style of simple and natural acting has passed away. The actor of forty pounds a night comes forth to astonish. He is a sort of rhetorical Merry Andrew ; and all his excellence consists in the exhibition of a certain round of tricks. . . . Every start, every rant, every whisper, is followed by rounds of applause, and by these [the audience] estimate his merits. The mob arc collected to see an enormously paid actor, who acts only for twelve nights, and their expectations must not be disappointed. I f they returned home without having been wonderfully astonished, without having something extra- ordinary and monstrous to relate, they would begin to suspect that the performer did not deserve his wages. The con- THE DOLDRUMS. 75 sequence is that Messrs. Young, Kean, and Macready — Mr. Young in a degree less than the other two — have introduced a manner of acting more forced, heavy, exaggerated, and unnatural than perhaps ever disgraced the stage since England had a regular theatre to boast of." I have quoted this long passage because, in spite of obvious exaggerations, it contains a certain leaven of truth, and at least represents the views then held with regard to the stage by a large number of educated men. Macready declares the account of his dealings with Miss Mitford to be " false and libellous ; " but it was certainly not quite unfounded. What the writer failed to see was that the weakness of the authors, rather than the egoism of the actors, lay at the root of the evil. No playwriglit of really commanding talent was ever tyrannized over by his actors, though the greatest playwrights, from Shakespeare downwards, have not disdained to fit particular actors with parts " cut to their measure." In the spring of 1826 Macready played a short engagement (April 10 to May 19) at Drury Lane, now nominally under the management of William Gore Elliston, a son of the Great Lessee. He attempted no new character. He was the Hotspur in Henry IV. Pari I. when Elliston made the attempt to play Falstaff, which brought his career at Drury Lane to an inglorious close. At rehearsal Macready thought Elliston the best Falstaff he had ever seen, but on the night of performance (May 11) he was feeble and ineffective. When the play was repeated, four nights later, he struggled on until, in the last act, he reeled and fell upon the stage. The disaster was generally attributed to drink, but Macready avers that it was really due to physical weakness com- bined with an overdose of ether. After fulfilling some pro\incial engagements, Macready, 76 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. with his wife and sister, sailed from Liverpool for New York on September 2, 1826, arriving on the 27th of the same month. As to the details of this tour I have not been able to learn much, but there is no doubt that it was thoroughly successful. His impresario was Stephen Price, one of the first of a long line of American specu- lative showmen, who was lessee of Drury Lane Theatre during this very winter. Macready made his first ajv pearance at the Park Theatre, New York, on October 2, in the character of Virgin ius, and was warmly received both by the public and the press. He may not have been much gratified on finding himself described in one of the leading papers as " second only to Mr. Cooper;" * hut there must have been solace in the fact that another critic credited him, not only with genius, but with great personal beauty. It seems to have been recognized, on the whole, that of all the tragedians who had appeared on the American stage, only Cooke and Kean were to be regarded as his peers. Though it was five years since Junius Brutus Booth had crossed the Atlantic, he had not yet attained the height of his feme ; Forrest, the first native-born tragedian, was but a youth of twenty, though already rising into note ; and such actors as Holman and Conway were evidently on a lower plane of talent. Kean's second American tour, ill-advised and humiliating, had taken place during the previous winter, and it is possible that the unpopularity of his predecessor may have reacted to the advantage of Macready, whose conduct, both in i)rivate life and towards his audiences, was so different. At Boston, where the most serious anti-Kcan riots had occurred, Macready was received * Thomas Alillioipo CoopLT, the pupil of William Godwin. He was an actor of fine endowment, mancd by carelessness and defective training. THE DOLDRUMS. 77 uilh entluisiaMn, both on his first \isit in November, 1S26, ami (luring a return engagement in the following Marc h. He also appeared at Baltimore, Phila(lel[)hia, and Albany, and seems to have visited Niagara. In New York he played no fewer than five short engagements — in October and December, 1826, and in February, April, and ]Ma\-, 1827. In the third series of perform- ances Conway appeared with him, playing Jafifier to his Pierre, Charalois to his Romont, Faulconbridge to his John, the Prince of Wales to his Henry IV., and Brutus to his Cassias. He took his farewell benefit in New York on June 4, playing Macbeth and Delaval, and seems to have returned to England shortly afterwards. During the season 1827-28 Drury Lane was still under the management of Stephen Price. On the open- ing night Charles Kean made his first aj^pearance on any stage in the part of Young Norval, and continued to perform at intervals throughout the season, while Listen, Wallack, Ellen Tree, and Miss Eoote also be- longed to the company. Macready appeared on Novem- ber 12 as Macbeth, to the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. W. AVest. It was at this time that the German traveller. Prince Piickler-Muskau, saw him in Macbeth, and re- corded* his striking excellence in the murder-scene, the banquet-scene, and the last act. He praises the stage management, but ridicules the tashionable flowered- chintz dressing-gown which Macready threw over his armour in obedience to Lady Macbeth's advice that he should get his nightgown on. Early in 1828 Macready played Ribemont, Marshal ot France, in an historical play by Reynolds^ '' founded on .Shirley and Beaumont and Fletcher," entitled, Edward the Black Prince. A gentleman informed Cienest that * " Bricfe eines Vcr.slorbcncn," iv. 255. 78 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. the plays of Fletcher from which Reynolds borrowed were Philaster, Bo/iduca, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. " He could not pretend to describe hotv Reynolds had contrived to jumble his materials together — -he only knew that the thing was done, and that he witnessed the damnation of the piece." No better fate awaited Lord Porchester's tragedy of Z'^v/ Pedro, m which (March lo) Macready played Henry of Trastamar. There were one or two strong situations in the piece, but it was on the whole tedious and ineffective. Macready played Posthumus for his benefit (May 23), to Miss Foote's Imogen and Cooper's lachimo. Bunn states that Price, finding him unattractive, sacrificed sixteen nights of his engagement, though he had jievertheless to pay the stipulated ^20 for each night. As Macready played only twenty-four times (not counting his benefit), Bunn is no doubt right. There was certainly no love lost between actor and manager, Macready one evening suggested to Price that, as the bill was unusually long, he might cut out the music in Macbeth. " I can't very well do that," replied the manager; 'Mnit I'll cut out the part of Macbeth, if you like." During this season (1827-28) a company of English actors, under the management of Abbott, gave a series of performances in Paris, which has left its mark upon the history both of the French drama and of French music. Their first play was The Rivixls (Odeon, Sep- tember 6, 1827), in which Listen played Acres; Chippen- dale, Sir Anthony ; and Miss Smithson, Lydia Languish. Two days later Listen appeared as Tony Lumpkin ; and on September ii Charles Kemble played Hamlet to the Ophelia of Miss Smithson. This was the fateful evening which revealed to Alexandre Dumas the full possibilities of the romantic drama, and inspired Hector Berlioz with THE DOLDRUMS. 79 the great passion of his life. Harriet Smithson (the French called her Henriette) was regarded in London as a third-rate performer with an Irish brogue ; in Paris she found herself a great actress, a second O'Neill. " The success of Shakespeare," wrote Berlioz, '' height- ened by the enthusiastic efforts of all the new literary school, whose leaders were Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Alfred de Vigny, was surpassed by the success of Miss Smithson;" and, though Berlioz is scarcely an impartial historian, contemporary documents fully bear out this statement. Yet the success of Shake- speare was undoubtedly great. He came in the nick of time. The romantic revolution had set in (Victor Hugo's Cromwell was the literary event of this very winter), and its ringleaders were prepared in advance to accept the name of Shakespeare as a watchword. " It was the first time," wrote Dumas, "that the stage had shown me real passions animating men and women of flesh and blood." Miss Smithson played Juliet and Desdemona, to Charles Kemble's Romeo and Othello. Then Miss Foote ap- peared as Lgetitia Hardy, Lady Teazle, and Violante, and was pronounced (to her no small disgust, we may believe) an imitator of "la belle Smidson," On October 4 the company removed to the The'atre Italien (Salle Favart), but afterwards returned once or twice to the Odeon. Miss Smithson made her chief success in Jane Shore, about the middle of October, and afterwards played Belvidera, Portia, and Cordelia. On April 7, 1828, Macready made his first appearance, as Macbeth. The house was crowded, the places of honour being occupied by "S.A.R. Mgr. le due d'Orleans et toute sa famille, et S.A.R. Madame, duchesse de Berry." The majority of the French public was not yet reconciled So WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. to the " strange inequalities which disfigure the master- pieces of Shakespeare." They rebelled against the \\'itches in Macbeth, and the handkerchief in Othello. But Macready's personal success was great. 'Yht Journal des Dci'ofs, noticing his first appearance, spoke of him as a fine actor, full of skill, energy, fire, and intelligence. His play of expression, said the critic, redeemed the irregularity of his features, while his voicC; in its lower register, possessed tones which penetrated to the very soul. He did not fulfil the writer's ideal of Macbeth, perhaps because that gentleman credited himself with a singularly profound insight into Shakespeare's inten- tions. "Abbott," he continued, "dans le role de Mac- dulph, est pur, correct, et ele'gant;" but Miss Smithson's Lady Macbeth he admitted to be feeble. Between the 7 th and the 25 th of April Macready i)layed Macbeth thrice, and Virginius four times. After Virginius, says Jules Janin, " on trouva, pendant vingt-quatre heures, (|ue Macready etait I'egal de Talma." "Who would believe," cried the critic of La Jici/nion, on paradox intent, " that this man, to whom Nature has refused everything — voice, carriage, and physiognomy — could rival our Talma, for whom she had left nothing undone ? This prodigy, which is related of Lekain, was yesterday realized by Macread}'." The general complaint was that the performance was too harrowing. Towards the end of April Macready returned to London, and Kean took his place, being received with comparative coolness. After the close of his Drury Lane engagement, Macready paid a .second visit to Paris, appearing eight times between June 23 and July 21. His parts were A'irginius, \Villiam Tell, Hamlet, and Othello, in all of which his success was great. "At his entrance as William 'I'cll," says Ihe Dcbats, "and more than lhirt\' limes during the perform- THE DOLDRUMS. 8i ance, salvos of applause proved to him that a French pit has ears for the language of truth in whatever idiom it may be couched. Protracted acclamations pursued him even after the foil of the curtain." At the close of his last performance as Othello, a police ordinance for- bidding actors to appear before the curtain was evaded by a number of enthusiastic young men, who haled him, still in costume, from his dressing-room into the orchestra, and thence lifted him over the footlights. Well might he write to his wife, " I am considerably fatigued, as I play in earnest here, and feel it for some days afterwards ; but I am more than repaid in the sort of transport that seems excited among the literary and fashionable."' During the seasons of 1828-29 and 1829-30 Macready did not appear in London, but devoted himself, with intervals of rest, to starring engagements in the provinces. On April 1 1, 1829, his father died at Bristol, aged seventy- four, and Macready seems to have afforded a good deal of aid to his widow, who retained the management of the theatre. It is reported that in January, 1830, he one night played Macbeth in Portsmouth to ten persons in the boxes and a proportionately scanty audience in the pit; and a {q.\\ w^eeks later we find him selling an Irish engagement to Alfred Bunn for ;^6oo, and then remitting ^100 of the price, " in consequence of the ill-success of the engage- ment." Yet, on the whole, his provincial rounds must have been fairly remunerative. His total income amounted, in 1828, to ^2361, and in 1829 to ;^2265 ; so that even if we suppose his investments to have brought him in ;^5oo a year, his professional receipts would still come to the respectable sum of over ^1750. As his first child, Christina Letitia, was not born until December 26, 1830. he was spared, at this period, the morbid anxiety to secure a provision for his family which tortured him in after-years. G 82 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. On October i8, 1830, he made his "first appearance these two years " at Drury Lane, now under the management of Captain Polhil), a wealthy amateur, and Alexander Lee, a musician. Virginius was his opening part, to the Icilius of Wallack, and the Virginia of Miss Phillips. For fourteen successive weeks he played Joseph Surface every Tuesday to Farren's Sir Peter, Dowton's Sir Oliver, Walla ck's Charles and Miss Chester's Lady Teazle. Among other legitimate parts he acted Pierre, King John, and Hastings, to the Belvidera, Constance, and Jane Shore of a new actress, Miss Huddart, who was afterwards, under the name of Mrs. Warner, closely associated with his career. Wallack's performance in The Brigand was the great popular attraction of the autumn ; but on December 15 INIacready added to his repertory a part which was destined to rank among his great achievements — the gloomy and conscience-stricken Werner. The fact that he was able to breathe life into Byron's dull, diffuse, and ill-written ])lay appears to me, I confess, one of the most convincing proofs that he was really a great actor. Two other "creations" belong to this season— Don Leo in The Pledge ; or, Castiltaii Honour (April 8, 1 831), and Alfred the Great in Knowles's play of that name (April 28). llic Pledge was a bald version, by James Kenney, of Victor Hugo's Hernani, produced in Paris more than a year before amid the tumultuous scenes so vividly described by The'ophile Gautier. In London it was well received, the Times according it the then unusual honour of a whole cohmm of criticism. The mounting, liowever, was miserable, and the managers seem to have been anxious to shelve the- piece, Mac- ready's part was Don Leo (Ruy Gomez) ; ^^'allack jilayed Hernani ; Cooper, Charles V. ; and Miss Phillips, Donna Zanthe (Doha Sol). Knowles's Alfred was played ten THE DOLDRUMS. 83 times running, and fifteen times in all, the numerous allusions to the " patriot king "being applied to William IV,, and much applauded ; but the part was not strong enough to hold its place in Macready's repertory. This season, however, witnessed his first appearance as Mr. Oakly in The Jealous Wife., afterwards the most popular of his few comedy parts. He acted it with "careless nonchalance," said the Ti/iies, up to the last scene, " which cannot be too highly praised." For his benefit (May 27) he played Coriolanus, to the Volumnia of Miss Huddart, and Puft' in The Critic. During the following season (1831-32) Drury Lane was under the management of Captain Polhill. The attraction of the winter was the "Grand Oriental Spectacle" of Hyder All ; or., The Lions of Mysore., in which a whole menagerie of animals, including boa-con- strictors and an elephnnt, figured on the scene. In the spring of 1832 a version of Robert le Diable, entitled, The Dcemon ; or. The Mystic Branch., was very popular. Against such competitors " the legitimate" stood a bad chance, and Macready acted only fifty-two times in all, as against ninety-nine times in the previous season. Werner (October 4) was his opening part, and was followed by a round of stock characters. On December 5 he appeared as Richard III., "first time these eight years," said the play-bill ; but, as a matter of fact, he had not played the part in London since the spring of 182 1. His only new part was Scroope in Tlie Merchant of London, a poor play by T. J. Serle, actor, stage-manager, and author. It was well received on the first night, but had no real vitality. For his benefit (May 14) Macready acted Leontes and Petruchio ; and on May 30, when Charles Young bade farewell to the stage at Covent Garden, Macready played the (ihost to his retiring rival's Hamlet. 84 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. The season of 1832-33 was more eventful. Macready's opening part was Rolla (September 28), and on October i he appeared as Colberg in Serle's tragedy, The House of Colberg. Though the play was feeble as a whole, the last two acts offered fine opportunities for the morose vehemence in which Macready excelled. The death of Sir Walter Scott having occurred, in September, Rob Roy was revived on October 13, and was followed by a grand Waverley Pageant, which curiously illustrates the taste of the times : — " Scene I. — View of Abbotsford (the residence of the lately deceased Poet), painted expressly by Mr. Stanfield ; to which celebrated place will be introduced, in commemoration of .Scotland's Immortal Bard, a Pilgrimage of the Principal Dramatic Characters his genius has created, in imitation of the honours paid to Shakespeare in the celebrated Jubilee. "Scene II. — The Poet's Study at Abbotsford, Exhibiting an arrangement of the Characters round his Bust and Vacant Chair, concluding with a Grand Scenic Apotheosis of the Minstrel of the North, the Coronach from The Lady of the Lake, to be sung by Mr. Braham and full chorus. "Ori:)ER of the Pageant : The Bard (from I7ie Lay of ilie Last Minstrel), Waverley, Hie Fortunes of Nigel, Guy Manueriiig, The Bride of Lammernioor, Rob Roy, Ivatthoe, The Antiquary, The Heart of Midlothian, Pei'eril of the Peak, The Lady of the Lake, The Legend of Mont}-ose, Kenilworth.' Macready not only acted in the drama (or opera, as it was then called), but figured as the central personage of the Rob Roy grou]) in the Pageant. On November 10 he played Kitely in a careful revival of Every Man in /lis J/uinour, with Power as Bobadil, l''arren as Brain- worm, ]J)owton as Justice Clement, liarley as Master Stephen, and Mrs. Nisbett as Dame Kitely. Notwith- standing this strong cast, the play was repeated only THE DOLDRUMS. 85 once. Kcan, whose race was now almost run, appeared early in November, and on the 26th he and Macready acted together for the first time, as Othello and lago. Greatly to Macready's disgust, Kean resorted to the old trick of always standing a pace or two further up the stage than his interlocutor, who was thus forced to ap- pear in profile to the audience. At the close of the performance, says Bunn, who was Polhill's stage-manager, Macready '"bounced into my room," and vowed that he would play no more with so unfair an actor. " He finally wound up by saying, ' And pray what is the — next p — lay you ex — pect me to appear in — with tlrat low — man?' I replied that I would send him word, I went up into Kean's dressing-room, where I found him scraping the colour off his face, and sustaining the operation by copious draughts of cold brandy and water. On my asking him what play he would next appear in with Macready, he ejaculated, ' How the blank should I know what the blank plays in?'" They appeared, as a matter of fact, in no other play ; they did not even alternate the leading parts in Othello. Macready played lago ten times to Kean's Othello, and once to Cooper's, Kean being too ill to act. The last joint performance took place on F^ebruary 8, 1833, and on May 25 Macready was one of the pall-bearers at Kean's funeral, A new part of a ridiculous order which he performed during this season was that of Lord Bellenden in Men of Pleasure, by Don Telesforo de Trueba, a Spaniard who wrote in English. A German opera company, with Schroder- Devrient as its star, was one of the attractions of the season, in the course of which, too, the " matchless " and ill-fated Malibran made her first appearance on the Eng- lish stage. Roth these great artists sang, and Taglioni danced, on Macready's benefit-night (June 10), when he 86 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. played Joseph Surface. He at one time intended to play Charles Surface, but wisely changed his mind. Perhaps he remembered the story of John Philip Kemble and " Charles's Martyrdom." At • Swansea, during the recess of 1833, Macready played King Lear for the first time. *• How?" he writes in his diary. " Certainly not well, not so well as I re- hearsed it; crude fictitious voice, no point — in short, a failure !" It afterwards became one of his best Shake- spearian performances. Towards the end of May, 1833, the public and the l^layers alike were astonished to learn that the "... houses twain Of Covent Garden and of Drury Lane " had passed into the hands of one man, and that man Alfred Bunn. As a journalist, a speculative country impresario, an experienced stage-manager, and the lius- band of Mrs. Bunn, this gentleman was tolerably well known in the theatrical world. He had little education, no literary culture, a shady private character, plenty of fluency and effrontery, a fine stock of ingenuous snob- bishness, and withal a sort of rough good-nature, not wholly unsympathetic. We may pretty safely conjecture that Thackeray had him in his eye when he drew Mr. Doljihin, " the great manager from London," who lured the Fotheringay awa}- from her Chatteris admirers. " He was a tjll, ])ortly gentleman, with a hooked nose, and a profusion of curling brown hair and whiskers ; his coat was covered wiih the richest frogs-braiding and velvet. He had under-waistcoats, many splendid rings, jewelled pins, and neck-chains." I have before me a ])ortrait of Alfred Bimn, to which this description (all but the single word •' tall ") api)lies exactly. .\s a manager he was THE DOLDRUMS. 87 sanguine, improvident, hapi>y-go-lucky, and (like his master, Ellislon) devoted to the catchpenny methods of the showman. His character and habits, in short, were altogether antipathetic to Macready, who regarded with justified forebodings the freak of fortune whitli made " Bunny,'' as his friends loved to call him, the autocrat of the legitimate drama. His first measure was to strike a blow at the large salaries which he considered the ruin of the stage, and to re-establish the " maximum " of Sheridan and Harris (;^20 a week). This step, which naturally enraged " the profession," was a futile attempt to stem the oncoming- tide of free-trade, and revert to a bygone order of things. I have not been able to ascertain whether Macready, in engaging with Bunn for the season 1833-34, con- sented to this self-denying ordinance. Certain it is that he joined the Drury Lane company, and appeared on the opening night of the season as Prospero in Dryden and Davenant's version of The Tempest, to which, "by way of being extra legitimate," Bunn added Comas as an afterpiece. The new manager was determined not to let his principal tragedian rust in idleness. Between the 5th and the 30th of October Macready appeared fifteen times, playing Prospero, Macbeth, Mr. Oakly, Pierre, Biron (in Isabella), Posthumus, the Stranger, Wolsey, Hotspur, Werner, and Leontes. As the season went on his appearances were less frequent. On November 21, struggling against illness, insufficient rehearsal, and de- plorable mounting, he played Antony to the Cleopatra of Miss Phillips, but made of it only " a hasty, unpre- pared, unfinished performance." A few days later he offered Bunn a premium to release him from his engage- ment, which Bunn, in a conciliatory letter, declined to do. The horsemanship of Ducrow attracted crowds to 88 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. the pantomime of St. George and the Dragoti, and in the early spring Bunn produced a successful adaptation of Scribe's Bert?-and et Raton, under the title of The Minis- ter and the Mercer. Thus Macready was not greatly in request until after Easter, when a grand spectacular pro- duction of Byron's Sardanapalus was announced. The part of Myrrha was assigned to Ellen Tree ; but just as the rehearsals were drawing to a close, Bunn received a letter from Paris which altered his plans. It Avas an offer from Mrs. Mardyn, the actress whose name had been associated with Byron's in the scandalous chronicle of 1815, to play the part of Myrrha, which, she declared, liad been written for her. " My late regretted friend," the writer stated, " ever paid me the flattering compli- ment that in his portraiture of the ' Ionian INIyrrha,' I had been associated by his muse in every image of her trance, and that if ever the poem strayed into publicity, beyond the closet, it was his wish that the dreek girl's sandals should be worn by niei' Bunn promptly came to terms with "Madame la Baronne de St. Dizier," as ISIrs. Mardyn now called herself, and announced the postponement of the production in order that the design of the "Noble Author" might be fulfilled. But alas! one illness after another prevented Madame la Baronne from leaving Paris, and Bunn finally concluded (on in- sufficient evidence, I think) that the whole correspond- ence was a hoax, in which the real Mrs. Mardyn had no hand. The part was restored to Ellen Tree, and the play produced on April i o, with some success. Accord- ing to Macready, Cooper, the stage-manager (who played Salemenes), was "as capable of directing the niisc en scene of a play as a man devoid of information, industry, genius, or talent may be supposed to be." It was of him that Malibran said, " C'est un liotel garni, dont THE DOLDRUMS. 89 I'appartement le plus eleve est ordinairement le plus mal meublc." The mounting, though far inferior to that of Charles Kean's revival of the same play at the Princess's, passed muster with tlie public of that day, and Sarda- napalus had a considerable run. A revival of Henry IV. Part IL, with the Coronation Spectacle, was also fairly attractive, Macready resuming his old part of the King. For his benefit (May 2t,) he pjlayed King Lear for the first time in London, purging the text of Tate's absurdi- ties, but not yet venturing to restore the Fool. He was " as nervous as on the first night he acted in London," and did himself no justice in the first two acts. In the third act, however, he improved, and the performance was, on the whole, a success. Before the season closed he gave three performances at Covent Garden, repeating Lear twice, and playing Hamlet once. On Monday, July 28, Sheridan Knowles took a fare- well benefit at the Victoria Theatre before starting for America. There had been some estrangement between him and INLicready, who, by way of heaping coals of fire on his old friend's head, for what he called his " bad and base conduct," offered to play Icilius to Knowles's Vir- ginius on the night of his benefit. Knowles, however, would not hear of this self-abasement, and elected to play Siccius Dentatus to INIacready's Virginius, IVilliain Tell being performed as an afterpiece, with the author in the title-part. Macready also played Virginius for Abbott's benefit, at the Opera House, on August 18. The winter season of 1834-35 Macready spent entirely in the country. On October 27, 1834, he wrote from Dublin to his friend Thomas Gaspey, editor of the Suuday Times — '"I suppose you know that I a)ii not ew^agcd in London. Mr. Bunn will not have me. I do not know the quality of 90 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. his new performer [Denvil, who made somethuig- of a success in Manfred, but failed lamentably in Othello], but presume he is satisfied that I may be dispensed with. This is rather hard, that so grievous a monopoly is to exclude an artist from the practice of his art, where his station gives him some right to appear. But cheapness is the order of the day." During this engagement in Dublin, Tlie Bridal^ adapted by Alacready from Beaumont and Fletcher's Alaid's Tragedy, was produced for the first time, with Macready as Melantius. Sheridan Knowles had contributed three scenes to the adaptation, and some misunderstanding as to their respective shares in the work seems to have caused the coolness between them to which I have just alluded. At the end of December, 1834, Macready embarked on a managerial speculation at Bath and Bristol, in partnership with a Mr. \\'oulds. The lieading of the play-bills (written by Macready) ^announced a "CoMiu- NATiON OF TALENT witliotit precedent in this or any theatre out of the Metropolis, and at present dejying competition on the part of the London theatres.'' Macready and Mrs. Lovell were the tragic stars ; Dowton represented comedy ; and ]\Ir. and Mrs. Wood (Miss Baton), popular vocalists of the period, strengthened the combination. Macready played all his popular parts, even Gambia, and at Bath, on February 24, he added a new part to his list — that of Ford in The Merry Wives of ]Vi/tdsor : Dowton i)laying Falstaff; and Mr. and Mrs. Wood, Fenton ami Mrs. I'ord. The " combination of talent," though Farren joined il in tlic course of the spring, was nut, on the whole, successful. Macready writes to Gaspey from Bristol, on March 5, 1835 — " I iiave made u;i my mind not to play at the wintci THE DOLDRUMS. 91 theatres this season under any circumstances ; the thing is too loiu down. We are playinj^^ here to splendid houses — again. Last week the Woods, Dowton, and self played on Monday in The Slave to ^{^50 (!!!) at Bath; on Tuesday, Merry Wives of Windsor— £'^^ (II!). There's taste and patronage! Thursday, Hamlet — upwards of ^100. Satur- day, Rob Roy — turned ;^ioo again. Here we have played the same pieces to considerably above ^100 each night, and the /^ — a step, a blow. The motion of a muscle — this way or that — 'Tis done ; and in the after vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed." Macready, however, does not seem to have noticed the allusion. " I felt tranciuilly hajipy," lie writes. For Osbaldiston's benefit, on May 30, Julius Ccesar THi: DOI.DRrMS. 97 was revived, with Sheridan Knowles as Brutus, Macready as Cassius, and Charles Kenible in his great character of Mark Antony. The Bunn affair had led to a formal reconciliation between Kemble and Macready, who, how- ever, writes of this performance, " I do not think my reception was quite so long as Kemble's, or I did not use sufficient generalship with it."' The eighth re]:)resen- tation oi Ion brought the season to a close on June ii. From the second night onwards Miss Faucit had re- placed Ellen Tree as Clemanthe. It had been supposed at first that Bunn would challenge Macready, who was ready to go out if called upon. The wily manager, however, took refuge in the plea that his adversary's conduct had deprived him of all right to be treated as a gendeman. He chose the more pacific course of suing him for assault, and as Macready allowed judgment to go l)y default, the issue was reduced to an assessment of damages. Thesiger, afterwards Lord Chelms- ford, was Bunn's counsel, while Talfourd appeared for Macready. It cannot be said that Talfourd's advocacy did much for Macready's case. His address to the jury, full of cajolery and emi)ty rhetoric, is a fine example of the Bu/.fuz style. '' Shakespeare ! " cried the learned Serjeant — "the mighty magic of the name is enough — Shakespeare, in whose might}- name the British drama originated, and still has its being — Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's representative, Mr. Mac- ready, were to be shelved, that the words of the songs of The Maid of Ariois should be given to the public. How polite, how modest, is Mr. Bunn ! Mr. Bunn's poetry against Shake- speare's Richard III. f . . . Mr. Macready felt injured and insulted ; he struck Mr. Bunn ; a scuffle ensued ; genius, and right, and strength triumphed — Mr. Bunn was the sufferer!" The attempt to represent Macready as a victim to H 98 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. Bunn's literary vanity was too flagrant a piece of special pleading even for a British jury. The truth, though it was not Talfourd's cue to admit it, was that " Shakespeare and Shakespeare's representative " did not draw, whereas opera and spectacle did. The fortunes of the season (unforeseen, of course, at its outset) had made Macready a white elephant on the manager's hands, and he treated the haughty and supersensitive tragedian with little con- sideration and less tact. Macready accused him of attempting, by dint of deliberate and studied humilia- tions, to force him to throw up his engagement ; but I find no evidence of any such far-reaching plan on Bunn's part. The player's professional position and dignity were nothing to the manager. He regarded actors as his natural enemies : they got all they could out of him ; he would get all he could out of them. 'We can scarcely believe that it would have done Macready's position any grievous harm had he yielded with a good grace to the requirements of a manager who, after all, had paid him a large sum and received very little in return. In any case, even if he was right to be "jealous in honour," he was obviously wrong in being so " sudden and quick in quarrel." The jury, despite Talfourd's blandishments, awarded Bunn damages to the amount of j[,'i^o. After some unimportant provincial engagements, Mac- ready returned to Covent (harden, where he had agreed with Osbaldiston for twenty-two weeks at j[,^o a week. His opening part was the favourite Macbeth (October 3), with Pritchard as Macduff, and Mrs. ^^^ A\'est as Lady Macbeth. Charles Kemble's farewell performances drew crowded houses during the last three months of 1836. He ])layed his great parts of Faulconbridgc, Cassio, and Aiiiony, to Macready's King John, Othello, and Brutu.s, THE DOLDRUMS. 99 and also acted Hamlet, Macbeth, Mercutio, Shylock, and Petruchio, his last part being Benedick, to Miss Faucit's Beatrice, on December 23. Osbaldiston was running the theatre at reduced prices (boxes, 4J-. ; pit, 2s. ; lower gallery, i^-. ; upper gallery, 6d.) ; but the rush to see the last of Kemble induced him to announce on the play-bill of Monday, November 21 {Julius Caesar), that " Stalls had been fitted up in the Orchestra," admission 7,s-. ; and this arrangement was adhered to throughout the season. On the fourth day of the new year (1837) a new dramatist made his first essay. The Duchess de la Vallihr, " by H L. Bulwer, Esq., M.P.," had been offered to Bunn in the spring of 1836; but the author making it a condition that the play should be accepted unread, Bunn very naturally declined to buy a pig in a poke. At Covent Garden, Vandenhoff made a most unkingly Louis XIV. ; Farren was ludicrously out of place as Lauzun ; Miss Faucit acted La Valliere ; and Macready, Bragelone. The play met with a mixed reception, and held the bill for eight nights only. That Macready should ever have accepted the part of Brage- lone is a strong proof of his friendship for Bulwer ; for the scenes between Louis, La ^^alliere, and Madame de Montespan in the third act are the only really effective passages in the rambling, turgid, and unhealthy play. Another new dramatist was soon to have his turn. We have seen that at the Ion supper Macready sat opposite to Robert Browning. " On descending the staircase," writes Mr. Browning, "he said, with an affectionate gesture, ' Will you not write me a tragedy, and save me from going to America ? ' " Mr. Browning responded in a letter which Macready accepted as one of the highest honours that had ever been paid him ; but other occu- loo WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. pations prevented the poet from immediately fixing on a subject. At last he selected the story of Thomas Wentworth, and on the evening of Macready's benefit (May i) Strafford was produced for the first time. While the play was in rehearsal Macready had grave doubts as to its reception, which the event did not justify. He anticipated " consideral)le opposition ;" but though the minor parts were badly filled, the play met with unmixed applause. " Macready acted very finely," Mr. Browning notes, " as did Miss Faucit. Pym received tolerable treatment. The rest — -for the sake of whose incompetence the play had to be reduced by at least one- third of its dialogue — noii ragiouiain dl lor .'" Most of the critics complained of the obscurity of the action. "Events are implied, not stated," said the Jo/in Bull : "thoughts inferred, not uttered." Even the more than friendly Examiner could not predict permanent success for the trasedv. ■^C)^ "It should be stated, however," the critic wrote, "that it was most infamously got up ; that even Mr. Macready himself was not near so fine as lie is wont to be ; and that for the rest of the performers, with the exception of Miss Faucit, they were a barn wonder to look at ! Mr. \'anden- hoff was positively nauseous, with his whining, drawling, and slouching in Pym ; and Mr. [J.] Webster whimpered in somewhat too juvenile a fashion through young \'ane. Some one should have stepped out of the pit and thrust Mr. Dale [Charles I.] from the stage. . . . The most striking thing of the evening was Mr. Macready's first entrance upon the stage. It was the portrait of the great and ill-fated Earl stepping from the living canvas of Vandj-ke." The play-bill of May 3 (Osbaldiston was great in play-bills) announced that " The new Historical Tragedy of STRAFFonr). having been iiukcd most cminentlv THE DOLDRUMS. lOI successful and greeted with the most enthusiastic fervour hy a liouse densely crowded in every part, will be repeated This Evening, on Friday and Tuesday next.' After the fourth performance (May 9) a series of benefits intervened, and tlie fifth and last did not take place until May 30, when the tragedy was for the first time announced as " by — Browning, Esq." Macready's chief parts during the spring were King John to the Faulconbridge of Vandenhoff and the Constance of Miss Faucit \ Brutus to Vandenhoff' s Cassius and Sheridan Knowles's Antony ; Posthumus to Elton's lachimo, Farren's Cloten, and Miss Faucit's Imogen ; and Leontes to Miss Faucit's Hermione, Mrs. Glover's Paulina, and Farren's Autolycus. His last appearance took place on June 3, when he played Othello to Elton's lago and Miss Faucit's Desdemona. The doldrums were now fairly past, and during the remaining fourteen years of his career Macready ran before the trade-winds of success. His financial fortunes varied, but his reputation, his position, was securely established. He was "a personage/' the recognized leader of his profession. He had lived down the adverse influences which beset his middle course. Though heartily hated in many (quarters, he was respected in all. His unpopularity both with the press and among his fellow-actors had decidedly declined, and, on the other hand, his enthusiastic supporters were more numerous and influential than ever before. The faith- ful Talfourd was always at liis side. He had made the acquaintance of John Forster at Kean's funeral, in 1833. Bulwer he met in Dublin in the following year, and their friendship was now confirmed. In 1835, at the house of \\\ J. Fox, he met '^' Mr. Robert Browning, the author of Pamcehiisr In his dressing-room at the Haymarket, I02 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. in June, 1837, Forster introduced him to ''Dickens, alias Boz," his friend till death parted them. Thus the chief members of his much-talked-of " clique " were already around him at the period we have now reached. The establishment of the Garrick Club, in 1832, some- what extended his social relations, but its atmosphere was never very congenial to him, and he retired from it at the close of 1838. During and after his period of management he entered largely into social life, and his dinner-parties were famous in their way. " I only intend in future," writes Abraham Hayward, in 1838, "to go to dinner where I am sure of meeting people worth meet- ing. ... At Macready's, for example, there was no rank, but there w^as hardly a person in the room but was worth knowing for something." I am inclined to believe that his liberation from his thraldom to the bungling managers of Drury l,ane led to a substantial improvement in his art. In the news- paper criticisms between 1825 and 1835 the adjectives "cold," " tame," and " measured " recur with surprising frequency. Now, if we can be sure of anything with regard to a player of the past, it is that Macready was not naturally " cold " or " tame." His temper, however, reacted strongly upon his performances, and the chronic dissatisfaction and despondency under which he laboured through so many seasons may well have begotten a slackness and apathy in his average efforts. Under these circumstances, too, he would naturally yield to his mannerisms without a struggle. He notes that on December 7, 1836, Mrs. Glover remarked to Iiini that " she had never seen such an improvement in any person as in himself lately;" and Mrs. Glover spoke with the authority of commanding talent, and an experience which reached back to the best days of the Kemble dynasty. THE DOLDRUMS. 103 No doubt his somewhat exaggerated sense of having endangered his position by his assault on Bunn served as a spur to his flagging genius ; and he was soon to have the nobler incentive of acting amid worthy sur- roundings on behalf of an enterprise in which his own fortunes were identified with what he conceived to be the best interests of the British drama. Macreadv's Characters. 1823-1837. DruryLane: 1823-24: Leontes, 12; *Caius Gracchus, Rob Roy, 7 ; Virginius, 4 ; Macbeth, Roll a, 3 ; Hamlet, Duke {Measure for Measure)., Wolse)', Coriolanus, 2 ; Prospcro, Almaviva, Delaval {Mairii/io/iy), i. 1824-25 : *\Villiam Tell, 11 ; Romont {Fatal Dowry), 7 ; Macbeth, Jaques, 4 ; Leontes, 3 ; King John, Virginius, 2 ; Wolsey, Henry v., Rob Roy, Gambia, i. 1826 : Tell, 6 ; Virginius, 4 ; Macbeth, Othello, Hotspur, 2 ; Leontes, Posthumus, Delaval, i. 1827-28 : Virginius, 8 ; Tell, 6 ; ]\Lacbeth, 3 ; *Ribemont {Edward the Black Prince), *Henry of Trastamar {Don Pedro), 2 ; Hamlet, Biron {Isabella), Jaques, Posthumus, i. 1830-31 : *Werner, 17; Joseph Surface, 16; *Alfred the Great, 15 ; Tell, 11 ; *Don Leo {T/ic Pledge), 8 ; Rob Roy, 5 ; Virginius, 4 ; Hastings, Henri Ouatre, Macbeth, 3 ; Henry v., Pierre, Stranger, Mr. Oakly, Coriolanus, 2 ; Hamlet, Hotspur, King John, Daran {The Exile), Puff, i. 1831-32 : *Scroope {Merchant of London), g ; Daran, 7 ; Macbeth, 6 ; Richard III., Rob Roy, 5 ; Tell, 4 ; Werner, Virginius, Joseph Surface, 3 ; Alfred the Great, 2 ; Hastings, Stranger, King John, Hamlet, Leontes, Petruchio, i. At CovENT Garden : Ghost {Hamlet), i. 1832-33 : lago, II ; Joseph Surface, 8 ; Rob Roy, Mac- beth, 6 ; Rolla, *Co\hQrg {House of ColOero;), Tell, Mr.' Oakly, *Lord Bellenden {Men of Pleasure), 4; Kitely, Virginius, 2 ; Hotspur, Hastings, Daran, Wolsey, i. I04 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. 1833-34: *Sardanapalus, 23; Henry I\'.. 12; Macbeth. Werner, 7 ; Prospero, Hotspur, \'irginius, 4 ; Tell, Antony {Antony and C/copatra), 3 ; Hastings, Hamlet, Coriolanus, 2 : Mr. Oakly, Pierre, Biron {IsadcHa), Posthumus, Stranger, Wolscy, Leontes, Jaques, Henry V., lago, King John, King Lear, i. At Covent Garden : King Lear, 2 ; Hamlet, I. At the Victoria : A'irginius, I. At the Opera HOUSE : Virginias, i. 1835-36: Macbeth, 9; *Bertulphe {Pro7'os/ 0/ Bneifcs), 8 ; Othello, 7 ; Hamlet, Lord Townly, 3 ; Jaques, Hotspur, Leontes, Virginius, King John, Tell, Stranger, Henry IV., Richard IIL (tirst three acts), i. Covent Garden : 1836 : *Ion, 8 ; INLacbcth, Stranger, 2 ; Virginius, Hamlet, Cassius, i. 1S36-37 : Othello, King John, 14; Ion, Brutus, 13; *Bragelone {La VaUicrc), 8; ^slacbeth, 7; Richard III., VVolsey, *Straftbrd, 5 ; Virginius, 4 ; Werner, Posthumus, 3 ; Leontes, Pierre, 2 ; Hamlet, Hastings, i. lo; CHAPTER V. 1837-1843. MANAGEMENT. The idea of going into management had hovered before Macready's mind tor years. It was absohitely necessary, he felt — and the "legitimate" actors all felt with him — that some effort should be made to arrest the rapid decline of the legitimate drama. At the patent theatres, to which these performers were obliged to look for the greater part, at any rate, of their livelihood, matters had long been going from bad lo worse. Manager after manager had been driven to the most '' illegitimate" expedients in the hope of attracting the public, and had nevertheless drifted into insolvenc}'. The monopoly which confined the ''regular drama"" to Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket had become a mere dog-in-the-manger absurdity. Its days were clearly numbered; yet Macready and most of his comrades had the foresight to recognize that the remedy for the depression of their particular Ijranch of ait was not to be found in free-trade. In his evidence before the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature, of 1S32, Macready had expressed himself in favour of the monoi)oly, with certain modifications. In the mean time, the fact of the decline was obvious, and it was ro6 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. generally felt that some serious attempt ought to be made to stay it. All eyes turned towards Macready. In spite of his unpopularity, he was known to be an able, energetic, honourable man. If anything could be done, he was the man to do it. Private motives conspired with public con- siderations to induce him to undertake the task. It was certain that, unless he stepped into the breach, the great theatres would be given over to a succession of showman- managers, of Bunns and Osbaldistons, each, probably, more speculative and irresponsible than the last. He ' could no longer brook such leadership ; and, on the other hand, his power of attraction in the provinces was on the wane. Even if his management should result in a pecuniary loss, the effort, he knew, would not be in- glorious. The great productions which he had in his mind's eye would give his reputation a fillip both in the country and in America. A splendid success was pos- sible, a disastrous failure highly improbable. The enter- prise might conceivably lead to great results for dramatic art and all concerned in it, while at Avorst it could do him, personally, no harm in the long-run. Osbaldiston's failure offered an opportunity, and, after much anxious thought, Macready determined to enter into negotiations with the Covent Garden proprietors. In the mean time, he had accepted a short engagement with Benjamin Webster, who entered upon his historic management at the Haymarket on INIonday, June 12, 1837. On that night Macready played Hamlet, with Webster as the Gravedigger, Elton as the Ghost, and Miss Huddart as the Queen. The chief event of this en- gagement was the first performance in London (June 26) of The Bridal. Tt was an adroit-enough li.mdling of a difficult subject, though much of the tragic intensity of the original was, of course, sacrificed, whilst the style of MANA CEMENT. 107 Knowles, overlaying that of Beaumont and Fletcher, was like a coat of cheap varnish on a Stradivarius. Its success was declared to be more brilliant and decisive tlian that of any play since The Hii}ichback. According to the Times, the rough frankness of Macready's Me- lantius was touching, his anger terrific. Miss Huddart's Evadne was probably the great success of her life. Elton made a hit as Amintor, and Miss Taylor played Aspatia. Farren, Buckstonc, Mrs. Nisbett, and Mrs. Glover were all at this time members of the Haymarket company, and Macready appeared along with them in The Provoked Hnsbayid. By the middle of July the Covent Garden negotiations were practically concluded. I have not been able to dis- cover the precise details of Macready's contract with the proprietors. ^Ve find in his diary that he offered to pay ^40 per night for a hundred and eighty nights (_p^720o in all), and then, after assigning himself a salary of ^^30 a week, to share any surplus with the proprietors "till the remainder of ^8800 should be paid to them." On the other hand, we have his own statement that the rent he actually did pay was only ^5500, or about ^26 for each of the two hundred and eleven acting nights of the season. During his second and more productive season he paid ^7000 on two hundred and twenty-one acting nights, or a little over ^31 a night. It appears, then, that the claims of the proprietors must have been in some measure contingent on the receipts ; but the details of the arrangement are, to me at least, obscure. Fifteen years earlier, Elliston had paid the Drury Lane proprietors ;^i 1,300 in a single season. Comparing these figures, the reader may estimate for himself the depreciation of theatrical property. The next care was to select a company, and to induce io8 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. the actors so far to moderate their demands as to give the enterprise a fair start. The fact that he had no real difticulty on this score is a conclusive proof of the con- fidence he inspired. He met with only one serious re- buff — from Charles Kean. Having won his way by a hard struggle into genuine popularity, Kean was but little tempted by Macready's offer to "give the completest scope to the full development of his talents." He knew that the value of such a phrase lay entirely in its inter- pretation; and being by inheritance and habit essentially a " star," he saw that it would be folly on his part to become a stock actor under a tragedian-manager. Mac- ready can scarcely have expected any other reply. His offer was probably intended as a mere cloak for the ex- pression of a hope that, if Kean could not co-operate, he would at least not actively oppose — a rather maladroit appeal to an improbable generosity. On July 30, 1837, Macready wrote to his friend Wight- wick, with reference to an Exeter tragedian, of whom good reports had reached him — '• I hope he is moderate in his expectations of 7-cmiiiicraiion for ours is now a struggle for existence^ not for profit ; and every salary on our establishment is largely, but willingly, reduced. I should like much to know what is his aim in coming to town — whether he has the 'aul Ca:sar aut nullus' view of young Kean, or a resolution in the love of his art to study and toil for the perfection of it." This young man was named Samuel Phelps; and, after a visit to Southampton to see him act, Macready engaged him. Another provincial aclor, James Anderson, who came of a Scotch theatrical firmily, and had been on the stage from his childhood, was secured for the "juvenile lead." Phelps was at this time thirty-three, Anderson twenty-eight. Edward \\'illiam Ellon, on the ulhur hand. AfA NA GEMENT. \ 09 was only a year younger than Macready himself. He had for nearly twenty years been struggling into notice as a provincial and East-End actor, but had only recently made his mark in the ^^'est End. An amiable and intelligent man, he had no originality of talent, and his small stature stood in the way of his advancement. James Warde was a still older stager. V,oxx\ in 1790, he had been a leading actor in Bath and Dublin for a dozen years before his first appearance at Covent Garden in 1825. He was a useful and " responsible " performer of the second rank. Ten years younger than Warde, George Bennett was an actor of similar merit, though not yet of equal reputation. He had played the leading tragic characters in his day, not without applause ; but his place was un- doubtedly in the second rank. Pritchard, though an actor of some ambition, scarcely rose above the third rank, to which such useful but undistinguished performers as Waldron and Diddear certainly belonged. On the level of general utility stood T. J. Serle, playwright and actor, one of Macready's most assiduous henchmen ; and a youth of twenty-five, named Henry Howe, was already showing in small parts that sterling ability which has earned him the respect of two generations of playgoers. Among the ladies, Miss Huddart and Miss Helen Eaucit shared the leading place. Miss Huddart, born in 1804, had been discovered and brought to the front by Mac- ready, and was now the best living actress of what may be called Siddonian characters. Miss Eaucit, whose mother and elder sister had preceded her on the boards, was a girl of eighteen, and had made her first appearance so recently as January, 1836. She was already recognized as the most promising young actress of her time; but her first signal triumph was yet (and very soon) to come. On tlie comic side the company was well provided no WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. The genial and rotund Bartley, fifty-five years of age, had made liis first appearance in London so early as 1802, had acted all over the English-speaking world of his time, had succeeded Fawcett as stage-manager at Covent Garden during Charles Kemble's reign, and now retained that post under Macready. W. |. Hammond, one of the best low comedians and burlesque actors on the stage, came fresh from a great success at the Strand Theatre in the part of Sani Weller, the popular hero of the hour. Vining, Drinkwater Meadows, and Tilbury were all sterling actors trained in a good school. Harley, " Quicksilver Harley," whom the death of Munden and the retirement of Liston left incontestably the first comedian of the older generation, joined the company in the spring of 1838 ; and Tyrone Power, the extravagantly popular Irish actor ; Strickland, a good comedian of the second order ; and Mrs. Glover, the greatest living actress in 'a wide range of comic characters, — all made brief appearances in the course of the season. Miss Taylor (afterwards Mrs. Walter Lacy) ])layed with dis- tinction in sentimental comedy ; Mrs. Humby was an experienced and popular soubrette ; Mrs. W. Clifford was a good " first old woman ; " and a girl of nineteen, Miss Priscilla Horton, whom many of us remember as Mrs. German Reed, soon proved herself one of the most useful members of the company. " English opera," said ALicready, in his opening mani- festo, " has become an essential part of the amusements of a metropolitan audience." He was consequently forced to secure a strong musical company, the leaders of which v/ere Wilson, Manvers, and Leffler, Miss Shirreff, and Miss Vincent. Though these names have lillle meaning in our ears, they were poinilar in their day. Indeed, I gather that Miss Shirreff drew tlie MAXAGEMENT. ill highest salary on the Covent Garden list~-^i8 a week. Macready offered Miss Faucit (and she seems to have accepted) ;^i5 a week, while Phelps had only ;£\o, and Anderson jCd. The musical director was Alexander Lee, once part-manager of Drury Lane, who died some years afterwards in extreme misery. There was also a complete company of pantomiraists on the establishment, including W. H. Payne, T. IVLatthews, and C. J. Smith, who used to play " utility " parts in the Shakespearian productions. The chief scene-painter was Marshall, an artist of some originality. Macready promised and carried out two reforms which deserve to be noticed. He forswore the extravagant and mendacious play-bill puffs of his predecessors, and he did his best, at considerable trouble and expense, to free the theatre from the " improper intrusion "' which had from time immemorial rendered certain parts of it unapproachable for ladies. At Covent Garden he seems to have effected this improvement with comparative ease ; but at Drury Lane, in 1S41, his conduct was so misre- presented in the press (especially by the John Bull and the Weekly Dispatch) as to .cause him much annoyance. On the whole, he seems to have effected a distinct improvement in the manners of the average audience. Ten years earlier, Prince Piickler-Muskau wondered how great actors could endure to waste their genius on the inattentive mob whose turbulence would often spoil their best effects. At the end of this chapter will be found a synopsis, as complete as my limits allow, of Macready's four seasons of management. I have given the dates and casts of all important productions, with the numlier of their repeti- tions, so that such details need not burden my text. The bill generally consisted of a five-act play and a farce, a 112 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADl. three-act drama, or a musical piece ; sometimes both a farce and an operetta would be given. For instance, Macbeth would be followed by Fra Dlavolo or The Marriage of Figaro, Hamlet by The Miller and his Men, Othello by Dibdin's Waterman and The Spitfire, Werner by the Christmas pantomime. With us a three-act play will often constitute an '• entire evening's entertainment ; " fifty years ago the public would have felt defrauded had the manager offered them less than six acts, and did not complain of seven or eight. "• Curtain-raisers " were unknown. The solid pudding always headed the bill of fare, with a more or less liberal dessert to follow. The institution of "half-price," however, must have been a boon to all who preferred to take their theatrical enjoy- ments in moderate doses. The new management made but a languid start. The Winter's Tale was carefully but not brilliantly mounted, and the acting excited no enthusiasm. Anderson alone, who had nearly thrown up his engagement in disgust at being cast for Florizel, made a striking success. The revivals of Hamlet and Othello passed unnoticed by the Times, though, according t& the Examiner, " the scenes of Hamlet were a series of glorious pictures," wliilc tlie Council-scene in Othello (a faithful reproduction of the " Sala del Maggior Consiglio "') was one of the finest of all Rlacready's scenic effects. Macbeth, very strongly cast, and with tiic whole of the musical company in the singing parts, was the first revival that really impressed both critics and public. The Times admitted that Macready had made it " almost a new play ; "' while the John Bull said, " The poetry of the drama is now for the first time put in motion, and its supernatural agents begin to assunie their real functions." On the other hand, Henry /'. was '"crudely and incompletely" MANA GEMENT. 1 13 revived, the battle of Agincourt being fought by gentle- men in silken hose and velvet doublets, while not a single bowman was visible ! Balfe's Joan of Arc being in preparation at Drury Lane, Macready was not above taking the wind out of Bunn's sails by hurrying on a spectacular romance of the same title, written by Serle, with one or two ideas borrowed from Schiller. It was successful ; and, a few days later, Rooke's romantic opera Ainilie was received with great favour. Neverthe- less, it was stated that the loss, up to Christmas, amounted to ^3000; while scoffers remarked that tliis vaunted Shakespearian management had made its only real successes with a spectacle and an opera. The pantomime, with Stanfield's diorama, somewhat re- plenished the treasury, and towards the end of January King Lear was revived with unprecedented scenic effect. " The castles," said the John Bull, " are heavy, sombre, and solid ; their halls are adorned with trophies of the chase and instruments of war ; druid circles rise in spec- tral loneliness on the heath ; and the ' dreadful pother ' of the elements is kept up with a verisimilitude which beggars all that we have hitherto seen attempted." The Fool, restored to the stage for the first time, amid many misgivings, was charmingly played by Priscilla Horton. Three weeks later a new play was produced, the author- ship of which was attributed by rumour to all manner of improbable people. It was called The Lady of Lyons : and Macready, rather to his own humiliation, and to the displeasure of his more fervent admirers, assumed the part of the youthful hero. He was at least twice the age of Claude Melnotte, but Anderson assures us that " when playing to a good house, he did not look more than twenty-five ; " and as Anderson would fain have played the part himself, his evidence may be taken as unbiased. I 114 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC RE ADV. The play was enthusiastically received, Miss Faucit's Pauline producing a deeper impression than any of her previous performances. The Times praised the adroit manipulation of the plot, and allowed that the author "had written several nice speeches," but declared the characters to be " the gaudy, overdrawn personages of melodrame." " Vulgar bravoes," it added, greeted the " republican claptraps \\hich were flung in every here and there ; " and these '' liberalisms," as another critic contemptuously called them, gave so much offence that at the end of the fourth performance Macready protested, in a short address, that they " belonged to the period of the action," and were to be taken as purely dramatic utterances. For five or six nights the play drew poor houses, and Macready was on the point of withdrawing it ; but Bartley, who, in the part of Damas, had good opportunities of watching the demeanour of the audience, assured him that, if he kept it on, it would be "as great a draw as The Stranger'' Gradually the audiences in- creased, and the announcement of the author's name confirmed its success; notwithstanding which, Buhvcr declined to receive any payment for it. Perhaps by way of atonement for so frivolous a triumph, Macready now put all his strength into a great revival of Coriolanus, which extorted the admiration even of Bunn. The Times, indeed, dismissed it in seventeen lines, admitting that " the organization of the mob was ex- ceedingly clever," but adding that the " decorations were better than the substance." in his mounting of the play Macready reversed the achievement of Augustus — he found the stage Rome marble, and left it brick. Tiie Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, and Trajan's Column figured in Kcmble's revival ; in Macready 's, the Palatine was covered with thatched hovels. In everv outdoor Jl/A NA GEMEN7\ \ 1 5 scene, the Capitol, with its arx and temples, closed the perspective, "like a chord in music pervading the entire comjiosition." In the Senate-scene, the white-robed fathers, between one and two hundred in number, sat in triple rows round three sides of the stage, an effect of perspective being obtained by getting half-grown boys to present the more distant figures. In the middle of the back row the Consul occupied the curule chair ; before him the fire of the sacred altar, behind him (sole ornament of the pillared hall) the brazen wolf suckling the founders of Rome. The starlight view of the port and mole of Antium, with its pharos, was a lovely effect. But the great scene of all was the siege of Rome by the Volscian army, with its battering-rams and moving towers. The brilliantly equipped soldiers " seemed thousands, not hundreds ; " and when their serried ranks opened for the " black apparition " of the Roman matrons. '' one long dreary sable line of monotonous misery," the stage presented a glorious picture. The management of the Roman mob, all critics agree, was an unparalleled feat. Each figure lived its own life, and the plebeians were '' now for the first time shown upon the stage as agents of the tragic catastrophe." In this revival, in short, Macready seems to have anticipated all the Meiningen methods. An unfortunate attempt of Forster's to prove Macready superior to Kemble, on the ground that it is a mistake to suppose Coriolanus " an abstraction of Roman-nosed grandeur," drew from James Smith the following epigram, which had great success in its day :— "What scenes of grandeur docs this play disclose, Where all is Roman — save the Roman's nose ! " Coriola/ius was the great effort of the season. Macready produced The Ttuo Foscari for his benefit, with much Ii6 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. applause ; but the part of the Doge soon dropped out of his repertory. After this, nothing of importance occurred until well on in the summer, when Sheridan Knowles's comedy of Woman's Wit was produced amid wild enthusiasm. To us it is almost inconceivable that l^eople should take pleasure in the romantic extravagances of the plot and the laboured artificiality of the wit ; for, Irishman though he was, Knowles assuredly " jocked wi' deeficulty." The success of Woman's Wit, however, almost rivalled that of The Lady of Lyons, and brought the season to a brilliant close. On the whole Macready had fought a good fight. Out of two hundred and elev^en acting nights, fifty-five had been devoted to Shakespeare,* eleven of his plays being produced. There is reason to believe that, if he would have yielded to the tendency of the time, and repeated King Lear and Coriolanus without intermission until their attraction was exhausted, he might largely have increased the proportion of Shakespearian performances, to the great advantage of his treasury ; but he resisted, with heroic obstinacy, the encroachments of the " long run "system. As it was, he stated ofticially that "the plays of Shakespeare, genuine and unalloyed, had been the most profitable performances of the season " — and this in sj)ite of the rivalry of Charles Kean, who had played a forty-three nights' engagement at Drury Lane to large houses. The legitimate drama, as a whole, had held by far the most prominent place in the Covent Garden pro- gramme ; and though Macready had been rather unfor- tunate in his minor novelties, he had added two new plays of some importance to the dramatic literature of the time. * In these statistics I do not reci'^oa Garrick's afterpiece, Catherine and Pctriichio, among the Shakespearian jiiays. MANAGEMENT. \\>j During the recess he played a five-weeks' engagement with Webster at the Haymarket, appearing on July 23 as Kitely in Every Man in his Humour. On August 4 Talfourd's Athenian Captive was produced with consider- able success, Mrs. Warner playing Ismene and Macready Thoas. The same company, to all intents and purposes, gathered round Macready for his second Covent Garden season. It was strengthened, however, by Vandenhoff and his daughter. Vandenhoff was an older man and older actor than Macready by about three years, though he did not appear in London until 1820. He was popular in the provinces, but had never quite attained the first rank in his profession. Macready writes of him as " a useful mill-horse actor, or rather post-horse " — implying that it was his nature to follow in the track of others. Miss Vandenhoff, now near the commencement of her career, was a mediocre actress, who subsequently came to be regarded as an imitator of Miss Helen Faucit. It was Macready's practice, at the beginning of each season, to distribute complimentary season tickets among men of distinction in literature, art, and science. The ticket sent to Carlyle for the season 1838-39 elicited the follow- ing characteristic letter of thanks : — " 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, October 12, 1838. " Dear Sir, " On returning from the country, I find you have again honoured me widi a Free Ticket to Covent Garden. I owe you many thanks for such a kindness and distinction ; many thanks for the great pleasure I hope to have this season, as I had last, of occasionally seeing you — were it only in the distance and by lamplight. To an entirely ////theatrical man, perhaps the most so of all your spectators, there was a touch of wild sincerity in these things whicli was extremely ii8 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. striking. I wondered at the Drama, wondered at your Her- culean task. Proceed in it, prosper in it ! I remain always, " Dear sir, " Yours, much obliged "T. Carlvle." The first week of the season was given up to Vanden- hofif and Phelps, who played Coriolanus and Aufidius, lachimo and Posthumus, respectively. The critics condemned them roundly, perhaps not altogether to Macready's disappointment. At the end of the third week the first great effort of the season was made — an elaborate and highly successful revival of The Tempest. It was received with enthusiasm. '' Even papers that were wont to ' damn with faint praise, assent with civil sneer,' and to dismiss with a frigid notice of some dozen lines the most splendid restorations of Shakespeare at this theatre, whilst devoting columns to nonentities elsewhere, at length joined in the popular acclaim." Yet the general taste of the production was questionable. The whole dialogue of the opening scene was suppressed ; and the shipwreck, exhibited spectacularly, was a more or less clever piece of mechanism. In the second scene Pros])ero and Miranda entered together down a rocky incline, so that Miranda's first words — " If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them !" — were treated as part of an ordinary conversation, instead of the eager cry of her " i)itcous heart " on first meeting her father after having witnessed the wreck. It seems almost incredible that Ferdinand's sword should have been struck out of his hand by actual collision witli Prospero's wand; yet so i\\c John Bull affirms. Miss Priscilla Horton, as Ariel, it adds, was " whisked nliout MA NA GEMENT. 1 19 l)y wires and a cog-wheel like . . . the ladies in Peter IVitkifis^' and throughout the play " poetry was drowned in the vulgar hurly-burly of an Easter piece." Almost the only feature of the production praised by this critic (in my judgment the ablest of his day) was George Bennett's Caliban, which was acknowledged to be at once powerful and poetical. The John Bull, however, stood almost alone in its unfavourable opinion. The other critics were loud in their praises, especially of the wire-wafted Ariel. According to the Examiner, she " floated ill air across the stage, singing or mocking as she floated — while a chorus of spirits winged after her higher in the air. Now amidst the terrors of the storm she flanjcd aniazcnicnt ; now with the gentle descent of a protecting god she hung over the slumbers of Gonzago, . . . flitting in another instant across the scene, behold her resting on a leaf, that she may mock with her pretty human mimicry, Caliban and Stephano and Trinculo ; and then, almost before thought has time to follow her, see the pert and deft little spirit per- forming the part of Ceres. . . . The masque is given as Shakespeare wrote it, with beautiful landscapes, brown and blue, such as Titian would have beheld with pleasure.'' VV^e arc j^robahly safe in taking the mean between the John Bull, which found little to praise, and the Examiner, which found nothing to condemn. The majority sided with the Examiner. The play was performed fifty-five times to an average of ^230 a night, and might have drawn like receipts for another hundred nights, says Anderson, if Macready would have suffered it to run without interruption. Early in December Macready once more resorted to the not very generous policy of forestalling Bunn in an important enterprise. Rossini's Guillaume Tell being in preparation at Drury Lane, Knowlcs's William Tell \\3.^ I20 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. hurried on at Covent Garden, with interpolated choruses from Rossini's opera, performed by a company of eighty singers. The pantomime of Fair Rosamond was a failure on Boxing Night, but '• weathered the storm," and be- came fairly popular. January and February were, for the most part, given up to The Tempest, Kitig Lea?-, and The Lady of Lyo?is. But early in March a new play by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, Bart., was produced. ^Richelie2i: or, The Conspiracy, had been the subject of long and anxious discussion and correspondence between author and manager. The character of De Mauprat (under another name) was originally intended for Mac- ready, but the impossibility of finding a satisfactory Richelieu led to the abandonment of this design. Every scene, every speech, was anxiously weighed, and, before the production was finally decided upon, the play was submitted to a conclave of advisers, among whom were Robert Browning and W. J. Fox. It was elaborately mounted and very carefully prepared. " We have had twenty rehearsals of this piece," said some one on the morning of the production. " Then I wish you luck at vingt-et-un," replied Tom Cooke, the conductor of the orchestra. His wish was amply fulfilled. The extra- ordinary originality and power of Macready's concep- tion were recognized from the outset, and the great scenes of the concluding acts roused the crowded audience to a wild pitch of excitement. When Richelieu drew "the circle of the Church " round Julie de Mortemar, and threatened to " launch the curse of Rome " at who- ever should infringe it. "the vast pit," says ^^'estland Marston, " seemed to rock with enthusiasm as it vol- leyed its admiration in rounds of thunder;" and the great phrase of the last act, " There, at my feet ! " proved no less effective. The press scarcely echoed the public management: 121 enthusiasm. '' The play is clever," said the Times — " nothing more nor less ; clever is the exact predicate. ... Sir E. L. Bulwer, according to the new and most absurd fashion, being called for, made his bow from the stage-box." The John Bull admitted that the author had shown tact, cleverness, and the power of adapting means to an end : '• but the tact is wasted on the little, the cleverness on the pretty ; the end is to startle, and the means are squibs." A week later, the same paper remarked, " We said that the herd would go and gape at Riclielieu, and were oracular, for they do." The success was complete, and for three months no new effort of any importance was required. For Miss Faucit's benefit, As Vou Like It was revived, Macready playing Jaques, and Phelps the First Lord ! — who, however, was not forced, according to stage tradition, to give up his one great speech ^to Jaques. Miss Faucit, playing Rosalind for the first time, was received with popular applause, but not, as she herself tells us, with critical approbation. A '"'dramatic romance" named Agnes Bernaner was moderately successful ; but a new opera named Henrique, l)y the composer ot Auiilie, soon dropped out of the bills. Having determined, early in April, to bring his management to a close at the end of the season, Macready gave his wliole mind to an elaborate revival oi Henry V., which should enable him to retire in a blaze of triumph. The rehearsals were long and arduous, and the actors were seriously annoyed by the perpetual presence on the stage of a whole cohort of the manager's friends — Bulwer, Dickens, Forster, Maclise, Fox, and others. Forster's overbearing manner made him especially obnoxious, and so utterly upset the nerves of Mrs. Humb)-, who was to have played Dame Quickly, that the words of her part constantly escaped 122 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. her. She was, says James Anderson, so incredibly ignorant that her comrades advised her to put up with Forster's interferences on the ground that he was the author of the play ! Even this consideration, however, could not reconcile her to his habit of shouting, when- ever she made a slip, " Put her through it again, Mac. ; put her through it again ; " so that the matter ended in her relinquishing the part. The production did not take place until early in June, when it was received with general acclamation. The Morning Chronicle declared it "worthy of being reserved for some great national fete^' adding that "the nation has but rarely the oc- casions which deserve so splendid a celebration.'" Once more the Joiin Bull played the devil's advocate, ridicul- ing especially Stanfield's "Pictorial Illustrations." The prologue to the first act, with its allusion to " famine, sword, and fire," crouching for employment at the feet of " the warlike Harry," was illustrated by "a figure in armour with three furies clinging to his feet." " .Shade of yKschylus ! " cries the critic, " imagine your 'I'heban chiefs ill a raree-show ! " Macready's performance of the King was pronounced " conventionally dignified " and " bustling and didactic, rather than frank and im- pulsive." Phelps told Mr. Coleman that, after fatiguing rehearsals, Macready would "devote hours to walking about the stage ' with his cuisses on his thighs ; ' but all to no avail, for at night he tossed and tumbled about literally like a hog in armour." Nevertheless, the production was very attractive. " It would have filled the house nightly," said Anderson ; "but the old policy prevailed : it was acted only four nights a week, up to the close of the season, which was as good as telling the public the i)roduction was only half a success." Macready's reasons for relinquishing management are MANAGEMENT. 123 not very clear. Tlie enterprise was evidently prospering. He calculated that in " actual decrease of capital and absence of profit on his labour," he was ^2500 out of pocket by his first season ; but the result of his second season must have been very different. The ex- cessively cautious proposition he made to the Covent Ciardcn proprietors for a third season was rejected by them ; and as we find him, several months earlier, re- solving in his diary that Henry F. should be " the last Shakespearian revival of his management," it is natural to infer that he did not desire or intend it to be ac- cepted. One can hardly believe the proprietors so blind to their own interests as to let slip such a tenant if they could retain him by any reasonable concessions ; unless, indeed, they were already in treaty with Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris, who eventually took the theatre. We may probably conclude that the cares of management were such a perpetual annoyance to Mac- ready as to make him eager for any fair excuse to cast them off. Both in personal and professional considera- tion he had reaped the full reward of his enterprise. A public dinner bore witness to the esteem in which he was held, by a clique, perhaps, but certainly a large and influential clique. It took place at the Freemasons' Tavern, Ji^ily 20, 1839. The Duke of Sussex was in the chair, and Lord Conyngham, Lord Nugent, Dickens, Bulwer, Shell, Talfourd, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Forster, Fonblanque, Charles BuUer, and Charles Young were among the company. This was just the sort of distinction Macready most appreciated, and though nervousness made him look, as Bulwer said, like " a baffled tyrant," the occasion may be called, in more than a conventional sense, one of the proudest moments of his life. 124 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. It was at tliis time that he apphed to the Lord Chamberlain for a '-'personal licence" to perform the legitimate drama when and where he pleased — an ap- plication which was ultimately refused. Similar ill success attended a scheme for securing him the post of Reader of Plays, in succession to Charles Kemble. He was eager to obtain the office, and would willingly have engaged to retire from the stage in four years, or even in one, had such a condition been insisted on. In the end, however, the Anglo-Saxon scholar, John Mitchell Kemble, succeeded his father. During the two years and a half which intervened between his first and second managements, Macready was engaged, almost without intermission, at the Hay- market. He seems to have got on better with the Haymarket manager than with any other. I find him, indeed, in a letter to Webster of Oc.ober 8, 1840, com- plaining bitterly of certain unspecified offences, and vowing that, after the expiration of the current engage- ment, he will never enter upon another. But this (juarrel seems to have blown over quickly, and Macready certainly did not carry out his resolution. On August 19, 1839, he appeared at the Haymarket as Othello, with Phelps as lago. Cooper as Cassio, Walter T,acy as Roderigo, Miss J*aucit as Desdemona, and Mrs. Warner as EmiHa, Mr. Howe, on this occasion, made his first appearance on the stage with which he was so long and honourably connected, in the small part of Lodovico. The Lady of .Lyons followed, and was frequently rejieated. Other stock plays were ])er- formed at intervals, tlic most popular being The Merchant of Venice, with Phelps as Antonio, Helen Faucit as Portia, and Buckstone as Launcelot (lobbo. On October 31 a new play by Sir E. I.. Dulwcr was produced willi MANAGEMENT. 125 yreat success. This was The Sea-Captain ; or., The Birth- right., now remembered almost solely by reason of Barham's rhyming account of its plot, and Thackeray's scathing satire on its style. Macready played Norman ; Phelps, Onslow ; Mrs. Warner, Tady Arundel ; and Miss Faucit, Violet. In the scene between Norman and Lady Arundel, where the son reveals himself to his mother, and, being scornfully repudiated, invokes the spirits of his ancestors to take his part, " Macready's action, his look, his utterance, was sublimity itself." The play did not hold the stage, however, either in its original shape, or in the revised form in which it was reproduced at the Lyceum in 1868, under the title of The Rightful Heir. Five days after the close of the Haymarket season Macready appeared at Drury Lane, under the manage- ment of the comedian W. J. Hammond. His opening play (January 20) was Macbeth, with Phelps as Macduff, and Mrs. Warner as Lady Macbeth. On January 22 a new tragedy by James Haynes was produced under the title of Mary Stuart. It had originally and more fitly been called Kizzio. Macready's part was Ruthxen ; Elton played Rizzio ; Phelps, Darnley ; and Mrs. Warner, the Queen. The play was repeated twenty times, but cannot have been profitable, since at the end of February Hammond failed for ;^8ooo. Macready played four nights gratuitously for the benefit of the minor per- formers, and then returned to the Haymarket, where the season commenced on March 16. The opening play was Hamlet, with Warde as Claudius, Mrs. Warner as Gertrude, Priscilla Horton as Ophelia, Strickland as Polonius, Webster as Osric, and Phelps as the Ghost. A revival of The Sea-Captain proved un- attractive ; but, on the other hand, The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu vied with each other in popularity. At- 126 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. the close of the previous year a tragedy named Glencoc : or, The Fate of the Macdonalds. had been placed in Macready's hands by Dickens. He read it with admira- tion, and thought the anonymous author an imitator of Talfourd, " but without the point that terminated Tal- fourd's speeches." Great was his surprise on learning that it was by Talfourd himself. It was successfully produced at the Haymarket on May 23, Macready playing Halbert Macdonald ; Phelps, Glenlyon ; Webster, Maclan; Mrs. Warner, Lady Macdonald; and Miss Faucit, Helen Campbell. A gloomy and stilted production, it took no permanent place on the stage. IMrs. Inchbald's comedy, To Marry or not to Marry, revived with INIac- ready in Kemble's part of Sir Oswin Mortland, met with some success, but a new play by Serle, named Master Clarke (September 26), was practically a failure. In this Macready played Richard Cromwell ; and Miss Faucit, his wife, Lady Dorothy. The play-bill of November 5 announced that a " New and Original Comedy by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer had been accepted, and would be produced as early as the scenic arrangements, etc., would permit." A week later its tide, rMoNEv ! appeared in large letters. The production, after repeated postpone- ments, was fixed for Saturday, November 28 ; but on the previous day the play-bill stated that "In consecpience of the very severe domestic calamity of Mr. M.^cready, the production was necessarily deferred until Mr. Mac- ready could resume his professional duties." The calamity was the death of his daughter Joan, aged three years and four months. Phelps and A\'allack occupied the bill for ten days, playing Othello, JIamlet, and other stock pieces. On December 7 Macready appeared in Wcnwr, and on the following evening Money was pro- duced, •■ with entirely new Scenery, Dresses, Furniture, MA NA CEMENT. \ 2 7 and A[)pui"tcnanccs." It was out of pure coni])laisancc that IMacready accepted the part of Alfred Evelyn. Ke calls it in his diary " ineffective and inferior," and is said to have denounced the sententious secretary, in private, as a "damned walking-gentleman." His success, how- ever, was indubitable ; " the forced gaiety," says Walter Lacy, "being as natural to the man as appropriate to the character." The cast as a whole was very strong : Miss Faucit and Miss Horton played Clara Douglas and Georgina Vesey; Webster and Mrs. Glover established the traditions, .now so threadbare, of Graves and Lady Franklin ; David Rees, a fine and very popular come- dian, created the part of Stout ; Dudley Smooth, declined by James A\'allack, was admirably performed by Wrench ; F. Vining played Lord Glossmore ; Strickland, Sir John Vesey ; and Walter Lacy, Sir Frederick Blount. Every strap and button of the costumes was anxiously studied, Count d'Orsay supervising the whole ; for the Mathews- Vestris management at the Olympic and Covent Garden had made solecisms in modern dress unpardonable. We obtain a curious glimpse of Macready's habiliments in the following letter from Dickens, dated 1845 : — "]\IY DEAR MACREADV, " You once — only once — gave the world assurance of a waistcoat. You wore it, sir, I think, in Money. It was a remarkable and precious waistcoat, wherein certain broad stripes of blue or purple disported themselves, as by a com- bination of extraordinary circumstances too happy to occur again. I have seen it on your manly chest in private life. I saw it, sir, I think, the other day in the cold light of morning, with feelings easier to be imagined than described. Mr. Macready, sir, are you a father? If so, lend me that waistcoat for five minutes. ... I will send a trusty mes- senger at half-past nine precisely in the niorninf;^. He is sworn to secrecv. He durst not for his life belra\- us, or 128 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. swells in ambuscade would have the waistcoat at the cost of his heart's blood. " Thine, "The Unwaistcoated One." This marvellous garment no doubt contributed its share to the success of the comedy, which was unprecedented. It ran for eighty consecutive nights, the season being extended for two months, up to March 13, 1841, by special licence from the Lord Chamberlain. When Macready returned to the Haymarket for the following season (May 3, 1841) Money was again placed in the bills — Mrs. Stirling now playing Lady Franklin — and was repeated twenty-nine times. His performances during this season were interrupted for nearly two months, during which Charles Kean and Ellen Tree held the chief place in the bills, their principal produc- tion being Romeo and Juliet. Macready played no new character until November i, when, for Miss Faucit's benefit, R. Zouch Troughton's tragedy of Nina Sforza was produced. Wallack played the hero, Raphael Doria ; and Macready found in Ugone Spinola one of those sardonic villains who had vexed his soul during his early years at Covent Garden. The play, though written with some power, was in truth a mere romance, with little dramatic fibre. On December 7 he brought his Haymarket engagement to a close with The Lady of Lyons. So early as the previous April Macready had arranged to undertake the management of Drury Lane, and to open the theatre at Christmas. I am unable to state the pre- cise terms of his agreement with the proprietors. He notes in his diary that he demanded " liberty to close at a day's notice," and " no comjmlsion to pay any rent." This somewhat fantastic stipulation probably means that. MANAGEMENT. 129 if he should bring the season to a premature close, no rent was to be due for the nights thus sacrificed. We learn, too, that when he entered upon his new dominion, the female wardrobe was not worth ^40, and there was not a serviceable rope in the house ; so that the proprietors had to consent to a " very inadequate deduction " from the rent, in consideration of his putting the theatre in working order, ^Vhat the rent actually was, however, I have not discovered. The chief members of his Covent Garden company gathered eagerly round him, in some cases rejecting more highly-paid engagements elsewhere — a sufficient proof, surely, that his bark was worse than his bite. Mrs. Warner and Miss Faucit, Phelps, Elton, Anderson, and George Bennett enlisted once m'ore under his banner ; while Henry Marston, who had come to the front under Hammond's management, was the chief new- comer on the tragic side. This sterling actor, afterwards Phelps's trusted lieutenant at Sadler's \Vells, might have attained great distinction but for his unfortunately husky voice. The leading comedians were Keeley, Mrs. Keeley, Henry Compton, and James Hudson. Keeley and his wife were already at the height of their popularity ; Compton had been four years on the London stage ; and Hudson, a young actor whom Macready had discovered in Dublin, proved a valuable importation. The musical company included H. Phillips and Allen, Miss Romer, Miss (jould, Miss Poole, and Miss P. Horton. Ander- son was stage-manager ; Serle, acting-manager ; and T. Cooke, musical director. The scenic department — doubly important since the decorative achievements of the Vestris management at Covent Garden —was for the most part in the hands of Marshall and Telbin. The season opened on Boxing Night with The Mer- chant of Venice and the pantomime of Harlequin and K I30 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. Duke UinnJ)/irey. Enthusiasm was the order of the evening, and the audience would not suffer the play to proceed until Macready had appeared to receive their welcome. The Times, which, four years ago, had dis- missed Macready's opening night at Covent Garden in a mere paragraph, now devoted a column and three- quarters to impressing on the public the importance of the new undertaking. Macready's Shylock was received with almost unmixed praise, and the mounting of the play was declared superb. For the fust time (so far as I know) in the case of a Shakespearian revival, a synopsis of the scenery was issued — an honour hitherto reserved for pan- tomime and spectacular drama. Even now the list of scenes found no place on the play-bill, but was relegated to a small fly-leaf On the two following evenings Mac- ready, after a heroic mental struggle, swallowed two very bitter pills — the small parts of Harmony in Mrs. Inch- bald's comedy Every One has Ids Fault, and Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In Old Harmony (created by Munden !) he seems to have been thoroughly out of place, and he was scarcely repaid for his con- descension in undertaking Valentine. The revival of The Ttvo Walking-Gentlemeti (as they were rechristcned by a green-room wit) was chiefly remarkable for the great success of a Miss Fortescuc in the ]iart of Julia. Its first night, too, was signalized by the first appearance of a new crimson velvet curtain, with a broad gold fringe, orna- mented with large gold wreaths of laurel. A revival of The Gaviester, in which Macready undertook the part of Beverley with grave misgivings, was well received, but proved unattractive, and the season languished on the whole until, early in l''ebruary. Gay's Acis and Galatea was produced, with Handel's music and Stanfield's scenery. This was a great triumph, and was received MANAGEMENT. 131 with enthusiasm on every liand. It charmed even the fastidious Edward Fitzgerald. " Never in this country has the illusion which scenic art ]icrmits of been so completely and triumphantly displayed," exclaimed the cool and critical John Bull. AVhat chiefly excited admiration was a novel device for representing " the hollow ocean ridges roaring into cataracts," " The SiciUan coast in moonlight/' said the E.va/ni/icr, " stretches up the stage, and between the foreground and P^tna in the distance — • 'A promontory, sharpening by degrees, Ends in a wedge, and overlooks the seas,' as they come swelling towards us, the waves breaking as they come ; the last billow actually tumbling over and over with spray and foam upon the shore, and then receding with the noise of water over stones and shells, to show the hard, wet sand, and, in its due time, roll and break again." ISIacready himself took great pride and pleasure in the production, and Westland Marston records his delight when a lady said to him, " Now I have seen a poem ! " " It ought to have run two hundred nights," says Ander- son, who, as stage-manager, had access to the books of the theatre, "and brought thousands of pounds to the treasury, had the manager been so inclined. But no ; in direct^opposition to the advice of his officers, ... he would not permit it to be sung more than f/irec times a week. The consequence was its attraction dwindled to nothing. . . . Mr. Macready treated the public much as he did his own children — reared them on vegetable diet, and physicked them with homoeopathic doses. He said, ' He knew what probity was. He had promised variety, and he would be conscientious.' He had his own way, but he lost his money." 132 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. Douglas Jerrold's Prisoner of War, produced two nights later, was a great success ; Mrs. Keeley's reading of Peter Pallmall's letter from Verdun being encored nightly ! On the other hand, Gerald Griffin's powerful play Gisippiis, splendidly mounted, finely played, and received with acclamation by the critics, brought no money to the trea- sury. According to Anderson, it should have been re- served till next season ; as it was, Gisippus and Acis and Galatea each cut the other's throat. Macbeth was revived after Easter, in much the same style as at Covent Garden, and three weeks later a terrible disaster took place in the failure of Plighted Troth, a would-be Elizabethan tragedy, by a Mr. Darley. It was, in fact, an extravagantly gloomy and forcible-feeble melodrama, against which all possible circumstances conspired. The name of Mac- ready's character, "Gabriel Grimwood," aroused memories of a recent crime, and led to bantering interruptions from the gods ; and while Grimwood, stabbed with a bread- knife, was lying dead under a table, one of the other actors had the misfortune to tread on Macready's hand, causing the corpse to sit up and rate him soundly, in full hearing of the audience. This transformed the hisses and cat-calls, which had previously reigned supreme, into shouts of laughter, and dealt the finishing blow to Plighted Troth. The criticisms were one chorus of condemnation ; yet Macready had been "confident in hope about it." He was never guilty of a greater error of judgment. A revival of Hamlet, and the production of Marino Faliero, for Macready's benefit, were the chief events of the re- mainder of the season, which was brought to an early close on May 23. I'rovincial engagements occupied a portion of the summer, the inter\als being devoted to preparations for a "longer, stronger pulT'ilming the coming season at MANA GEMENT. 133 Drury Lane, which was to commence on October i. The company was strengthened by tlie addition of Mrs. Nisbett, the most popular comic actress of the day ; Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris, engaged at a salary of ^60 a week ; and John Ryder, then a raw- boned stripling, fresh from the provinces. As Yuu Like It, elaborately mounted, and very strongly cast, was the opening play, Macready acting Jaques ; but once more the audience insisted on seeing him before the comedy began, and the stage was littered with bouquets and wreaths, which were collected and carried off by a foot- man ! The weak point of the cast was Mrs. Nisbett's Rosalind, which Robson, " the Old Playgoer," does not hesitate to describe as "inflimous." Her merriment, said the Ti/iits, was thoughtless and unrestrained, with no hint of underlying seriousness. Anderson's Orlando, Mrs. Stirling's Celia, Hudson's Le Beau, and Compton's William, were all much praised^ but Keeley's Touchstone can scarcely have been the true sententious philosopher, and the sprightly Mrs. Keeley could by no means assume the stolidity of Audrey. The second Shakespearian revival, King John, with scenery by Telbin, took place towards the end of the month. The stage-management was very careful and effective. Especially striking was the rupture of the short peace between Philip and John. " The Englishmen and Frenchmen, who had mingled together," said \.\\Q./o/rn Bull, "parted with the rapidity of lightning. ... A quiet mass of glittering accoutre- ments had suddenly burst into new combinations of animation and energy." Macready's John was admitted to be one of his best Shakespearian parts, and Phelps, "an actor with more manly pathos than any on the stage," was greatly praised as Hubert. ' The Mathews- Vestris engagement was not a success. 134 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. They drew poor houses, and their dignity was outraged by the small parts for which they were cast. Mathews actually appeared as Fag in The Rivals and Roderigo in Othello^ and, playing carelessly no doubt, was roundly condemned by the critics. His wife complained that she was asked to play Maria in The School for Scatidal, and Venus in King Arthur — a part which was ultimately assigned to Miss Fairbrother, a columbine. The engage- ment, in short, was found to have been a mistake on both sides, and was rescinded by mutual consent in little more than a month. By way of following up the vein so successfully opened in Acis and Galatea, Dryden and Purcell's King Arthur was revived about the middle of November. Unfortu- nately, it had not the advantage of Stanfield's scenery, and was a "retrograde movement'" in point of " artistic display." I'he costumes were very tawdry. A genera- tion which has passed through the awakening crisis of restheticism cannot read without a shudder of Mrs. Nisbett's " bright yellow, almost orange, gown, surcoat of decided blue, and tippet and scarf of extreme scarlet." Nevertheless, it was well received and fairly successful. 'J'he Times described it as " a succession of magnificent masques." A young singer, who had hitherto passed unnoticed in the crowd, was entrusted on an emergency with the part of the Warrior, and made a decided hit in the song, '• Come if you dare," though he narrowly escaped dismissal for declining to sing it with his back to the audience. He has since been known as Sims Reeves. In a revival of Love for Love it was generally agreed that the ladies were all good (Mrs. Nisbett especially), the men all more or less jjad. Macready took no part in it, and the public showed but little appetite for MANAGEMENT. 135 Congreve's wit. Very different was the fare provided in the. first new j^lay of the season, The Patrician^ s Daughter, by J. VVestland Marston, produced early in December. The work of a young and as yet unknown writer, it had been pubhshed some months before, and had " made a sensation which, for an unacted drama, might be con- sidered remarkable." Critics had long been advocating an attempt to utilize, for the purposes of poetic drama, the spiritual conflicts of modern life, and some were .sanguine enough to hope that this simple yet powerful play might mark a new departure in dramatic literature. Charles Dickens took deep interest in the experiment, and wrote a prologue for it. The play was to all appear- ance a success, though its central incident — a repetition, in some sort, of the painful cathedral-scene in Much Ado — was misunderstood and generally condemned. When Macready, in his own person, spoke the prologue, he was, said the JoJin Bull, "easy and gentlemanly;" but "such a person as he represented Mordaunt to be had emptied any modern drawing-room in five minutes." On the whole, however, the performance was praised, and as the audience had shown no inclination to ill- timed laughter, it was declared that " the principle of characters talking poetically in plain dress " was secure. But the victory, as we know, has proved a barren one. Of the pantomime of Harlequin and William Tell the Titties remarked, " The scenery is clever, but the same may be said of it as of the scenery of King Arthur, that it is better conceived than executed, and that a certain want of finish prevails throughout." Revivals of IVeriier, The Lady of Lyons, and Cynibclinc (the last not so elaborate as some of its predecessors, but " distinguished by taste and art of the highest kind ") were the chief events of January, 1843. '"he season was not going 136 WILLIAM CILARLES M ACRE AD Y. prosperously, and Macready was in no happy mood ; hence the regrettable circumstances connected with the production of-^Ir. Browning's tragedy, A Blot in the ' Scufc/ico?i, which took place on February 11. Macready had engaged to produce it, and was too proud frankly to confess the embarrassments which now rendered his promise irksome to him. " It would seem, by all the evidence I had afterwards," Mr. Browning writes to me, " that I was supposed to myself understand the expediency of begging to withdraw, at least for a time, my own work — saving Macready the imaginary failure to keep a promise to which I never attached particular importance. As so many hints to my dull perception of this, Macready declined to play his part, caused the play to be read in my absence to the actors by a ludicrously incapable person — the result being, as he informed me, ' that the play was laughed at from the beginning to the end ' — naturally enough, a girl's part being made comical by a red-nosed, onedegged, elderly gentleman [Willmott, the prompter] — then, after proposing to take away from his substitute the opportunity of distinction he had given him (to which I refused my consent), leaving the play to a fate which it somehow managed to escape. Macready was fuori di sc from the moment when, in pure ignorance of what he was driving at, I acquiesced in his proposal that a serious play of any pretension should appear under his management with any other protagonist than himself When the more learned subsequently enlightened mc a little, I was angry and dis- inclined to take advice — but it is happily over so long ago ! One friendly straightforward word to the effect that what was intended for an advantage would, under circumstances of wliicli I was altogether ignorant, prove the reverse — how easy to have spoken, and what regret il would have spared us both ! " Tt was Phelps who i^layed Trosham, and, in spite of illness so severe lh;it M;)rrcndy at one time made up his MANAGEMENT. 137 mind to imdersludy the part, he [jla)cd it very finely. The Morning Post missed in him '' a Httle of that refine- ment which carries Macready so triumphantly through his blotchy mannerisms," but added that " he gave a singular passion and power to the proud brother, which could have been shown by no other actor than himself." Miss Faucit's Mildred was also much praised, and the performance, as a whole, was received with applause. The Thumping Legacy, with Keeley in his afterwards celebrated part of Jerry Ominous, was performed for the first time on the same evening • and this combination was thrice repeated. On the third evening (February 17) the play-bill announced that the tragedy and farce would be acted three times a week until further notice ; yet from that night forward the tragedy was shelved. For his benefit, to every one's surprise, Macready attempted the part of Benedick in Much Ado. As to the merits of the performance opinions were greatly divided. T\\z John Bull declared that " he clutched at drollery, as Macbeth at the dagger, with convulsive energy ; " while the Examiner argued, not very con- vincingly, that because his Benedick made Don Pedro and Claudio laugh, it must have been comic. Forster adds, however, what is much more to the point, that the audience laughed as well. James Anderson's account of the matter is that " his friends were pleased with him, and he with himself; but the general public said he was as melancholy as a mourning-coach in a snowstorm." Playgoers who still vividly remembered the chivalrous grace of Charles Kemble must certainly have regarded Macread/s Benedick with mixed feelings. A spirited attempt at grand opera was made shortly before Easter, Pacini's Sapphohexng splendidly produced, with Miss Clara Novello, fresh from her early continental 138 WJLLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. triumphs, as Sappho, and Vlx=>. Alfred Shaw, one of the most popular singers of the day, as Climene. The experiment, however, was unremunerative. The Easter piece was Planche"s graceful extravaganza, Fotiunio, with Priscilla Horton in the leading part. " The rehearsals," says the author, " were most energetically and judiciously superintended by Macready himself. ... He knew every one's part, and acted each in turn, to my great delight, and the infinite amusement of Miss Helen Faucit, who sat almost daily on the stage, and encouraged us all by her unaftected enjoyment of the dialogue." A small part was allotted to Mrs. Alfred Wigan, who, with her husband, had now joined the company, both appearing in very subordinate characters. Fortiuiio was a success, but The Secretary, by Sheridan Knowles, produced a few days later, was a complete failure. It was Knowles's last play, and one of his wordiest and emptiest. One other new play closes the list of novelties under INIacready's management. This was William Smith's Athehvold, produced on the occasion of Miss Faucit's benefit, and repeated only once. It dealt with a striking subject, but was undramatic in treatment and heavy in diction. At a conference with the Drury Lane Committee, on May 6, Macready found that there was no hope of coming to terms witli them for another season. The details of their disagreement are unknown to me. Mac- ready stated, in his farewell speech, that " he could not subject himself to the liabilities required of him ; " and his friend W. J. Fox attributed his retirement to "pro- prietary arrangements, or disarrangements, which yielded no security for an expenditure that could only have repaid itself in a series of years, and the immediate profits of which were liable to be pressed upon by un- MAN A CEMENT. \ 39 defined and encroaching claims." We can scarcely believe that the proprietors were unwilling to grant Macready a lease at a fixed rental if he would have accepted it. The truth probably is that he declined to undertake what they considered his fair share of the risk. He was determined not to burn his ships, and the Committee were dissatisfied with a lessee who insisted upon such unlimited facilities for retreat. In the light of after-events, we may think them unwise. It would have been to their interest, we may argue, to give such a man as Macready every possible encouragement in his enterprise. They should have preferred small profits and steady returns to rack-rents tempered by bankruptcy. Yet IMacready's bargains bore on the surface a heads-I- win-tails-you-lose appearance, from which we cannot wonder that they recoiled, In his heart of hearts Macready cared too little about the enterprise to give it any chance of permanency. He went into it with the feeling and pose of a martyr. At every touch of dis- couragement he said to himself that he was endangering his own and his children's future in order to fight a losing battle on behalf of an art he regarded with mingled feelings, and a body of artists with whom he had little personal sympathy. In such moments the alternative course of making a modest fortune as a star, retiring, and devoting himself to the education of his family, presented itself in the light of a positive duty. This was not the temper in which to set about the regene- ration of the drama. He " feared his fate too much." Without venturing too far into the vasty labyrinths of the might-have-been, we may ask whether any possible com- pliance on the part of the Drury Lane or Covent Garden proi)rietors would have ensured success. I doubt it. The era of long runs, of conversational playwriting and I40 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. actings of division of labour, or ratlier specialization of function, in the theatrical sphere, was already and in- evitably upon us. INIacready struggled gallantly to carry on the traditions and methods handed down, under all external modifications, from Davenant to Elliston, His huge establishment, his varied bill of fare, were fitted for the time when there were but two winter theatres to cater to the taste of a smaller but more homogeneous and, theatrically speaking, more intelligent town. In short, he tried to continue the system of monopoly manage- ment under the conditions of free-trade ; for the already decrepit monopoly was on the verge of extinction by Bulwer's Act of 1843. He declared, in his concluding speech, that the result of his experiment, though it did not as yet " amount to a remunerating return," might be " confidently taken as an earnest of future and permanent success." In order to secure this success he would almost certainly have had to modify and modernize his principles of management. He fought a good fight, but the tendencies of the time were against him. His conduct as a manager was much, and bitterly, criticized. The following passage from the John Bull states in short compass the current objections of his detractors. It occurs in an article on his Covent Garden management, but so far as it applies at all it applies equally well to his tenure of Urury Lane. I have read carefully the whole series of this writer's criticisms, and can find in them no trace of personal animus. He is often generous in praise, sometimes convincing in cen- sure. We may accept his judgment as that of an im- partial outsider, neither a member of the Macready clifiue nor an adherent of the opposition : — '■ His real services we wcie llic fust 10 bear testimony to, MANAGEMENT. 141 and will be the last to deny. Following in the track laid down by Kemble, he has rendered it impossible for any suc- ceeding manager to bring out a play of Shakespeare's other- wise than in an adequate manner. For this his profession is largely indebted to him. He has made the theatre a decent place of amusement, which it hardly was before. ... As an actor, though a very unequal, he is now an unrivalled one ; and so far from joining in the ungenerous judgments we have heard passed on him in this respect, we believe that, could the greatest in his art repeople the scene again, he would still be a foremost and a distinguished man. But here we stop. He has giv^en encouragement to no dawning genius ; has brought forward no new author ; has done all to serve himself, little to advantage his brethren. . . . We gave him credit for the enlarged views of the scholar, for the liberal sentiments of the gentleman. We have found him the mere actor ; the slave of the little feelings and paltry as- sumptions engendered of the green-room. He has pro- fessed much ; we have weighed him by his professions, and found him wanting. He began his career with well-assumed modesty ; he has ended it with ill-concealed and insensate vanity." The reproach as to his neglect of '' dawning genius "' may at once be dismissed. There is no proof that any such genius existed to suffer from his neglect. Far more relevant is the remark upon his conduct to his brother- actors. He treated them justly, in some cases gene- rously, but never graciousl)'. He crushed their profes- sional vanity with an iron hand, but he took no trouble to soften the blow by mortifying his own. In one or two cases he made a show of taking minor parts, such as Friar Laurence and Jaques, but these condescensions were rare, and in great measure illusory. He was the star of Covent Garden and Drury Lane, just as Mr. Irving is the star of the Lyceum. It is true that this position was in some degree forced upon him. To have cast himself 142 WILLIAM CILARLES MACREADY. tor minor parts would have cost him a far greater sacri- fice than one of mere vanity. Those which he could have played to any advantage were few, and the public would probably not have cared to see him in them. Before really critical audiences, a great actor may bestow his whole care upon second-rate or third-rate characters without any sense of waste ; but the average English audience has no eye for aught but the large effects to be obtained in leading characters. Moreover, the critics and the public would not accept Vandenhoff or Phelps, Elton or Anderson, in characters which Mac- ready had made his own. He is scarcely to be blamed, then, for not having brought his subordinates more to the front. Juster reproach attaches to his habit of taking to himself the whole credit of his achievements, and ignoring the co-operation of his comrades. His churlishness in this respect contrasts unfavourably with Mr. Irving's generosity of acknowledgment towards his company on all public occasions. Many of Macready's actors risked a third of their ordinary salary in order to serve under his banner ; and though he fulfilled his pro- mise of making good the deficiency so far as the results of each season permitted, he did so in such an ungrace- ful way as to minimize their gratitude. The attitude of his fellow-actors towards him is amusingly illustrated in an anecdote related by James Anderson. One day Macready failed to appear at rehearsal, on account of illness. Some one inquired what was the matter with him, andWillmott, the prompter, replied that he believed it was heart-disease. " AVhat ! "' cried Mrs. Kceley, who was standing by, " Macready suffering from heart- disease ! You might as well try to make mc believe that Walter Lacy could suffer from brain fever ! "' The faith- fulness with which the leading members of his company MANAGEMENT. '43 clung to liim ihroughoul proves that tlicy had Httle serious ground of complaint ; but there was undoubtedly a lack of amenity in his behaviour towards them which gave some colour to the strictures of his harsher critics. Among his personal friends and the theatre-going public his popularity was undiminished. On his retire- ment from Drury Lane his friends presented him with a marvellous piece of symbolic sculpture in silver, testify- ing that his management had " Formed an Epoch in Theatrical Annals." The public, who always crowded to his opening and closing nights, however they might neglect the intermediate performances, filled every corner of Drury Lane, when, on June 14, 1843, Macready made his last appearance as a manager. Their enthusiasm, he says, "was grand and awful. ... It was unlike any- thing that ever occurred before." He was nerved by the splendid reception to play his part — Macbeth — in his best style; then, having "spoken his speech," he "retired with the same mad acclaim." CovENT Garden Theatre. 1837-1838. Sept.'3o (opening night) : Address [by Talfourd] spoken by Macready. The Winter's Tale: Leontes = Macready; Polixenes = Diddear ; Camillo = Pritchard ; Antigonus = G. Bennett ; Florizel = Anderson (first appearance in London) ; Shepherd = Tilbury ; Clown = Meadows : Auto- lycus - BarUey ; Hermione = Miss H. Faucit ; Perdita = Miss Taylor ; Paulina = Miss Huddart ; Mopsa = Miss P. Horton ; Dorcas = Miss Vincent. 4 times. Feb. 10 : Dorcas = Mrs. Humby. Oct. 2 : Hamlet: Claudius = Diddear; Hamlet = ALic- ready; Polonius = Meadows ; Laertes = Anderson ; Horatio = G. Bennett ; Osrick = Vining ; (".ravcdigger = Bartley ; 144 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. Ghost — Elton ; Ophelia = Miss Taylor ; Gertrude = Miss Huddart. 3 times. Oct. 8 : Ghost = Warde. Oct. 7 : The Bridal: Arcanes = G. Bennett ; Melantius = Macready ; Amintor = Anderson ; Evadne = ]\Iiss Hud- dart ; Aspatia = Miss Taylor. 7 times. Oci'. ] I : New Play, The Novice [translation by W. Dimond?]: Warde, Bartley, Anderson, Miss H. Faucit. 3 times. Oct. 14 : Catherine and Petrtichio (afterpiece) : Miss Faucit and Vining. Twice. Oct. 16: Othello: Duke = Bartley; Brabantio = G. Bennett ; Othello = Macready ; Cassio = Anderson ; lago — Warde ; Roderigo = Mning ; Desdemona = Miss Faucit ; Emilia = Miss Huddart. 3 times. Oct. 30 : Othello = Phelps ; lago = Macready. Oct. 19 : The Provoked Husband: Lord Townly = Mac- ready : Lady Townly = Miss Faucit ; Lady Grace = Miss Huddart. 3 times. New Play, Afrancesado [by T. J. Serle] : Anderson, Bartley, Warde, Miss Taylor, Miss Vincent. Twice. Oct. 21 : Werner: Werner = Macready ; Ulric = Ander- son ; Gabor = G. Bennett ; Josephine — Miss Huddart ; Ida — Miss Vincent. 9 times. Oct. 26: The Hunchback: Warde, .*\nderson, X'ining, Miss Faucit, Miss Taylor. Twice. Oct. 27 : I'cnice Preserved: Jaffier = Phelps (first appear- ance at this Theatre) ; Pierre = Macready ; Belvidera = Miss Faucit. Twice. Nov. 9 : Pierre = Warde. Oct. 31 : The Stranger: The Stranger = Macready ; Steinfort = Warde; Mrs. Haller - Miss Faucit. Once. Nov. 2 : Virginius : Appius Claudius = G. Bennett ; Dentatus = Warde ; Virginius - Macready ; Icilius = Anderson ; Virginia = Miss Faucit ; Servia = Miss Hud- dart. Twice. Nov. 4 : New Play (afterpiece), Parole of Honour [by T. J. .Serle] : Bartley, Anderson, G. l)ennctt, INIeadows, Miss Faucit, Miss Taylor. 10 times. Nov. 6: Macbeth: Duncan = Waldron ; Malcolm and Donaldbain = Anderson and IMiss Fairbrothcr ; Macbeth MAN A GEMENT. 145 = Alacready ; IMacdufif — Thelps ; Banquo = Warde ; Lenox = Howe ; Witches = G. Bennett, Meadows, and Payne ; Hecate = H. Phillips ; Singing Witches = Wilson, Leffler, Stretton, Alanvers, Ransford, Mesdames Shirreff, P. Horton, Taylor, Vincent, Land, and East ; Lady Macbeth = Miss Huddart. Acted every Monday for 14 weeks run- ning, and 18 times in all. Monday, Jan. i, 1838 : " Lady ALicbeth = Mrs. Warner (late Miss Huddart)." Nov. 1 1 : New Comic Opera, The Barbers of Bassora [by J. Hullah]: H. Phillips, Wilson, Bartley, Leffler, Miss Shirreff. 7 times. Nov. 13 : New Interlude, TIte Original: Bartley, Meadows, Anderson, Miss P. Horton. 20 times. Nov. 14 : King Henry V. : Henry V. = Macready ; Exeter = Warde ; Archbishop of Canterbury = G. Bennett ; Flu- ellen = Meadows ; Williams = Bartley ; Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym = Macarthy, Hammond, and Ayliffe ; Mrs. Quickly = Mrs. Garrick ; Kathcrine= Miss P. Horton. Twice. Nov. 28 : Riches {The City Madam) : Luke = Macready ; Lady Traffic = Miss Taylor. Once. Joan of Arc, " Grand Historical and Legendary Spectacle" [by T. J. Serle]: Prit- chard, Anderson, Waldron, Miss Huddart. 31 times. Dec. 2: New Romantic Opera, Aniilie ; or. The Love- Test [music by T. B. Rooke] : Phillips, Hammond, Wilson, Miss Shirreff, Miss P. Horton. 53 times. Dec. 26: Jane Shore: Hastings = Macready; Glo'ster = G. Bennett ; Dumont = Phelps ; Alicia= Miss Huddart ; Jane Shore = Miss Faucit. Once. Pantomime, Harlequin and Peeping Tom of Coventry : Herbert Bellenclapper = I'aul Bedford. 43 times. " The Manager acknowledges expressly and particularly, under the particular circum- stances, his obligations to Mr. Stanfield, That distin- guished Artist, at a sacrifice, and in a manner the most liberal and kind, has for a short period laid aside his easel to present the Manager with his LAST WORK //; a depart- ment of art so conspicuously advanced by him, as a mark of the interest he feels in the success of the cause which this Theatre labours to support." Stanfield's Diorama con- sisted of " Scenes at Home and Abroad." L 146 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. 1838. Jan. 25 : King Lear : Lear = Macready ; Kent = Bartley; Glo'ster = G.Bennett ; Edgar = Elton; Edmund = Anderson ; Fool - Miss P. Horton ; Goneril and Regan = jMrs. W. Clifford and i\Irs. Warner ; Cordelia = Miss Faucit. 10 times. Jan. 27 : The Wonder : Don Pedro = Strickland (first appearance at this Theatre) ; Don Felix = Maci-eady ; Vio- lante = Miss Faucit ; Flora = Mrs. Glover (first appearance this season) ; Inis = Mrs. Humby (first appearance here these four years). 4 times. But after first performance, Don Felix = Anderson. Feb. 13: The Irish Ainbassador : Sir Patrick O'Plenipo = Tyrone Power (first appearance here these two years;. His engagement ended IMarch 3. Feb. 1 5 : New Play, The Lady of Lyons : or, Love and Pride: Beaus^ant = Elton; Glavis = Meadows; Damas -. Bartley; Deschappelles = Strickland; ist Officer = Howe ; Landlord = Yarnold ; Gas par = Diddear ; * Claude Melnotte - Macready ; Madame Deschappelles = Mrs. W. Clifford; Pauline = Miss Faucit ; Widow Melnotte = Mrs. Griffith. ■},■}, times. " Edward Lytton Bulwer, Esq.,'' an- nounced as author at the foot of play-bill of P'eb. 24. Feb. 16: New Opera, The Black Domino [by Scribe and Auber]: Strickland, Wilson, Hammond, iNIiss Shirreff, Miss P. Horton. 3 times. Feb. 20: Julius Ccrsar: Cit^sar = G. Bennett; Octavius = Anderson ; Antony = Elton ; Brutus = Macready ; Cas- sius = Phelps ; Casca = Bartley ; Cinna = Howe ; Cal- phurnia = Mrs. W. Cliftbrd ; Portia* = Mrs. Warner. Twice. Feb. 21: New Farce, Mackintosh and Co.: Power, Bartley. 3 times. March 12: Coriolanus : Menenius = Bartley ; Caius Marcius = Macready ; Aufidius = Anderson ; Voluninia = Mrs. Warner; Virgilia - Miss E. Clifford ; Valeria = Mrs. W. Clifford. 8 times. April 7 (Macready's benefit) : The Tioo Foscari: Francis Foscari = Macready ; Jacopo Foscari = Anderson ; Lore- dano and Barbarigo = Warde and Elton ; Marina = Miss Faucit. 3 times. New Operetta, Windsor Castle ; or, The MANAGEMENT. 147 Prisoner King : Wilson, Leffler, Bartley, Miss Shirrcff, Miss P. Horton. Once. April 16: Easter piece, Si/idbad the Sailor: Bartley, Anderson, Paul Bedford, Miss P. Horton. 5 times. April 21: The Hypocrite: Cantwell = Bartley ; Maw- worm = Harley (first appearance this season), Waldron, Vining, Mrs. W. Clifford, Miss E. Clifford, Miss Taylor. 5 times. April 28 : Talfourd's Athenian Captive announced for this evening, but not produced on account of the sudden illness of Mrs. Warner. April 30: Romeo and Juliet: Romeo = Anderson ; Paris = Howe ; Tybalt = G. Bennett ; Mercutio = Vining ; Friar Laurence — Macready ; Apothecary = Meadows ; Nurse = Mrs. W. Clifford ; Juliet = Miss Faucit. Twice. May 3: The Jealous Wife: Major Oakly = Warde ; Charles Oakly == Anderson ; Mr. Oakly = Macready ; Sir Harry Beagle = Harley ; Russet = Bartley ; Mrs. Oakly — Miss Faucit. Once. May 4: Ion: Adrastus = Phelps; Ion = Macready; Clemanthe = Miss Faucit. Once. May 5 : As You Like It: Banished Duke = G. Bennett ; Amiens = Wilson ; Jaques = Macready ; Orlando = Ander- son ; Adam = Warde ; Touchstone = Harley ; Silvius = Howe ; Rosalind = Miss Taylor ; Celia = Miss E. Clifford ; Phcebe = Miss E. Phillips ; Audrey = Mrs. Humby. Once. May 10: New Farce, The Veiled Portrait ;' or. The Chateau of Beauvais : Harley, Warde, Vining, Miss Taylor. 6 times. May 14: King Henry VIII. : Henry VIII. = Bartley; W^olsey = Macready ; Buckingham = Elton ; Sands = Harley ; Gardner = Meadows ; Cromwell = Anderson ; Queen Katharine = Miss Faucit ; Anne Bullen = Miss Taylor ; Patience = Miss Shirreff .with song, "Angels ever bright and fair "). Twice. May 17 : New Operatic Entertainment, Tlie Outpost \hy J. HuUah] : Wilson, Leffler, Meadows, Bartley, Miss Shirreff. 7 times. May 23 : New Play by James Sheridan Knowles, Esq., 148 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE ADV. Womaifs Wit ; or, Lcn'c's Disguises : Lord Athunree = Warde ; Sutton = Bartley ; De Grey = Anderson ; *Wal- singham = Macready ; Eustace = Miss Taylor ; Clever = Harley ; Hero = INIiss Faucit. 31 times. Elton played Walsingham 6 times. June 23 (Sheridan Knowles's benefit) : IVoman's Wit and The Wife : Leonai'do and Ferrardo Gonzago = Elton and Warde ; Julian = S. Knowles ; INIariana = H. Faucit. Once. June 28 (Theatre open gratuitously, in honour of the Queen's Coronation) : T/ic Hypocrite and Tlie (2ita/ccr. July 6 (last night of season; : IVoam/i's JVit. Minor Pieces : A Roland for an Oliver, 3 ; Miller and his Men, 3 ; Love ifi a Village, 2 : Irish Tutor, 3 ; Brother a?id Sister, 3; Fra Diavolo, 22 ; The Spitfire, 11 ; TJie Beggar'' s Opera, 3 ; The Lord of the Manor, 3 ; The (Quaker, 7 ; The Poor Soldier, 5 ; I'he Waterman, 6 ; No Song no Supper, 3 ; Aladdin, 2 ; Gity Mannering, 2 ; The Marriage of Figaro, 7 ; Rob Roy, 2 ; TJie IrisJi Ambassador, 3 ; Born to Good Luck, 2 ; The Omnibus, 3 ; Teddy the Tiler, i ; The Neri'ous I\Ian, i ; High Life Below Stairs, 7 ; Animal Magnetism, 3 ; Johji of Paiis, 3 ; The Midnight Hour, 2 ; Matrimony, i ; The Padlock, i ; The Will, 5. Macreadv's Characters : *Claude INIelnotte, 33 ; *WaIsingham, 25; Macbeth, 18; Lear, 10; Werner, 9; Coriolanus, 8 ; Melantius, 7 ; Leontes, 4 ; Hamlet, Lord Townly, *Francis Foscari, 3 ; Othello, Virginius, Henry V., Brutus, Friar Laurence, Wolsey, 2 ; lago, Pierre, Stranger, Luke, Hastings, Don Felix, Mr. Oakly, Ion, Jaqucs, r. Total, 144 performances. 1838-1839. Sept. 24 (opening night) : Coriolanus : Caius Marcius = Vandenhofif (first appearance here these two years) ; Virgilia — Miss Vandenlioff; Aufidius = Phelps. Rest as March 12, 1838. Twice with this cast. (See May 6, 1839.) Sep']'. 26 : Cymbeline: Cymbeline = Waldron ; Guiderius = Elton ; Avvira; us = Anderson ; Clotcn = \'ining ; Be- MANAGEMENT. 149 larius = Warde ; Postluimus - Phelps ; Pisanio = G. Bennett ; Imogen = Miss Faucit ; Minstrels = Mrs. Serle, Miss P. Horton ; lachimo = Vandenhoff ; Philario = Howe. Twice. Sept. 27 : New Farce, Brori'/i, Jones, and Robinson [by J. 0.\enford] : Bartley, Harley, \'ining, Mrs. Humby, Mrs. W. Clifford. Thrice. Sept. 29 : To7u/i andCoitntry : \'andenhofif, Elton, Harley, Mrs. Warner, Miss Vandenhoff. Once. Oct. I : Hamlet: Polonius = Bartley ; Horatio = Serle ; Gravedigger = Harley ; Ghost = Warde ; Ophelia = Miss Rainforth. Rest as Oct. 2, 1837. 5 times. Oc'l'. 3 : The Lady of Lyons : Deschappelles = \\'aldron. Rest as Feb. 15, 1838. 29 times. Oct. 4 : Othello : Othello = Macready ; lago = Vanden- hoff. Rest as Oct. 16, 1837. ' 8 times. Oct. 25 : Othello = Vandenhoff; lago = Macready. Oct. 6: The Winter's Tale: Leontes = Vandenhoff Polixencs = Warde ; Camillo = Diddear ; Autolycus = Harley; Perdita = Miss-Vandenhofif; Dorcas = Mrs. Humby. Rest as Sept. 30, 1837. Thrice. Oct. 13 : The Tempest., from the text of Shakespeare. The music selected from the works of Purcell, Linley, and Dr. Arne, and arranged by Mr. T. Cooke. The entr'actes from Corelli. Previous to the play, Weber's Overture to The Ruler of Spirits. Alonzo = Warde ; Sebastian = Did- dear ; Prospero = Macready ; Antonio = Phelps ; Ferdi- nand = Anderson ; Gonzalo = Waldron ; Caliban = G. Bennett ; Trinculo = Harley ; Stephano = Bartley ; Mi- randa = Miss Faucit ; Ariel = Miss P. Horton ; Spirits in the Vision : Iris = Mrs. Serle ; Ceres = Miss P. Horton ; Juno = Miss Rainforth. 55 times. On Nov. 29 and Dec. I and 4 : Miranda = Miss Vandenhoff. Oct. 19 : New Drama [from the German], interspersed with music. The Foresters; or, Twenty five Years Since: Vandenhoff, Frazer, Anderson, Warde, Harley, Bartley, Mrs. Warner, Miss Rainforth, Miss P. Horton. 4 times. Oct. 20 : New Petite Comedy, Jealousy : Vandenhoft', Anderson, Meadows, Mrs. Warner. Thrice. I50 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. Oct. 26 : The Htitichback: Helen = Miss Vandenhoff. Rest as Oct. 26, 1837. Once. Oct. 29: Macbeth: Lenox = Serle; Hecate = Leffler. Rest practically as Nov. 6, 1837. 5 times. Nov. 2: Cato : Cato = Vandenhoff; Porcius = Elton ; Marcus = Phelps ; Juba = Anderson ; Sempronius = G. Bennett; Syphax = Warde ; Marcia = Miss Vandenhoff; Lucia = Mrs. Warner. Once. Nov. 3. "^Qw O^txa., Bcifbara; or, The Bride of a Day [music by Boieldieu yf/j] : Harley, Frazer, Miss Rainforth, Miss P. Horton. 7 times. Nov. 10 : Catherine atid Petruchio. 8 times. Petruchio = Vining ; Catherine = sometimes Miss Faucit, sometimes Mrs. Warner. Nov. 19 : New Farce, Chaos is Come Agdi/i ; or, The Race Bail: Bartley, Vining, Meadows, Miss Charles. 30 times. Nov. 23: Ion: Adrastus = Vandenhoff; Ion = Ander- son ; Clemanthe = l\Iiss Faucit. 3 times. May 20 : Ion = INIacready. Nov. 30: Werner: Gabor = ^'andenhoff; Ida = Miss Vandenhoff. Rest as Oct. 21, 1837. 4 times. Dec. 3 : Williain Tell, with alterations by the author : Gesler = Warde ; Tell = Macready ; Michael = Anderson ; Albert = Miss R. Isaacs ; Emma = Mrs. Warner. 14 times. Di;c. 7 : Venice Preser^ied : Jafifier = Elton ; Pierre = Vandenhoff; Belvidera = Miss Faucit. Once. Dec. 26: Ja7ie Shore: Glo'ster = Vandenhoff. Rest as Dec 26, 1837. (Repeated March 4, 1839 : Hastings = Elton.) Pantomime, Harlequin and Fair Rosamond; or, Old Dame Nature a/id the Fairy Art. 41 times. 1839. Jan. 4: Rob Roy: Vandenhoff, Harley, Frazer, Mrs. Warner, Miss Rainforth. 5 times. FeI3. I (Royal command) : The Lady of Lyons (49th time) and last two acts of Rob Roy. Feb. 4 : King Lear. Cast as Jan. 25, 1838. 6 times. FeI!. 8 : New Drama, The King and the Duke ; or, I he Siege of Alcn^on : Bartley, .\nderson, \'ining, Harley, Miss Rainforth, Miss Taylor. 6 limes. MA NA CEMENT. 1 5 1 March 7 : New Play, RicJicIicii ; or, The Cofispiracy, hy Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, Bart. : Louis XIII. - Elton ; Gaston = Diddear; *Richelieu = Macready ; Baradas = Warde ; Mauprat = Anderson ; De Berighcn = Vining ; Father Joseph = Phelps ; Huguet — G. Bennett ; Francois = Howe ; Julie de IMortemar = Miss Faucit ; Marion de Lorme = Miss Charles. 37 times. April 8: "The Public is respectfully informed that the present management will terminate with this season." Al'Rii, 18 (Miss Faucit's benefit) : As You Like It: ist Lord = Phelps; Amiens = Frazer ; Rosalind — Miss Faucit; Celia = Miss Rainforth ; Phoebe = Miss P. Horton. Rest as May 5, 1838. 4 times. New F^arce, Sayings and Doings : Meadows, Vining, Harley, T. Lee, :\Irs. W. Clifford, Miss Charles. 15 times. April 20: New Dramatic Romance, Agnes Bernaiier; or, T/ie Secret Tribunal; Overture and incidental music by Mr. G. A. Macfarren : Phelps, Anderson, Serle, Elton, G. Bennett, Mrs. Warner. 17 times. April 27 (Vandenhoff's benefit) : Julius Cwsar: Antony = Vandenhoff. Rest as P'eb. 20, 1838. Once. May 2 : New Grand Opera, Henrique ; or, Tlie Love- Pilgi-imx IMusic by :Mr. W. M. Rooke : H. Phillips, W. Harrison (first appearance in London), Leffler, ]\Ianvers, Harley, Miss Rainforth, Miss P. Horton. 5 times. May 6 (Macready's benefit): Coriolanus : Menenius = Strickland ; Virgilia = Miss \'andenhoff. Rest as March 12, 1838. Once with this cast. (See Sept. 24, 1838.) ]\Iay 13 : Virginius. Cast as Nov. 2, 1837. Once. May 25 : Tlie Provoked Husband: Squire Richard = Harley ; Moody = Meadows ; Miss Jenny = Mrs. Humby. Rest as Oct. 19, 1837. Once. May 27: T7ie Two Foscari. Cast as April 7, 183S. Once. June 10: Ki/ig Henry ]''. "To impress more strongly on the auditor, and render more palpable these portions of the story which have not the advantage of action, and still are requisite to the Drama's completeness, the narrative and descriptive poetry spoken by the chorus is accompanied with Pictorial Illustr a iioxs from the pencil of Mr. IS2 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. STANFIELD.'' The music selected from Purcell, Handel, and Weber. Chorus in the character of Time = Vanden- hoff ; Henry V. = Macready ; Exeter = Elton ; Erpingham = Bartley ; Govver = Anderson ; Fluellen = Meadows ; IMacmorris = T. Lee ; Bates and Williams = C. J. Smith and Warde ; Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol = Bedford, Ayliffe, Harley ; Boy = Miss P. Horton ; Mrs. Quickly = Mrs. C. Jones; Charles VI. = G. Bennett; Dauphin = Vining ; Orleans = Howe ; D'x'llbret = Phelps ; Isabel = Mrs. W. Clifford; Katharine = Miss Vandenhoff. 21 times. June 25 : The Stranger: Vandenhoff, Warde, Miss Faucit. July 16 (last night) : Kijig Henry V. Minor Pieces : High Life Below Stairs, 11 ; Fra Dia- volo, 20 ; A Roland for an Oliver, 6 ; The Original, 1 1 ; Animal Magnetism, i ; The Waterman, 7 ; The Marriage of Figaro, 12 ; The Cabitiet, 5 ; Laugh when yon can, 5 ; TJie Quaker, 12 ; The Omnibus, 12 ; The Miller aiid his Men, I ; The Royal Oak, 3 ; A7t Agreeable Surprise, 4 ; Charles IL, 3 ; TJie Portrait of Cervantes, 7 ; Raising the Wind, 3; The Invincibles, 10; Lodoiska, 6; Inkle and Yarico, 5 ; The Slave, 2 : The Mountaineers, i ; No Song no Supper, 3 ; A mi lie, 10. M.vcready's Characters : Prospero, 55 ; *Richelieu, 2,7; Melnotte, 29; Henry V., 21; Tell, 14; Othello, 7; Lear, 6 ; Hamlet and Macbeth, 5 ; Werner, 4 ; Jaques, 3 ; lago, Hastings, Brutus, Coriolanus, Virginius, Ion, Lord Townly, F. Foscari, 1. 194 performances. Drury Lane Theatre. 1841-1842. Dec. 27 (opening night) : The Merchant of Venice, from the text of Shakespeare : Duke — G. Bennett ; Antonio = Phelps ; Bassanio = Anderson ; Salarino = Marston ; Shy- lock = Macready ; Launcelot Gobbo = Compton ; Old (iobbo = W. Bennett; Portia = Mrs. Warner; Nerissa = Mrs. Kceley. J 5 times. Pantomime, Harlequin and Duke Hutnphrey's Dinner ; or, Jack Cade, the Lord of London. 42 limes. MANAGEMENT. 153 Dec. 28 : Every One has his Fault: Macready, Phelps, Compton, Kcelc)-, Anderson, Mrs. Warner, Mrs. Keeley. 8 times. Dec. 29: Two Gentlemen of Verona: Duke = Phelps; Valentine = Macready ; Proteus = Anderson ; Thuri.o — Compton ; Speed = H. Hall ; Launce = Keeley ; Julia = Miss Fortescue ; Silvia = Miss Ellis. 13 times. 1842. Jan. 12: '['he Gamester: Beverley = Macready ; Lewson = Anderson ; Jarvis = Elton ; Stiikeley = Phelps ; Mrs. Beverley = Mrs. Warner ; Charlotte = Miss Ellis. 5 times. May 6 : Beverley - Anderson. Jan. 25 : Point of Honour: Phelps,, Hudson, Anderson, Compton, Mrs. Warner. Twice. New Farce, The Wind- mill [by E. Morton] : Sampson Low = Keeley ; Marian = Mrs. Keeley. 33 times. Feb. 5 : Acis and Galatea. " In aid of the endeavour to establish upon the ENGLISH Stage the Wokks of the Greatest Co^iposers of the English School of Music, Mr. STANFIELD, R.A., has been engaged to furnish the Scenic Illustrations for the representation of the first of a series of Operas proposed to be revived at this Theatre." Cupid = Miss Gould ; Acis = Miss P. Horton ; Damon = Allen ; Polyphemus = H. Phillips : Galatea = Miss Romer. 43 times. Feb. 8 : New Play, The Prisoner of War [by Douglas Jerrold] : Captain Channel = Phelps ; Firebrace = Anderson ; Peter and Polly Pall-Mail = Mr. and Mrs. Keeley. 31 times. Feb. 14 : Venice Preserved: Jaffier = Anderson ; Pierre = Phelps ; Belvidera = Miss Faucit (first appearance at this Theatre). 3 times. Feb. 21 : Catherine and Petruchio (afterpiece) : Petruchio = Anderson; Grumio = Compton; Catherine = Miss Faucit. 4 times. Feb. 23 : Gisippjis, by the late Gerald (iriffin : Fuhius = Anderson ; *Gisippus = Macready ; Pheax and Chremes = Elton and Hudson : Sophronia =^ Miss Faucit. 20 times. March 28 (Easter Monday) : Macbeth: Duncan = Wal- dron: Malcolm = Graham; Macbeth = Macready ; Banquo = Anderson ; Macduff = Phelps ; Rosse = Elton ; Lenox 154 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. = Marston ; Fleance = Miss Phillips ; Lady Macbeth = Mrs. Warner; ist and 2nd Witches = G. and W. Bennett ; 3rd Witch ^ M'lan ; Singing Witches = Giubilei, Allen, Reeves, Jones, etc., Mesdames Romer, P. Horton, Keeley, Poole, etc. 8 times ; every Monday to May 16. New Operetta, The Students of Bonn [by G. H. Rodwell] : Hudson, Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Selby, Mrs. C. Jones, Mrs. Keeley, Miss Romer. 22 times. April 20 : New Play, Plighted Troth [by Darley] : Macready, Anderson, Hudson, Phelps, Elton, Miss Faucit, Mrs. Stirling. Once. April 29: Hamlet: Claudius = G. Bennett; Hamlet = Macready ; Polonius = Compton ; Laertes = Elton ; Horatio = Graham ; Osrick = Hudson ; Gravedigger = Keeley ; Ghost = Phelps ; Gertrude = ]\Irs. Warner ; Ophelia = Miss P. Horton. 4 times. May 17 (Miss Faucit's benefit) : The Stranger : Stranger = Macready ; Steinfort = Phelps ; Solomon = Compton ; Peter = Keeley ; Mrs. Haller = Miss Faucit ; Countess Wintersen = Mrs. Stirling ; Charlotte = Mrs. Keeley. Once. May 19 (Mr. and Mrs. Keeley's benefit) : The Provohcd Husband: Lord Townly = Macready ; Manly = Phelps ; Sir F. Wronghead = Compton ; Squire Richard = Keeley ; Lady Townly = Miss Faucit ; Lady Wronghead = Mrs. C. Jones ; Lady Grace = Mrs. Stirling ; Miss Jenny = l\Trs. Keeley. Once. New Farce, The Attic Story: Mr. and Mrs. Poddy = Mr. and Mrs. Keeley. Twice. May 2o(Macready's benefit) : Marino Falicro : * Marino = Macready ; Bertuccio Faliero=: Hudson ; Lioni = Anderson ; Benintende = Q. Bennett ; Israel Bertuccio = Phelps ; Bertram = Elton ; Angiolina = Miss Faucit. Twice. May 23 (Anderson's benefit, and last night) : Othello : Othello = Anderson ; lago = Macready ; Cassio = Hudson ; Roderigo = Compton ; Brabantio = I'"lton ; Desdemona = Miss Faucit ; Emilia = Mrs. Warner. Once. Minor Pikces : La Sonnatnbula, 4 ; The Poor Soldier, 4 ; No Song no Supper, 6 ; The (Quaker, 3 ; The Duenna, 2. Macready's Characters : *Gisippus, 20 ; Shylock, 15 ; \''alcntine, 13; Macbeth and Harmony, 8: Hamlet and MA NA CEMENT. 1 5 5 Beverley, 4; ♦Marino Faliero, 2 ; *Grim\vood, lago, Stranger, and Lord Townly, i. 78 performances. 1 842-1 843. Oct. I (opcninj^ "ight) : -^s You Like It; Overture, first movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, entr'actes selected from the same work : Duke = Ryder ; ist Lord = Elton ; 2nd Lord = H. Phillips ; Amiens = Allen ; Jaques = Macready ; Duke Frederick = G. Bennett : Le Beau — Hudson ; Oliver = Graham ; Jaques do Bois = Lynne ; Orlando = Anderson ; Adam = Phelps ; Touchstone = Keeley ; William = Compton ; Pages to Banished Duke = Miss P. Horton and Miss Gould ; Foresters = Stretton, J. Reeves, etc. ; Rosalind = Mrs. Nisbett ; Celia = Mrs. Stirling; Phoebe = Miss Fortescue ; Audrey -Mrs. Keeley. 22 times. Oct. 3 : Hamlet. Cast as April 29. 7 times. April 3 and 19, 1843: Hamlet = Anderson. Acis and Galatea: Polyphemus = Stretton. Rest as last season ; but see May 5, 1843. 15 times. Oct. 5 : ATaiiiio Faliero. Cast as May 20. Follies of a i\7«^/// [by J. R. Planche] : Druggendraft = Compton ; Palliot = C. Mathews; Duchesse de Chartres = Madame Vestris. 16 times. Oct. 7 : The Rivals : Sir Anthony = Lambert (first appear- ance) ; Captain Absolute = Anderson ; Faulkland = Phelps ; Acres = Keeley ; Sir Lucius = Hudson ; Fag = C. Mathews; David = Compton ; Mrs. Malaprop = Mrs. C. Jones ; Lydia Languish = Mrs. Nisbett ; Julia= Miss Faucit ; Lucy = Mrs. Keeley. Thrice. Oct. II : The Stranger. Castas May 17. Once. Oct. 18: The Road to Ruin : Dornton = Phelps ; Harry Dornton = Anderson ; Sulky = Lambert ; Silky = Compton ; Goldfinch = C. Mathews ; Widow Warren = Mrs. C. Jones ; Sophia = Mrs. Stirling. Twice. Oct. 20 : Othello : Othello = Macready ; Cassio = Anderson ; lago = Phelps ; Roderigo = C. Mathews. Rest as May 22. 10 times [Macready played lago twice ; and once Othello = Anderson ; lago = Phelps]. 156 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. Oct. 24 : Khig John ; Overture, Martial Movement from Beethoven's C Minor Symphony : King John = Macready ; Arthur = Miss Newcombe ; Salisbury = Elton ; Hubert = Phelps ; Faulconbridge = Anderson ; Philip Augustus = Graham; Dauphin = Hudson ; Pandulph= Ryder ; Elinor = jNIiss Ellis ; Constance = Miss Faucit ; Blanch — Miss Fairbrother ; Lady Faulconbridge = Mrs. Selby. 26 times. Oct. 27 : Patter v. Clatter : C. Mathews. Twice. Oct. 29 : The Provoked Husband: Lord Townly = Anderson; Manly = Phelps ; Lady Townly = Mrs. Nisbett. Rest as May 19. Once. New Farce, The Eton Boy : Popham — C. Mathews [afterwards Hudson] ; Dabster = Keeley ; Fanny = Mrs. Stirling. 18 times. Nov. 16: Dryden's King Arthur ; Overture and music by Purcell, except three songs by Dr. Arne : Arthur = Anderson; Conon = (T. Bennett; Merlin = Ryder ; Warrior = J. Reeves ; Emmeline = Mrs. Nisbett [afterwards Mrs. Stirling] ; Osmond = H. Phillips ; Priest = Allen ; Philadel = Miss P. Horton ; Grimbald = Stretton ; Cupid = Miss Romer ; Venus = Mrs. Fairbrother. 31 times. Nov. 19 : Love for Love : Legend = Lambert ; Valentine = Anderson ; Ben = Keeley ; Scandal = Phelps ; Tattle = Hudson ; Foresight = Compton ; Angelica = Miss Faucit ; Mrs. Foresight = Mrs. Stirling ; Mrs. Frail = Mrs. Nisbett ; Miss Prue = Mrs. Keeley ; Nurse = Mrs. C. Jones. 8 times. Dec. 10 : New Play, Tlie Patrieiairs Daughter, by J. Westland Marston, Escj. : Earl Lynterne = Phelps ; Pierpoint = Hudson; *Mordaunt = Macready; Heartwell = Elton ; Lister = G. Bennett ; Physician = Ryder ; Lady Mabel = Miss Faucit ; Lady Lydia = Mrs. Warner. 1 1 times. Dkc. 26; ya7ic Shore: Glo'ster = Phelps ; Hastings = Macready ; Dumont = Anderson ; Bclmour = Ryder ; Jane Shore = Miss Faucit ; Alicia = Mrs. Warner. Once. Tantomimc, //(?;7^(7//'/« and IV/lliatn Tell: or, 'The Genius 0/ the Ribstone Pippin. 35 times. 1843. Jan. 9: Macbeth: 3rd Witch = Ryder. Rest practically as March 28, 1842. 10 times. (See April 17.) MA NA GEMENT. \ 5 7 Jan. 13; Werner: Gabor = I'lielps ; Idcnstcin = Compton ; Ida = Miss Fortescue. Rest as Covent Garden, Oct. 21, 1837. Twice. Jan. 17: TJic Lady of Lyons : Beausdant —Elton ; (jlavis = Keeley; Damas = Phelps; (]aspar = G. Bennett ; Melnottc = Macready ; Madame Deschappcllcs = Mrs. C. Jones ; Pauline = Miss Faucit ; Widow Melnotte = Miss Ellis. 12 times. Jan. 21 : Cymbeline : Cymbeline = Ryder; Cloten — Compton ; Posthumus = Anderson ; lachimo = Macready ; Bellarias = Phelps ; Guiderius and Arviragiis= Hudson and Allen; Pisanio= Elton ; Oueen = Miss Ellis ; Imogen = ?vliss Faucit. 4 times. Fed. 1 1 : New Play, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon [by Robert Browning] : Thorold = Phelps ; Mertoun = Anderson ; Austin = Hudson ; (Jerard = G. Bennett; Mildred =: Miss Faucit ; Gwendolen = Mrs. Stirling. Thrice. New Farce, The Thumping Legacy: Jerry Ominous = Keeley ; Rosetta = Miss P. Horton. 17 times. Feb. 18: She Stoops to Conquer : Hardcastle = Compton ; Young Marlow= Hudson ; Tony Lumpkin = Keeley ; Mrs. Hardcastle = Mrs. C. Jones ; Miss Hardcastle = Mrs. Nisbett ; Miss Neville = Miss Fortescue. Once. Feb. 24 (Macready's benefit) : Much Ado about Nothing : Don Pedro = Hudson ; Don John = Lynne ; Claudio = Anderson ; Benedict = Macready ? Leonato = Phelps ; Balthazar = Allen ; Dogberry and Verges = Compton and Keeley; Se.\ton = Morris Barnett ; Friar = Ryder; Hero = IMiss Fortescue; Beatrice = Mrs. Nisbett. 11 times. ConiHs : Attendant Spirit = Miss P. Horton ; Comus = Macready [he played the part this night and on May 5 ; on all other occasions, Comus = Phelps] ; Elder Brother = Anderson ; Lady = Miss Faucit ; Sabrina = Miss Romer ; Bacchanals = H. Phillips, Allen, J. Reeves, etc. 14 times. Feb. 25 : The Gamester: Mrs. Beverley = Miss Faucit ; Charlotte = Mrs. Stirling. Rest as Jan. 12, 1841. Once. New Operetta, TJie Queen of the Thames : Phillips, Allen, Keeley, Miss Romer. 6 times. March 6 : Virginius : Appius = Ryder ; \'^irginius - 158 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. Macready ; Dentatus = Phelps ; Numitorius = Elton ; Icilius = Anderson ; Virginia = Miss Faucit ; Servia=Mrs. Warner. Twice. April i : Pacini's Sappho : Phillips, Allen, Stretton, J. Reeves, Clara Novello (first appearance on the English stage), Mrs. Alfred Shaw (first appearance at this Theatre). 13 times. April 17 (Easter Monday) : Macbeth: Lady Macbeth = Miss Faucit ; Gentlewoman = Mrs. Alfred Wigan. New Piece, Foriunio [by J. R. Planchd] : Hudson, T. IMatthews, Miss P. Horton, etc. 40 times. April 24 : New Play, The Secretary, by Sheridan Knowles : Earl of Byerdale = Phelps ; Colonel Green = Macready ; Wilton Brown = Anderson ; Lady Laura Gaveston = Miss Faucit. Thrice. May I (Anderson's benefit) : Julius Ccesar : Caesar = Ryder ; Antony = Anderson ; Brutus = Macready ; Cassius -Phelps; Lucius = Mrs. A. Wigan; Calphurnia = Miss Ellis ; Portia = Miss Faucit. Thrice. May 16: Casca = Slieridan Knowles. M.w 5 : Acts ami Galatea (see Oct. 3, 1842) : Acis = Allen ; Polyphemus = Staudigl (first appearance at this Theatre) ; Galatea = Clai-a Novello. May 6 (Mrs. Nisbett's benefit) : The School for Scandal: Sir Peter = Compton ; Sir Oliver = Lambert ; Backbite = Keeley ; Crabtree = W. Bennett ; Joseph = Macready (this night only); Charles = Hudson ; Moses = Morris Barnett ; Trip = A. Wigan ; Sir Harry (with song) = Allen ; Lady Teazle = Mrs. Nisbett ; Lady Sneerwcll = Miss Ellis ; Mrs. Candour = Mrs. Stirling; Maria = Miss P. Horton. Once. ]May 10 (Mr. and Mrs. Keeley's benefit) : The Jealous Wife: Mr. Oakly = Macready ; Major Oakly = Phelps ; Charles Oakly = Anderson ; Sir Harry Beagle = Keeley ; Captain O'Cutter = A. Wigan ; Mrs. Oakly = Miss Faucit ; Lady Freelove = Mrs. Stirling; Toilet = Mrs. A. Wigan, Once. May iS (Miss Faucii's benefit): New Play, Athelwold, by W. Smith, Esq. : *Alhcl\v()ld = Macready ; Elfrid - Miss A/ A NA GEMENT. 1 59 Faucit ; Anderson, Phelps, Ryder, Keeley, Mrs. Kecley, Mrs. Stirling. Twice. May 29 (Performance in aid of the Siddons Memorial) : 2)id Henry IV., act iv. : King = Macready ; Prince = Anderson ; Gascoigne = Phelps ; Pages = Selby and A. Wigan. Two chief acts of Z)6'r /vv/.f(r/////r. Is ]ie yealous ? Hudson, Mrs. Warner, Mrs. Nisbctt, Mrs. Kecley. Fo-tiinio. Tributary address, spoken by Miss Faucit. May 30 (Phelps's benefit) : The Winters Tale : Leontes = Macready ; Polixenes = Ryder ; Florizel = Anderson ; Camillo = Elton ; Antigonus = Phelps ; Autolycus = Compton ; Shepherd = W. Bennett ; Clown = Keeley ; Hermione = Miss Faucit ; Perdita — Mrs. Nisbett ; Paulina = iMrs. Warner ; Mopsa and Dorcas = IMrs. Keeley and Miss P. Horton. Twice. June 3 (Saturday) announced as last night but one of the season ; but on June 5 (Monday) " The public is respectfully informed that, in pursuance of arrangements with the Proprietary of this Theatre, Mr. Macready will relinquish its direction upon the close of the present season, which, in consequence, is e.\tended to Monday, June 12, on which night he will make His last appearance in a London Theatre for a very considerable period." June 12 (Royal command) : As Vote Like It and A Thumping Legacy. June 14 (last night) : Macbeth and Fortiinio. Minor Pieces : The Attic Story., 10; La Sonnanibula^ 8 ; TJie Duenna., i ; The Windmill , 2 ; Catherine and Fetruchio, i ; La Gazsa Lad?'a, 5 ; Der Freischiitz (whole or part), 16 ; The Prisoner of War., 3 ; The Midtiight Hour., I ; Tlie Loan of a Lover., 2. Macready's Characters : King John, 26 ; Jaques, 22 ; Melnotte, 12 ; *Mordaunt and Benedick, 11 ; Macbeth, 10; Othello, 7 ; Hamlet, 5 ; lachimo, 4 ; Brutus and *Coloncl (jreen, 3 ; lago, Leontes, Werner, Comus, Virginius, and *Athelwold, 2 ; Henry IV., Stranger, Hastings, Beverley, Joseph Surface, and '"Six. Oakly, i. 133 performances. i6o WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. Macreadv's Characters. 1837-1843. (Not under his own management.) Haymarket : 1837 : *Melantius, 23 ; Hamlet, Othello, 2 ; Richard III., Ion, Lord Townly, Mr. Oakly, i. 1838 : *Thoas, 17 ; Lord Townly, 4 ; Kitely, Mr. Oakly, Duke Aranza, 2 ; Melantius, i. 1839-40: *Norman, 38 ; Melnotte, 26 ; Shylock, 16 ; Othello, Stranger, Mr. Oakly, 3 ; Lord Townly, 2 ; lago, 1. Drury Lane : 1840: *Ruthven, 20 ; Macbeth, 7. Haymarket: 1840-41 : *Alfred Evelyn, 80; Melnotte, 29 ; *Halbert Macdonald, 22 ; Richelieu, 1 5 ; Sir Oswin Mortland, 14; Werner, 12; Hamlet, 10; ^Master Clarke, 9 ; Jaques, 8 ; Mr. Oakly, Stranger, 4 ; Shylock, 3 ; Nor- man 2 ; Lord Townly, i . 1841: Alfred Evelyn, 30; *Spinola, 18; Melnotte, 15; Werner, Virginius, 11 ; Luke {Riches), 7 ; Hamlet, Tell, 4 ; Sir 0. Mortland, Stranger, 3. Note.— After the most diligent inquiry, I have failed to ascertain whether the Mr. Darley who wrote riighied Trcih (p. 132) was George Darley, the mathematician and poet. I am inclined to think that it was not he. The play was announced for repetition on April 21, but was withdrawn, on the pretext of " the indisposition of a princip.-xl performer."' ( i6i ) CHAPTER VI. HOMEWARD P.OUND. 1843-1851 ; 1851-1873. " Oh, my cottage, my cottage ! " Macready mused in his diary some time after his retirement from Covent Garden : " shall I die without seeing thee ? " Drury Lane had been abandoned in its turn, 5nd the coveted retreat seemed as far off as ever. He was now just fifty, and there was evidently no time to be lost. A large sum was still needed to secure what he considered a fair provision for his old age and for his family. He must gird up his loins, and make the most of his hard-earned position while his vigour was yet unimpaired ; for both his self- respect and his disrespect for his calling made him shrink from the bare idea of lagging superfluous on the stage. The first thing to be done was to exploit in America the new renown acquired in his managerial experiments. He sailed from Liverpool early in September, 1843, Dickens relinquishing his intention of seeing him off, lest this public show of friendship should do him injury amid the justly incensed countrymen of Elijah Pogram and Jefferson Brick. Ryder accompanied him (Phelps having declined), to play " seconds," and look after tlie details of the tour. They opened in New York on Scp- M i62 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. tember 25, travelled as far south as New Orleans, as far west as St. Louis, as far north as Montreal, and ended the tour at Boston on October 14, 1S44. Macready's repertory consisted of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, lago, I.ear, Shylock, Brutus, Cassius, Benedick, King John, King Henry IV., Wolsey, Virginius, Tell, Werner, Marino Faliero, ]\Ielantius, Claude Melnotte, Richelieu, The Stranger, Lord Townly in a three-act version of The Provoked Husband, and JosejDh Surface in a similar cur- tailment of The School for Scandal, His heavy Shake- spearian parts seem to have been the most attractive. " Hamlet," he notes, " has brought me more money than any play in America 3 " and I find that at Mobile, in March, 1844, his Hamlet drew %'iT,2> ) Macbeth, Jg666 ; Othello, K475 J ^^'l^ile William Tell brought in but K269, and Richelieu only K13S. The tour was very successful on the whole, and ended*in a clear profit of over ;^55oo. I emphasize the fact of his success, because the origin of the Forrest feud has sometimes been traced to Macready's rage at the " failure " of this visit to America. It was during this tour that he encountered Charlotte Cushman, then a struggling actress of twenty-seven. " She has to learn her art," he noted in his diary, after playing Mac- beth to her Lady Macbeth ; " but she showed mind and sympathy with me." She, on her part, attributed to Macready's influence and encouragement the true begin- ning of her artistic life. Everywhere throughout the Republic he was received with great social distinction. Charles Sumner and Judge Story were his intimate friends, and he met Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Prescott, Webster, Clay, and many other *• prominent citizens." Soon after his return from America he paid his second professional visit to Paris. The company, under Mitchell's management, included Miss Helen Faucit, whose "grace HOMEWARD BOUND. 163 aiiglaise un peu manieree des keepsakes et des livres de beaute " enraptured Theophile Gautier and the other critics, in spite of the fact that the plays in which she most excelled (all except Romeo and Juliet) were cut out of the repertory by Macready. She played Desdemona to his Othello on the opening night (Theatre Italien, December 16, 1844), and afterwards Ophelia to his Hamlet, Virginia to his Virginius, and Lady Macbeth to his Macbeth, She seems, however, to have escaped the shadowy Josephine of Werner. The visit was (at least) a success of esteem. " On the night on which we were present," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1846, "the house was crowded. At least half the audience held books in their hands, between which and the stage they managed to divide their attention. Some were incessantly occupied in inter- preting what was going on to their less learned neighbours. Many appeared resolutely absorbed, and one might discern considerable anxiety to look as if they understood all that passed, and to be moved by pity or by terror in the right place. Some, on the contrary, looked honestly vSiCant, and not a few deeply and sincerely interested. In front of the pit sat the critics, triumphantly conscious of English, and boldly enthusiastic for Macready, or passiones for Miss Faucit. The boxes were lined with rous of the blanches epaules, long locks, and impassive countenances which marked the countrywomen of the mighty poet." The critics' " consciousness of English " seems to have been somewhat vague, since we'findeven Gautier admiring in IVerner " la fermete male du style." Janin preferred Macready's Hamlet to his Othello, and Gautier, though he does not say so explicitly, seems to have been of the same opinion. "If the French public," George Sand wrote, "has seemed to Mr. Macready attentive and deeply affected rather than excited and noisy, he must i64 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. not conclude that he has not been understood by us , . . I should like hmi to carry away a good opinion of us ; and from myself, individually, my sincere homage. Eugene Delacroix, Louis Blanc, Chassoir, and all who saw him with me were enraptured with him. I cannot console myself for not having seen his Othello." Alex- andre Dumas, Eugene Sue, and other leaders of the literary world were also warm in their praises ; and there is a legend that, at the gala performance in the Tuileries, Victor Hugo, who was in the parterre, could not restrain his enthusiasm within the bounds of court etiquette. This performance took place on January i6, 1845, in presence of the royal family, the diplomatic, body, M. Guizot, Marshal Soult, and five or six hundred military and civil notables. The programme consisted of Hamlet (with the Gravediggers omitted), and The Day after the Wed- ding, in which Mdlle. Plessy, of the Comedie Frangaise, played Lady Elizabeth Freelove in English. She excited Gautier's admiration by remaining beautiful, "meme en s'extirpant de I'anglais de la bouche, operation qui . . . ne parait meme pas fort aisee pour ces insulaires, s'il faut en juger d'apres les grimaces et les contractions muscu- laires qui accompagnient leur debit." We can scarcely be wrong in reading this as a side-fling at Macready's facial mannerisms. Mdlle. Plessy repeated this feat on the following evening, when the English company gave a farewell performance, Macready playing tlie death-scene of Henry IV., and Miss Faucit, Juliet. 'I'he series of performances would have been prolonged had not the director of the Grand Opera contended that his privilege was infringed by the opening of the Tiiedtre Italien on the three "off-nights" of the week. On January 18 Macready played the death-scene of Henry IV. at the Opera Comitiuc, for the benefit o^ the Society for the HOMEWARD BOUND- 165 Relief of Distressed Authors. In recognition of this courtesy, the Dramatic Authors' Society presented him with a gold medal struck in his honour, and a letter of thanks, signed by Scribe, Me'lesville, Victor Hugo, Halevy, and others. The visit, in short, was an artistic, if not a financial, triumph. It was not so memorable, in a literary sense, as the English performances of 1827-28, for the romantic movement now needed no reinforcement. In 1844-45 Shakespeare was placed in opposition, not to classicism, but to the prevalent triviality of the Scribe school of mere adroitness. *' Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth^' cries Gautier, " cela nous lave de bien des vaudevilles et de bien des melodrames." From the beginning of 1845 till the middle of 1848, when he started on his farewell visit to America, Mac- ready made only desultory appearances in London, devoting himself for the most part to provincial wander- ings. The Princess's Theatre, Oxford Street, erected in 1840, had been opened for dramatic performances in 1842 under the management of J. M. Maddox, a Jewish speculator. AVith him Macready made a series of short engagements, generally for a stated number of weeks at three nights a week. In 1845 he appeared at the Princess's between October 13 and November 21, play- ing Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, to the Laertes of Leigh Murray, the Edgar and lago of Wallack, and the Cordelia and Desdemona of Mrs. Stirling. Cooper, Granby, Compton, Ryder, and Mrs Ternan were also in the company. Next year, from January 26 to February 27, he repeated the same parts, and added Richelieu to the list. During a third engagement (April 13 to June 19, 1846) he performed the above-mentioned parts, along with Macbeth and Virginius, and created the character of James V. of Scotland, in The King of the Commons, i66 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE ADV. by the Rev. James White, of Bonchurch. There Avas a good deal of life and vigour in the dialogue of this romantic drama ; but its construction was rambling, and the underplot unduly hindered the action. " The part of James," says i\\t AthencBum, "fiery, moody, passionate, cheerful, generous, and mistrustful — all things by turns — was exactly suited to Mr. Macready's stjHe of acting. It was, indeed, composed of Macreadyisms — painfully so." Mrs. Stirling played the heroine, and Ryder, Cooper, Leigh Murray, and Compton were in the cast. In the autumn of 1846 (September 7 to November 7) Mac- ready gave a very successful series of performances at the Surrey Theatre, under the management of Mrs. Davidge. In 1847 1"'6 played two engagements with Maddox. During the first (May 24 to June 18) his parts were Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Werner, and Melantius, and his supporters Creswick. Ryder, Mrs. Warner, and Mrs. Stirling. The second engagement (October 11 to December 3) was of more importance. He played Macbeth, Wolsey, and Othello to the Lady Macbeth, Queen Katharine, and Emilia of Charlotte Cushman ; and on November 22 he produced a stage-arrangement, by himself, of the first part of [Sir] Henry Taylor's Philip von Artcvelde. Perhaps we should rather say a stage-disarrangement — " The nine written scenes of the first act," says the Athciucu))!^ "have been reduced to four — and this not by the mere omission of five scenes, but by a recomposition of the material. The curtain opens on what is in the book the third scene of the act ; but this is again recast and pieced out with passages taken from other scenes. . . . Speeches are torn from the dialogue and treated as soliloquies. ... As we advance further into the performance we find even the text changed — enlarged as well as abridged. ... In fact, HOMEWARD BOUXD. 167 ]Mr. Taylor has been treated (perhaps with his own consent) as a dead dramatist. ... He has, while yet living, had the honour of having his work mutilated for the stage." It was with Ills own consent that Mr. Taylor had been so treated, and lie was not dissatisfied with the result. The piece was finely mounted (though extreme parsi- mony was the rule at the Princess's in tliose days), but was very inadequately acted by Cooper as Occo, James Vining as the Earl of Flanders, Miss Emmeline Mon- tagu as Adriana, and Miss Susan Cushman as Clara. Ryder as Van den Bosch seems to have been good. " I thought Macready acted his part admirably," wrote Sir Henry Taylor, in his Autobiography, " and I did not find so much fault as he and many did with others of the per- formers ; and whatever might be his own feeling, so long as the audience was of the cultivated class, the play seemed to persons of that class to be successful ; but of course the literary audiences could only be few ; and the Press, which either leads or follows the many, took the part of blaming the attempt to bring on the stage a work which was designed only for the library." The fact is that those of the audience who did not know the play beforehand had difficulty in following the action, which never properly seized their interest. It attained only five performances, to Macready's bitter disappointment. Philip van Artevelde was his last new part, and it is pleasant to think that the roll of his creations ends with so noble an effort, even if unsuccess- ful. " I never saw you more gallant and free than in the gallant and free scenes last night," Dickens wrote to him on the morning after the production. " It was perfectly captivating to behold you." On December 7, 1847, Macready played the death- scene of King Henry IV. at Covent Garden, on what lOS WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. was called a "Shakespeare Night," designed to raise money for the purchase of Shakespeare's birthplace. Macready's scene came first (Leigh Murray appearing as the Prince of Wales), and was followed by selections from no fewer than nine plays of Shakespeare, played by Harley, Buckstone, Farren, Webster, Keeley, Granby, Charles Mathews, Phelps, George Bennett, and Henry Marston ; Mrs. Butler (Miss Fanny Kemble), Miss Faucit, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Nisbett, Madame Vestris, Mrs. Stirling, Miss Priscilla Horton, Miss Laura Addison, and Mrs. Warner. The performance was a remarkable one, and added p^8oo to the fund. In 1848, before his departure for America, Macready played two engagements in London, The first — at the Princess's — lasted from February 21 to April 14. During the first four weeks he played Macbeth, Wolsey, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear, to the Lady ALacbeth, Queen Katharine, Desdemona, Ophelia, and Cordelia of Mrs. Butler, the daughter of his old adversary, Charles Kemble. On the expiry of Mrs. Butler's engagement he added Virginius, Richelieu, and ^^'erner to the list, and on April 5 resumed a part which he had long dropped — that of Brutus in Julius Cccsar — to Ryder's Cassius and Cooper's Antony. From April 24 to May 8 he appeared at the Marylebone Theatre, where INIrs. Warner, having seceded from Sadler's Wells, was carry- ing on an enterprise similar to that which she had assisted Phelps to launch in Islington. On July 10, before starting for America, he took a farewell benefit at Drury Lane, "commanded" by the Queen. His parts were Wolsey in the first three acts of Ilcnry VIII., to the Queen Katharine of Charlotte Cushman ; and Mr. Oakly in T/ie Jealous IVife, to the Mrs. Oakly of Mrs. A\'arner. Phelps assisted in imlh pieces, and the great HOMEWARD BOUND. 160 Braham came forth from his retirement to take part in the National Anthem. The house was so crowded tliat, after some disturbance, many of the audience departed, receiving their money back. Nevertheless, over ;^i 100 were realized. ^ Macready's farewell tour in America in 1848-49 is chiefly noteworthy for its lurid ending. In order fully to understand the causes and circumstances of the Astor Place catastrophe, it is necessary to follow up the Forrest feud from its insignificant beginnings. This I shall now do; premising that the greater part of the evidence may be read at length in two pamphlets pub- lished in New York in 1849 — the first entitled, The Replies from England, etc., to Certain Statements circulated in this Country respecting Mr. Macrcady ; the second entitled, A Rejoinder to " The Replies from England, ..." together with an Impartial History and Revieiv of the Lamentable Occurrences at the Astor Place Opera-House on the \oth of May, 1849, by an Americari Citizen. Edwin Forrest was thirteen years younger than Mac- ready. His parentage was obscure, his boyhood un- settled. He had tried his hand at printing and other trades ; had been (we are assured) a circus athlete ; and had found a place on the stage before he was fifteen, in virtue of his handsome face and commanding presence. When Macready was in New York in 1826, Forrest, then barely twenty, had just made his first marked success at the Bowery Theatre. Writing long after the events which made the name of Forrest one of tragic import to him, Macready professes to have recognized his promise at this early date, and to have foreseen danger in the preponderance of his physical over his mental powers. Ten years passed, in whicli Forrest acquired great popularity in his own country. He was the first I70 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. distinguished American actor, his predecessors and rivals, Cooper and Booth, being Enghsh by birth. Accordingly, when he came to England in 1836, his countrymen felt the honour of America concerned in his success. On the night of his appearance at Drury Lane, under Price's management (October 17), Macready heard from Dow that the play, T/ie Gladiator, had failed, but that Forrest had succeeded. Recording this in his diary, Macready notes, "When I saw him nine years ago, he had every- thing within himself to make a very great actor." Forrest dined with IMacready at Elstree; Macready made a cordial speech at a dinner given to Forrest at the Garrick Club ; and all was friendship and amenity. "Mr. Macready," Forrest wrote, "has behaved in the handsomest manner to me." Their paths did not cross again until Macready visited America in 1843-44. Soon after his arrival in New York he dined with Forrest, and notes, "Our day was very cheerful; I like all I see of Forrest very much. He appears a clear-headed, honest, kind man: what can be better?" Five months later he met Forrest again in New Orleans, still in friendly fashion, though the local critics seem to have done their best to make mischief between them. We have seen that the theory whicli finds the germ of the subsequent strife in Macready's rage over the " failure " of this tour is totally untenable. The feud really dates from Mac- ready's visit to Paris in 1844-45. Forrest also was in Paris at the time, and naturally wished to show the Parisians that America had her tragedian as well as England. To that end he tried to open negotiations with the manager, Mitchell, who (oddly enough) refused to see him. This refusal Forrest attributed to the hostility of Macready ; but he never adduced one tittle of evidence, and Mitchell afterwards solemnly asserted HOMEWARD BOUND. 171 in writing that Macready neither directly nor indirectly influenced his action in the matter. Still smarting under this rebuff, Forrest came to London to fulfil an engagement with Maddox at the Princess's, where Charlotte Cushman had made her first appearance in England only a few days earlier. Among his American supporters, and perhaps in his own mind, the belief subsequently grew up that Macready and Forster had suborned the press in his disfavour, and had packed the house on his opening night (February 17, 1845) with a body of roughs hired to drive him from the stage. After careful examination of the evidence, I am convinced, not only that Macready had no hand in any such attempt, but that no such attempt was ever made. The writer of the Rejoinder to the Replies (repro- duced almost word for word by Forrest's biographer, James Rees), asserts that "it was evident from the number of hisses, and the pertinacity with which they persisted in expressing their disapprobation of Mr. Forrest himself — not his acting, for they scarcely heard him — that the movement was preconcerted." If this were so, how comes it that not one of the critics who were present seems to have heard any hisses at all? The Times (one of the papers supposed to have been bought by Macready) stated that Forrest's Othello was greatly applauded ; the John Bull says that it " merited the immense applause it received ; " and I have sought in vain for the record of a single hiss. On the other hand, when he played Macbeth four days later, Oxenford remarks that " the tragedy was not announced for repetition, probably on account of the general disapprobation that Mr. Forrest's peculiarities elicited, in spite of the unanimous applause awarded to Miss Cushman." It seems, then, that Forrest's imagination, and that of his partisans, converted the 172 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. *' general disapprobation " of his third performance into an attempt to drive him from the stage on his opening night ! That the Times critic was an impartial witness is sufficiently proved by his warm praise of Forrest's subsequent performances of King Lear and Metaraora. The engagement came to an end — prematurely, I suspect — after eighteen performances, and Forrest retreated with rage in his heart, which the praise bestowed on Miss Cushman by no means tended to allay. He probably felt himself a better actor than he had been at the time of his first success, nine years before, and was irritated to find himself treated with comparative indifference. In this morbid frame of mind he found solace in imagining himself the victim of jealous machinations on the part of a rival tragedian ; and these imaginings soon grew into a sort of monomania. It must be admitted that the conduct of Forster, as critic of the Examiner, gave a faint tinge of colour to Forrest's suspicions. In 1836 Forster had stood almost alone among the critics of the day in condemning the blusterous style of the American tragedian. He found a good deal to praise in his non-Shakespearian parts, but utterly condemned his Othello and his Lear. I know of icw criticisms which convey so clear an idea of the l)crformances criticized as these two articles of Forster's. They are full of masterly analysis and vivid description. Damaging they certainly were; but it was the writer's obvious sincerity and thoughtfulness that made them so. Macready, according to Albany Fonblanque, the editor of the Exctmifier, "repeatedly entreated Mr. I'^orster to be lenient or silent, but Mr. Forster very properly maintained his independent judgment." He must have known that his intimacy with Macready might subject lK)t]i of them to injurious imputations in the matter; HOMEWARD BOUND. 173 but no one who reads his articles will blame him for taking the risk. Very different was his conduct on Forrest's second visit. Instead of criticizing him frankly, as before, or ignoring him altogether, he wrote, or allowed to be written, two or three contemptuous paragraphs, after this fashion — " Our old friend, Mr. Forrest, afforded great amusement to the public by his performance of Macbeth on Friday evening' at the Princess's. Indeed, our best comic actors do not often excite so great a quantity of mirth. The change from an inaudible murmur to a thunder of sound was enormous ; but the grand feature was the combat, in which he stood scraping his sword against that of Macduff. We were at a loss to know what this gesture meant, till an enlightened critic in the gallery shouted out, ' That's right ! sharpen it I ' '' Jibes like this, proceeding from the friend and satellite of another tragedian, were in flagrant ill taste. The most perfect sincerity does not justify a man in wantonly ex- posing himself and others to misrepresentation. Forster certainly helped to start the snowball of misunderstanding which was soon to become an avalanche. It was now Forrest's turn to put himself openly in the wrong. On March 2, 1846 — a year after Forrest's retreat from London — Macready was playing Hamlet in Edinburgh. At the phrase, " I must be idle," immedi- ately before the entrance of the court for the play-scene, it was his custom to wave his handkerchief fantastically, and assume an air of exaggerated jauntiness. Great was his astonishment on this evening when the waving of the handkerchief called forth a loud and determined hiss from some one in the upper boxes. He " bowed derisively and contemptuously to the individual," who was soon put to silence by the applause of the audience. The incident was, of course, discussed in the green-room, 174 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. and the rumour began to get abroad that Forrest was the hisser. Macready at first refused to beheve it, averring that Forrest was " too much of a gentleman." Convic- tion grew upon him, however, until the question was set at rest by a letter from Forrest to the Times, con- fessing that he hissed his rival's " fancy dance," stating that he was not alone in so doing, arguing that, having paid for his admission, he had a right to express his opinion, and alleging that he more than once started applause at points which he held to deserve it. It was afterwards maintained that, some nights later, the Edinburgh audience again hissed what Forrest called the pas de mouchoir. As to this there is some conflict of evidence ; but I am strongly inclined to believe that, as Ryder put it in an affidavit, " there was not one single hiss from any other person [than Forrest] through that evening, nor during any night of Mr. Macready's engage- ment." The point is quite immaterial. What is certain is that Forrest did, deliberately and obtrusively, hiss his brother-actor, and that in so doing he was guilty of an unpardonable error. Not even Forrest's warmest partisans have found a word to say for him in this instance. They have tried to i)rove that the pas dc mouchoir deserved to be hissed, but they have freely admitted that Forrest should have left the duty to some one whose motives were less open to suspicion. The report of these events naturally crossed the Atlantic in all sorts of garbled forms. Forrest himself had now far passed the stage of exasperation at which it is still possible to distinguish fiict from fancy. No one who has ever had to sift the testimony of untrained intellects, even on the simplest matters of foct, can have failed to observe how soon the mythopceic faculty, spurred by interest or by passion, takes the bit between HOMEWARD BOUND. 1 75 its teeth and dashes off into the region of pure romance. Forrest's intellect was essentially imtrained. His percep- tions were at the mercy of his passions. Without any mendacious intent (as we can easily believe) he put in circulation the most flagrant falsehoods. He " had met with persecution in every corner — in Paris, in London, in Edinburgh ; " though in Edinburgh, at any rate, he was, by his own admission, the aggressor. " The whole house had hissed" the pas de )nouchoir ; whereas the immense preponderance of testimony goes to show that his was the solitary hiss. He had been " most out- rageously assailed by the venal London press in 1845 ;" whereas the files are there to show that the leading papers treated him with respect, and in some cases praised him very highly. His American adherents, how- ever, were in no frame of mind to examine his assertions critically. The lampoons of Mrs. Trollope and of Dickens had touched the national susceptibilities on the raw. There was a large class or party to whom Forrest was endeared no less by his patriotism than by his talent. He was in their eyes the genius of democracy, while Macready was the toady and tool of the bloated aris- tocracy of an effete civilization, and his American admirers were little short of traitors to their country and its institutions. I am not conjecturing these sentiments ; they are set forth at length and with emphasis in the documents of the case. The feud between the two tragedians may be said to have passed from the artistic into the political sphere, and we are now approaching the sanguinary close of the sordid " international episode." Scarcely had ]\Iacready landed in America, in the autumn of 1848, when the Forrest party on the press began to decry him. Their taunts were of the sort best met by perfect silence, and Macready certainly 1-6 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. blundered when, on the night of his first appearance (New York, October 4), he made a short speech, thank- ing the audience for having, by their applause, con- futed his detractors. This mistake, of openly braving hostility, he repeated at the close of his New York en- gagement, three weeks later. The foe retaliated by publishing in the Boston Mail, on the very day of his first appearance in Boston (October 30) a violent and detailed account of the "persecutions" endured by Forrest. The Bostonians, however, were not stirred up to any demonstration ; it was in Philadelphia, on November 20, that the first disturbance took place. The play was Macbeth, and a noisy opposition was kept up throughout it, though the great majority of the audi- ence were in Macready's favour. A copper cent and a rotten egg were thrown on the stage, but no serious violence was attempted. At the close, Macready managed to deliver a speech, thanking the well-disposed among the audience for their support, and asserting strongly that he had never in act or word shown the slightest hostility towards Forrest. Two days later there ap- peared in the Philadelphia papers a so-called " Card " from Forrest, categorically reaftirming his accusations against Macready and his " toady " Forstcr, while deny- ing the existence of any "organized opposition" to the English invader. " Many of my friends," Forrest continued, "called upon me when Mr. Macready was announced to perform, and proposed to drive him from the stage. . . . My advice was — Do nothing; let the superannuated driveller alone ; to oppose him would be but to make him of some importance." The document, as a whole, was conceived in the worst possible temi)er and taste. It elicited from Macready a denial that any notice of Forrest liad appeared in the Exainiiwr in 1845, HOMEWARD BOUND. 177 and a statement that he intended to seek " legal re- dress" for Forrest's other allegations. Macready was wrong as to the Examiner. Knowing that Forster had been ill at the time of Forrest's performances in London, he felt sure that no "notice" of his acting had ap- peared ; he had not seen, or did not remember, the contemptuous paragraphs of which I have given a speci- men. With a view to his contemplated libel suit, he wrote to England for evidence on the points in dispute, and the Replies from England, published in New York on May 8, 1849, two days before the grand catastrophe, were the result of these inquiries. His American lawyer, however, advised him to abandon his action, not because it did not lie, but because the proceedings would certainly outlast his stay in America, and involve indefinite trouble and expense. In the mean time, the matter seemed to have blown over. Macready enjoyed a prosperous and pleasant tour in the south and west. At New Orleans, in March, he was entertained at a great banquet, amid much enthusiasm. At Cincinnati, during the perform- ance of Hamlet, a sportive gentleman threw half the carcase of a sheep upon the stnge ; but this seems to have been a mere ebullition of amiable vivacity, not an expression of opinion. The beginning of ISIay found him once more in New York, ready for the farewell engagement which was to be so tragically cut short. He was curiously free from apprehension, though Forrest was in the city, and the enthusiasm of his ad- mirers was running high. Macready's opening night at the Astor Place Opera-House was Monday, May 7. Macbeth was the play announced, and on the same night Forrest appeared in the same character at the Broadwny Theatre. It was probably on this occasion that the whole audience rose and cheered the lines — N 178 WILLIAM CHARLES M ACRE AD Y. "What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these Enghsh hence ? " A pretty drastic purgative was, in fact, being exhibited at the Opera-House. The theatre was crowded with a very demonstrative audience, but until he was actually on the stage Macready did not anticipate hostility. He was received with thunders of applause, which at first grati- fied him. He bowed and bowed ; the applause went on and on ; and gradually he realized that his friends were doing their best to drown the groans and howls Avhich nevertheless made themselves audible from the parquette. He tried to address the audience, but his words were lost in the clamour. Placards were displayed, with the words, "You have been proved a liar," and "No apo- logies : it is too late." " Down with the English hog ! " yelled the malcontents, and again " Three groans for the codfish aristocracy ! " A rotten egg fell on the stage at his feet. He waited calmly for a quarter of an hour, in the hope that the tumult would subside, then went on with the play in dumb-show. "Copper cents were thrown," he says ; " some struck me ; four or five eggs, a great many apples, nearly — if not quite— a peck of potatoes, pieces of wood, a bottle of assafcetida, which splashed my own dress, smelling, of course, most horribly." So the first and second acts passed. At last, during the third act, a man in the gallery tore up a chair, and sent it crasliing upon^ the stage. " Mr. Macready," said the New York HerdlJ, on the whole a hostile organ, " stood (juile iinuKjved — not the slightest licnior visible, nor the least bravado eitlier, in his manner." Presently a second chair descended from aloft ; and then Macready thought "lie had fulfilled his obligation to Messrs. Niblo and Hackett ; " the curtain dropped, and the rioters were triumphant. HOMEWARD BOUND. 179 The better class of newspapers, and all men of the more intelligent sort, were indignant at this outrage. It was Macready's intention to relinquish his engagement altogether, but a requisition, signed by forty-eight leading citizens (among them Washington Irving and Richard Grant White), induced him to alter his mind. It was represented that the riot had been totally unforeseen ; that such a surprise could not occur again ; and that it would be unjust to deny Americans who had the credit of their country at heart an opportunity of making him reparation, and at the same time signally rebuking his assailants. Thus invited, Macready could scarcely decline ; and the following Thursday, May 10, was fixed for his reappearance as Macbeth. In the interval the Replies from Etigland were published in a twenty-one page pamphlet. The seats for Thursday evening were bought up with ominous rapidity, many of the purchasers being suspi- ciously like the " b'hoys " of Monday. Determined to nip rowdyism in the bud, the city authorities stationed posses of police at various points of vantage in the auditorium, especially so as to command the parquette, or pit. The house was filled to the very dome soon after the doors were opened, but it is said that only seven ladies were present. An increasing crowd as- sembled outside ; but until the curtain rose there was no disturbance. Macready's appearance was greeted with tremendous applause, but it soon became evident that there was a determined opposition present, though its numerical strength was not so great as before. This time no pause was made in the performance. Macready went right on with his part, the rioters howling and shaking their fists at him savagely, and the well-disposed, admonished by a placard, remaining silent, so as to i8o WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. make the offenders more conspicuous. At the end of the first act, as Macbeth Avas leading Lady Macbeth ofif, the chief of the pohce gave the signal by raising his hat, and his men bore down upon the rowdies in the par- quette, clearing them out at one swoop. Four ring- leaders were arrested, and, being temporarily confined in a room under the pit, tried to set fire to the house. The attempt, fortunately, was discovered in time, and frus- trated. The others, being forcibly ejected into the street, seem to have excited the fury of the mob outside, for a bombardment almost instantly began. It hap- pened, by a fatal chance, that a sewer was being repaired in the street, so that a plentiful supply of loose paving- stones was ready to hand. To shiver the windows was the work of an instant, but the barred shutters inside resisted for some time. Presently they too gave way, and missiles began to crash into several parts of the auditorium. Meanwhile the play went steadily on, in spite of the pandemonium outside and the bowlings of the rioters who still held their places in the gallery. The name of the Lady Macbeth who remained gallantly at her husband's side throughout this dismal scene de- serves to be recorded. It was Mrs. Coleman Pope — " a very beautiful and cpieenly-looking woman " — who thus showed an ''undaunted metal" not unworthy of the character she represented. At the end of the third act Macready found his dressing-room drenched with water, some pipes having been shattered in the bombardment. Throughout the fourth act the hubbub increased. A stone struck the chandelier. The audience shrank to- gether into sheltered spots, and many left the theatre. During the fifth act the inside noises ceased, and Mar- ready acted his best, in spite of the roar from without. His death was loudly cheered, and he was called before HOMEWARD BOUND. i8i the curtain, where he mutely thanked his supporters, and then made his last bow on the American stage. He retired to his room to change his dress, the riot mean- while raging more furiously than ever outside. He had barely finished his hasty toilet, amid a crowd of pale and anxious onlookers, when a rattling detonation suddenly crashed through the hubbub. " Hark ! what's that ? " he asked. It was a volley of musketry. Soon there came another, and yet another; then the noise of the riot rolled gradually back, and stillness fell upon the scene. The civic authorities had arranged early in the day that the military should be at hand if required. It is almost certain that, if the pohce had acted with prompti- tude and determination when the bombardment began, they could have dispersed the rioters, who at that time were comparatively few. They were mostly youths between fifteen and twenty, animated by sheer love of mischief rather than by any great enthusiasm for Forrest or hatred of Macready. They seem to have entertained no serious design of storming the theatre. The great majority of the crowd (which was not at this time unmanageably dense) were mere indifferent onlookers. The police, however, made no decided sortie ; the mob increased ; and many policemen, disabled by stones, had to be carried into the theatre. At last, shortly before nine o'clock, the Sheriff sent for the military, who were soon on the ground. First came a troop of cavalry, forty strong, followed by infantry to the number of a hundred and seventy, in two detachments. As soon as the cavalry entered Astor Place, they were assailed with a shower of stones and brickbats. Almost every one of them was hurt, their horses became unmanageable, and they rode ignominiously from the field. Tlius the foot- 182 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. soldiers were left unsupported in the midst of a dense crowd of from ten to twenty thousand people, howled at, cursed, and stoned by the aggressive section of the mob, whom their very presence infuriated. To make confusion worse confounded, the night w^as as dark as pitch, the street-lamps around having been extinguished. For some time the troops tried, by marching and counter- marching, to clear the space round the theatre. It was useless. Little by little they were more and more closely hemmed in, until, when orders were given for a bayonet- charge, they found themselves at too close quarters with the mob even to attempt it. Many of them, both soldiers and officers, were severely injured by stones; a pistol, loaded with small shot, was tired by one of the rioters, and wounded two or three men ; some of the mob were even wrenching the muskets from the soldiers' hands. When things had come to this pass, Generals Sandford and Hall, who were in command, told the Sheriff and the Recorder that unless their men were ordered to fire they could not hold their ground. Still the civic authorities hesitated for several minutes, warning the mob that they would be fired upon, and exhorting them to desist. There was not even a pause in the shower of missiles ; the Sheriff saw that the troops could- not stand there to be annihilated ; and finally he gave the re(iuisite per- mission. The number of soldiers at this point was about seventy, the others being engaged at the back of tlie theatre, where the disturbance was less acute. General Hall gave orders to fire above the heads of the crowd, against the wall of a house opposite ; but the hubbub was so terrible that the order was imperfectly heard. Most of the troops obeyed it ; but some fired into the crowd, one or two of whom fell. The majority of the mob, however, imagining that no harm was done, HOMEWARD BOUND. 183 concluded that the soldiers had only blank cartridges, and, raising a howl of scorn and execration, rushed again to the attack. This time the order was given to aim low ; a second volley was fired ; several people dropped ; and the mob, now alive to the seriousness of the situa- tion, recoiled considerably. Still the hailstorm of missiles continued, and it was evident that the rioters were not really quelled. They rallied, indeed, and began to ad- vance once more, in two bodies. The troops were ordered to fire obliquely, one half to the right, the other to the left ; and this volley, which was so desultory that some witnesses describe it as two separate discharges, did great execution, and finally broke the spirit of the mob. An advance was made in two directions, the rioters fliUing gradually back, though still keeping up a running fire of stones. Presently the military were left in undis- puted possession of the space around the theatre. Two brass pieces, loaded with grape-shot, were brought upon the scene, and placed so as to command, one the Broad- way, the other the Bowery. The battle over, the crowd vanished very quickly, bearing its dead and wounded away with it ; and the soldiers, largely reinforced, bivou- acked for the night on the scene of their melancholy victory. The number of the dead is variously stated, but seems to have been about seventeen ; many of them, of course, mere chance onlookers, who cared no straw for the rival tragedians. Within the theatre, Macready and his friends were in a state of not unnatural trepidation. Shots had been fired ; men had been killed ; even if the military were for the moment victorious, could Macready hope to get out of New York without falling into the hands of rioters eager to avenge their comrades ? " There was nothing for it," he writes, "but to meet tlie worst with iS4 WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY. dignity." He was persuaded to exchange overcoats with one of the actors, and to wear a cap in place of his hat. Otherwise undisguised, he joined the last stragglers of the audience leaving the theatre, and passed with them into the street. Accompanied by one friend, he made his way unrecognized to that friend's house, where a council of war was held. It was decided that he must leave New York at once. He sat up all night, smoking and talking, until, at the peep of day, a carriage and pair, ordered " to take a doctor to some gentleman's house near New Rochelle," sped him out of the city. At New Rochelle he took train for Boston. Some fellow-passengers recognized him on the way, but he was quite unmolested, and soon found himself safe in the house of his friend George Curtis. Even in Boston he did not at first feel quite secure, though the Mayor called to assure him that the authorities had both the will and the power to protect him from outrage. He remained in Boston for ten days, and then started for home in the steamer Hibeniia. " I never felt sucli relief," he writes, " as in planting my foot upon that vessel's deck." Supersensitive as his conscience was, Macready could not feel that any drop of the blood shed on the loth of May v>'as on his head. In the last analysis, the riot is to be regarded simply as an acute outbreak of a long- standing international irritation. But for tliat pre-exist- ent condition, not even Forrest's alleged ''persecution" could have worked people up to such a pitch of frenzy. Local rancours, too, came into pla}'. It is evident that the support given to Macready by the upi)er classes and the upper-class press did mucli to cxas[)crate the mob. If we must distribute the responsibiHty among indi- viduals, there can be no doubt tliat Forrest's wounded HOMEWARD BOUND. 185 vanity Jay at the root of the misunderstanding. The jibes of tlie Examiner gave him some shadow of ex- cuse for suspecting Macready of liostility to him ; and this suspicion grew into a monomania which rendered him subject to delusions on the plainest matters of fact. Forrest, however, seems to have given no direct en- couragement to violence. Apart from his angry letters to the newspapers, he pursued a policy of masterly inactivity, Macready, on the other hand, cannot be acquitted of injudiciously braving an opposition which he ought to have ignored. His speeches on the opening and closing nights of his first New York engagement should have remained unspoken. Otherwise, I cannot find that any tittle of blame attached to him, and, at the crisis, even his opponents admitted the dignified intre- pidity of his conduct. Surveying the whole matter with every desire to be impartial, I should say that Forrest was thrice as much to blame as Macready, while fatality — the unhappy convergence of a hundred deplorable circumstances — was thrice as much to blame as Forrest. Macready returned from America in June, 1849, and retired from the stage in February, 185 1. The interven- ing twenty months were occupied with farewell visits to the provinces and two engagements at the Hay market. The first of these extended from October 8 to Decem- ber 8, 1849. He played only four parts — Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, supported by James Wallack, Howe, Rogers, Keeley, Mrs. Warner, Miss Reynolds, and Miss Priscilla Horton. On February i, 1850, he took part in the Windsor Castle theatricals, arranged by Charles Kean, playing Brutus in Julius Ccesar to Kean's Antony, \Vallack's Cassius, and Mrs. Warner's Portia. This was the only time he ever appeared on the same stage with Kean, whom he did not love, ll is reported 1 86 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. that on this occasion, after the play was over, Kean sent some message of courtesy to him in his dressing-room, which was met by the gruff rejoinder, " If Mr. Kean has anything to say to me, let him say it through my solicitor !" Kean's share in the Windsor theatricals was rewarded by the gift of a diamond ring, which he afterwards lost ; whereupon a wit reported that it had been found " stick- ing in INIacready's gizzard." The second Haymarket en- gagement began with INIacbeth on October 28, 1850, and ended with Lear on February 3, 185 1. In the course of the engagement he played Hamlet, Othello, Shylock, Richelieu, Werner, Virginias, Brutus, and afterwards Cassius, in Julius Ccssar (Mr. Howe making a great success as INIark Antony), Wolsey, King John, the Stranger, Benedick, Henry IV. (in the death-scene), Mr. Oakly, and (for the first time in London) Richard 11. The revival oi Richard IT. (which was acted with "singu- lar fidelity to the text") excited Httle interest, and was repeated only once. The American actor, E. L. Daven- port, played seconds during this engagement, in place of Wallack ; the support, for the rest, being much as before. Macready, I fear, cannot be acquitted of conniving at what he calls " play-bill trickery " in the announcement of "last appearances," which, as a matter of fact, were only penultimate, or even antepenultimate. But the phrase, "last time for ever," meant what it said; and during the last weeks of January it was appended to each of his great characters in turn, except Macbeth. That favourite part was reserved for his last farewell. So early as two o'clock on February 26, 1851, crowds had gathered round the pit and gallery doors of Drury Lane Theatre, then under the management of James Anderson. An old playgoer, who witnessed the throng later in the day, said that " Jenny Lind was nothing to HOMEWARD BOUND. 187 it " — there was no slight crowd to sec the crowd. Phelps closed his own theatre in order to play Macduff to his old leader's Macbeth ; Howe was the Banquo ; Mrs. Warner, the Lady Macbeth. When the curtain rose every corner of the house was densely packed. "And what a sight that was!" writes George Henry Lewes. " How glorious, triumphant, affecting, to see every one starting up, waving hats and handkerchiefs, stamping, shouting, yelling, their friendship at the great actor, who now made his appearance on that stage where he was never more to reappear ! There was a crescendo of excitement enough to have overpowered the nerves of the most self-possessed ; and when, after an energetic fight — which showed that the actor's powers bore him gallantly up to the last — he fell pierced by Macduff's sword, this death, typical of the actor's death, this last look, this last act of the actor, struck every bosom with a sharp and sudden blow, loosening a tempest of tumultuous feeling such as made applause an ovation. " Some little time was suffered to elapse wherein we recovered from the excitement, and were ready again to burst forth as Alacready the Man, dressed in his plain black, came forward to bid ' Farewell, a long farewell, to all his greatness.' As he stood there, calm but sad, waiting till the thunderous reverberations of applause should be hushed, there was one little thing which brought the tears into my eyes, viz. the crape hatband and black studs, that seemed to me more mournful and more touching than all this vast display of sympathy [his eldest daughter, ' Nina,' died February 24, 1850, aged twenty]. . . . Perhaps a less delibe- rate speech would have better suited the occasion ; . . . but under such trying circumstances a man may naturally be afraid to trust himself to the inspiration of the moment. Altogether I must praise Macready for the dignity with which he retired, and am glad that he did not act. There was no ostentation of cambric sorrow ; there was no well got-up broken voice to simulate emotion. The manner was calm, gra\e, sad, and dignified." 1 88 WILLIAM CHARLES MAC READY. His children were among the audience. They had also been allowed to witness his farewell performances at the Haymarket.* The inevitable public dinner followed on the ist of jSIarch, in the Hall of Commerce. Sir E. L. Bulwer was in the chair; Dickens, Thackeray, and Bunsen spoke. Forster read Tennyson's sonnet of farewell to '•' Macready, moral, grave^ sublime ; " and the whole company stood up and cheered when Charles Kemble, at the age of seventy-six, rose to stammer a few words of reply to the toast of '-The Stage." On the follow- ing day Macready betook himself to his "cottage" — a substantial house at Sherborne, Dorsetshire — and entered upon the twenty-two years of his retirement. The evening of his life was full of sorrows. Death was busy around him. The first victim was his wife, who survived his retirement only some eighteen months, dying on September i8, 1852. A son, Walter Francis Shell, died on February 3, 1853, aged thirteen ; another son, Henry Frederick Bulwer, died after a lingering illness on August 12, 1857, aged nineteen; a daughter, Lydia Jane, died of scarlatina, June 20, 1858, aged sixteen ; and his "sister and friend," Letitia, died four months later (November 8, 185S), aged sixty-four. Death now stayed its hand for eleven years — a period of tranquillity and happiness. In i860 (April 3) Macready married again. His wife, Miss Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer, was many years his junior ; yet the union was a happy one. About the same time he removed from Sherborne to Wellington Square, Cheltenham, where he spent the rest of his life. A son was born of the second marriage * One of his sons, Edward, went on tiie stage in Australia, apparently without success. I/O ME WARD BOUND. 1S9 (May 7, 1862), and life rolled on unruffled until the sixties drew to a close. Then his eldest surviving daughter, " Katie," a young lady of strong character and some poetic talent, fell ill, and was sent to Madeira in search of health. She died on the homeward voyage, March 24, 1869, at the age of thirty-four. From this blow Macready never fully recovered; and it was followed two years later (November 26, 1871) hy the death, in Ceylon, of his eldest son, William Charles, aged thirt3'-nine. At Sherborne Macready had busied himself greatly, not only with the bringing up of his own children, but with the spread of education among the people. He founded, or revived, a literary institution, at which he induced Dickens, Thackeray, Forster, Bellew, and others to give readings and lectures. He himself frequently read and lectured, not only at Sherborne, but in other towns of the south and west. After the removal to Cheltenham these public appearances were almost, if not entirely, discontinued; but he still gave frequent private readings, to which the boys of Cheltenham College were sometimes admitted. During the last two or three years of his life he could not hold a book or read for himself ; hut he still enjoyed being read to, and, failing a reader, would go over the stores of literature in his memory. "I have been reading // 142, 186, 212 Atkins, Miss Catherine Frances. See Macready, Mrs. W. C. (first wife) , — (scene-painter), 17 Balfe, Michael, 91 Banim, John, 56 Barham, R. H., 125 Barlley, George, no, 114 Becher, Sir W. W., 49 Bellew, J. M., 189 Bennett, George, 109, 119, 129, 168 Berlioz, Hector, 78, 79 Betterton, Thomas, 191 Betty, W. H. W., 9, 10, 23, 25 Billington, Mrs., 6 Birch, Christina Ann. See Mac- ready, Mrs. (W. C. M.'s mother) , William, 7 Blanc, Louis, 164 Blisset, — (actor), 6 Booth, Junius Brutus, 38, 40-42, 52, 76, 170, 209 , Miss S., zz Braliam, John, 84, 169 Browning, Robert, 96, 99-101, 120, 136, 214 Bryant, William Cullen, 162 Buckstone, J. B., 107, 124, 168 Buller, C, 123 Bulvver, Sir E. L. (Lord Lytton), 99, loi, 114, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 140, 188, 204 Bunn, Alfred, 66, 69, 72, 78, 81, 85-89, 91-95, 97-99, 103, 106, 112, 114, 119, 209 , Mrs., 46, 68, 69, 71, Ti Bunsen, Chevalier, 188 Butler, Mrs. See Kemble, Fanny Byron, Lord, 28, 59, 88, 204 Carlyle, Thomas, 117 Chassoir, — , 164 Chester, Miss, 82 Chippendale, — , 78 Clay, Henry, 162 Clifford, Mrs. W., no Coleman, John, 122, 194 Compton, Henry, 129, 133, 165, 166 2l6 INDEX. Conway, W. A , 14, 76, 77 Conyngham, Lord, 123 Cooke, G. F., 13, 50, 76 , Tom, 120, 129 Cooper, John, 78, 82, 85, 88, 124, 165-168 , Thomas Abthorpe, 76, 170 Cornwall, Barry, 43, 45, 54, 56 Creswick, William, 166 Curtis, George, 184 Cushman, Charlotte, 162, 166, 168, 171, 172 , Susan, 167 Dale, — (actor), 100 Daly, Richard (Dublin manager), i Darley, — (author), 132, 160 Davenant, Sir W., 140 Davenport, E. L., 186 , Mrs., 56 Davidge, Mrs., 166 Delacroix, E. , 164 Denvil, H. G., 90 Desmond, Miss. See Macready, Mrs. W., W. C. M.'s step- mother De Wilde, — (artist), 18 Dibdin, J. C, 49 Dickens, Charles, 45, 102, 121, 123, 126, 127, 135, 161, 167, 175, 188, 189, 207 Diddear, C. B., 109 Dimond, — (Bath manager), 26, 27 Dow, — , 94, 1 70 Dowton, William, 49, 60, 82, 84, 90, 91 Ducrow, Andrew, 87 Dumas, A., the elder, 78, 79, 164 Edgeli, — (Birmingham school- master), 6 Edwin, J. P., 15 Egerton, Mrs., 34, 43 Elliston, R. W., 5, 10, 13, 22, 45, 49, 59, 60, 63, 69, 72, 75, 107, 140 , William Gore, 75 Elton, E. W., loi, 106-108, 125, 129, 142 Emerson, R. W. , 162 Emery, John, 13, 25, 39, 56 Everard, Cape, 15 Fairbrother, Miss, 134 Farren, William (sen.), 46, 52, 56, 58, 60, 82, 84, 90, 99, loi, 107, 168 Faucit, Miss H. (Lady Martin), 96, 97,99-101, 109, III, 114, 117. 121, 124-129, 137, 138, 163, 164, 168 Fawcett, John, 13, 29, 46, 56, 60, no Fisher, Claia, 73 Fitzgerald, Edward, 131 Fonblanque, Albany, 123, 172 Foote, Miss Maria (Countess of Harrington), 33, 52, 53, 72, 77- 79 Forbes, — (Covent Garden man- ager), 58 Forrest, Edwin, 76, 162, 169-177, 181, 184, 185, 194 Forster, John, 45, 94, 96, loi, 115, 121, 123, 137, 171, 172, 176, 177, 188, 189 Fortescue, Miss, 130 Fo.x, W. J., loi, 120, 121, 138 Galindo, Mr. and Mrs., 10 Garrick, David, 19, 191 Gaspey, Thomas, 89, 90 INDEX. 217 Gautier, Theophile, 82, 163, 165, 194 Genest, Rev. — , 27, 28, 54, 57 George HI., 52 IV., 53, 207 Glover, Mrs., 34, 49, 60, 66, 69, loi, 102, 107, no, 127, 168 Gould, Miss, 129 Granby, — (aclor), 165, 168 Griffin, Gerald, 132 Guizot, Monsieur, 164 Hackett, J. H., 178 Halevy, F., 165 Hall, General, 182 Hamilton, Lady, 7 Hammond, W. J., no, 125 Harley, J. P., 49. 69, 71. 73, §4. no, 168 Harness, Rev. W., 73, 96 Harris, Henry (Covent Garden manager), 27, 35, 37, 46, 50, 52, 53, 57, 62 Haynes, James, 125 Hazlitt, William, 35, 37, 38, 53 Henderson, John, 20 Hook, Theodore, 68 Horton, Miss Priscilla(Mrs. German Reed), no, 113, n8, 125, 127, 129, 138, 168, 1S5 Howe, Henry, 109, 124, 185-187, 212 Huddart, Miss. See Warner, Mrs. Hudson, James, 129, 133 Hugo, Victor, 47, 79, 82, 164, 165 Humby, Mrs., no, 121 Hunt, Leigh, 43, 192, 197, 201 Inglis, Dr. (of Rugby), 8 Irving, Henry, 20, 141, 142, 210 , Washington, 179 Janin, Jules, 80 Jerdan, William, 45 Jerrold, Douglas, 132 Jordan, Mrs., 22 Kean, Charles, 77, 88, 108, n6, 128, 185, 191 , Edmund, 1 1, 20, 22, 27, 32, 35, 39, 46, 49-53, 58, 60, 69, 72, 73, 76, 80, 85, loi, 191-195 Keeley, R., 129, 133, 137, 168, 185, 206 , Mrs. R., 129, 132, 133, 142 Kelly, Miss F. 49 , Miss F. H., 60 Kemble, Charles, 13, 25. 33, 35, 41, 48, 49, 52, 53, 56-58, 60, 61, 63. 78, 79, 93. 97, 98, no, 124, 137, 188 , Mrs. C, 25, 48 , Fanny (Mrs. Butler), 168, 197, 2n , John Mitchell, 124 John Philip, 5, 13, 20, 32, 36-38, 42, 51, 58, 59, 61, 86, 114, n5, 141, 191-193, 199 Kenney, James, 74, 82 King, Thomas, 6 Knowles, J. Sheridan, 53, 68, 72, 89, 90, 97, loi, 107, n6, ng, 138, 204 Lacy, Walter, 124, 127, 142 , Mrs. W. See Taylor, Miss Lamb, Charles, 45, 53, 54 Landor, W. S., 96 Lee, Alexander (musician), 82, ni Leffler, Adam, no Lekain, 80 Lewes, G. II., 187, 199, 201, 202, 205 2l8 INDEX. Lewis, "Gentleman," 6 Lind, Jenny, i86 Liston, John, 13, 36, 39, 43, 48, 49, 5i> 52, 57, 59, 60, 77, 78, no Lloyd, Charles, 45, 53, 54 Longfellow, H. W., 162 Lovell, G. W., 92 , Mrs., 90, 92 Macklin, Charles, 1-3, 20 Maclise, Daniel, 121 Macready, Edward N. (W. C. ^L's brother), 8, 25, 44 , Letitia (W. C. M.'s sister), 71, 188 , William (W. C. M.'s father), parentage, i ; comes to England, 2 ; marriage, 3 ; at C. G., 3 ; adapts plays, 4 ; man- ager at Birmingham, 5 ; at Royalty Theatre, 6 ; engages young Ros- cius, 9 ; takes T. R., Manchester, and fails, 10 ; arrest and release, 14 ; controversy with J. P. Edwin, 15 ; manager at Bristol, 49 ; second marriage, 70 ; death, 81 ; character, 15-17, 24 ; anecdotes, 16, 17, 24 ; parts played by him, 2, 3, 16 -, Mrs. W., (W. C. M.'s mother), ancestry and marriage, 3 ; death, 8 ; parts played by her, 2, 5 , Mrs. W. (W. C. M.'s step- mother), 70 , William Charles, birth, 4 ; schools — Kensington 4, Birmingham 6, Rugby 7 ; learns to recite, 6 ; early theatrical me- mories, 6 ; Rugby theatricals, 7 ; glimpse of E. Kean, II ; chooses theatrical profession, 1 1 ; classical acquirements, II; at Manchester and Newcastle, 13 ; in London during O. P. riots, 13 ; management at Chester and Newcastle, 14 ; first appearance, 17; De Wilde's portrait, 18; first criticism, 18 ; early perform- ances, 19-29; at Newcastle, 20, 22, 24, 25 ; performs with Mrs. Whitlock and Mrs. Siddons, 21 ; with Mrs. Jordan at Leicester, 22 ; accused of kicking an actress, 22 ; performs with Betty at Glasgow, 23 ; at Dumfries, 23 ; quarrels with father, 24, 26 ; adaptations of Mannion and Rokehy, 25 ; per- forms with Mr. and Mrs. C. Kemble, C. Young, and Emery, 25 ; accident at Newcastle, 26 ; at Bath, 27-29 ; negotiations with Covent Garden, 27 ; with Drury Lane, 28 ; meets Kean, 27 ; anecdote of Byron, 28 ; meets Miss Atkins at Glasgow, 28 ; at Dublin, 28 ; humours of Dublin audience, 29 ; engage- ment at C. G., 29; condition of the stage, 32 ; choice of opening character, 33 ; first appearance at C. G. (season 1S16-17), 34; criticisms on it, 35 ; his ugliness, 36 ; dissatisfied with unsympa- thetic parts assigned him, 37, 39, 41, 46 ; The Slave, 39 ; season 1817-18 at C. G., 42 ; Kob Koy, 43 ; thinks of going into the Church, 44 ; friendship with Wal- lace, Shiel, Lloyd, Lamb, Tal- fourd, etc., 45 ; season 181S-19 INDEX. 219 at C. G., 46; "cock-grumbler," 46 ; Wightwick on his Dumont, 46 ; rivalry with Young, 48 ; retirement of Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill, 48 ; visits Scot- land, 49 ; season 1819-20 at C. G., 49; success in Richard III., 50; compared with Kean, 51 ; declines to play Lear, 52 ; Vir- giniiis, 53 ; criticisms, 54 ; second meeting with Miss Atkins, 55 ; season 1820-21 at C. G., 55 ; attempt to restore Shakespeare's Richard III., 56 ; season 1821-22 at C. G., 57 ; quarrel with C. Kemble, 58, 61 ; letters of com- plaint to C. G. management, 58, 62 ; tour in Italy, 59 ; revolt of C. G. company, 59; season 1822- 23 at C. G., 60 ; Shell's Hitgtce^wt and Miss Mitford's Julian, 60 ; dispute as to salary with C. G. management, 62 ; pamphlet by M., 63 ; engages with Elliston, 63 ; season 1823-24 at D. L., 66 ; attack in John Bull, 66, 68 ; myth of the rescued child, 67 ; Cuius Gracchus, 69 ; Kean refuses to appear with M., 70; marriage, 70 ; season 1824-25 at D. L. , 71 ; The Fatal Dowry, 71 ; serious illness, 71 ; attack by Harness in Blackwood, 73 ; at D. L., 1826, 75 ; first American tour, 76 ; season 1827-28 at D. L., 77 ; English actors in Paris, 1827-28, 78 ; Shakespeare and the French romanticists, 79 ; M. appears in Paris, 79 ; criti- cisms by Janin and others, 80 ; starring in provinces, 1828 to 1830, 81 ; receipts, 81 ; season 1830-31 at D. L., 82 ; Werner, The Pledge (Hernani), and Knowles's Alfred the Great, 82 season 1831-32 at D. L., 83 Serle's Merchatit of London, 83 season 1832-33 at D. L., 84 Serle's I/ottse of Colberg, 84 Waverley Pageant, 84 ; appears with Kean, 85 ; Trueba's Alcii of Pleasure, 85 ; Bunn manager of both C. G. and D. L. , 86; season 1833-34 at D. L. , 87 ; Sardana- I>alns, 88 ; Knowles's benefit, 89 ; letters to Gaspey, 89, 90 ; The Bridal at Dublin, 90 ; manage- ment at Bath and Bristol, 90 ; season 1835-36 at D. L. , 91 ; friction with Bunn, 92 ; Provost of Bruges, 92 ; further quarrels with Bunn, 93 ; assault upon Bunn, 94 ; M.'s remorse, 95 ; re- ception and speech at C. G., 95 ; Ion, 96 ; supper at Talfourd's, 96 ; Bunn V. Macready — Talfourd's speech, 97 ; damages awarded, 98 ; season 1836-37 at C. G., 98 ; C. Kemble's retirement, 98 ; The Duchess de la Vallicre, 99 ; Straffo7-d, lOO ; M.'s position summed up, loi ; his clique, loi ; probable improvement in his acting, 102 ; motives for going into management, 105 ; at Hay- market, 1837, 106 ; The Bridal, 106 ; pecuniary arrangements at C. G., 107 ; selection of company for C. G., 107-111; restricts " improper intrusion," ill; com- position of programmes, 112; season 1837-38 at C. G., 112; 2 20 INDEX. Winters Tale, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Henry V., 112; Lear, Lady of Lyons, 113; Coriolanus, 114; Two Foscari, 115; Woman's Wit, 116 ; general results of season, 116 ; at Haymarket, 1838, 117 ; Athenian Captive, 117; season 1838-39 at C. G., 117; letter from Carlyle, 117; The Tempest, 1 18 ; William Tell, 119 ; Richelieu, 120 ; As You Like It, Henry V., 121 ; reasons for relinquishing management, 122 ; public dinner, 123 ; applies for Licensership, 124 ; at Hay- market, 1839, 124 ; The Sea- Captain, 125 ; at D. L., 1840, 125 ; Mary Stuart, 125 ; season 1840- 41 at Haymarket, 125; Glencoe, Master Cla?-ke, Money, 126 ; letter from Dickens, 127 ; season 1841 at Haymarket, 128 ; re-enters management, 128; company se- lected, 129; season 1841-42 at D. L., 129; Merchant of Vetiice, T-wo Gentlemen of Verona, Game- ster, Acis and Galatea, 130 ; Gisippus, Plighted Troth, 132 ; season 1842-43 at D. L., 133; As You Like It, King John, 133 ; Ki7ig Arthur, Love for Love, 134; The Patrician'' s Daughter, Cytnbeline, 135; A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 136 ; Mtich Ado, 137 ; Fortunio, The Secretary, \ 38 ; again relimiuishes management, 138; general review of his man- agement, 139 ; American tour, 1843-44, 161 ; performances in Paris, 1844, 163; at Tuilcries, 764; at Princess's, 1845-46, 165; The King of the Commons, 165 ; at Surrey Theatre, 166; at Prin- cess's, 1847, 166; Philip van Artevelde, 166 ; " Shakespeare night" at C. G., 167; at Prin- cess's, 1848, 168 ; at Marylebone Theatre, 168; benefit at D. L., 168; American tour, 1S48-49, 169; origin of Forrest feud, 169; Forrest's first visit to England, 170; his rebuff in Paris, 170; his engagement at Princess's, 171 ; Forster's criticisms, 172 ; Forrest hisses M. in Edinburgh, 173; exasperation of his American admirers, 174; M. arrives in America, 175; disturbances at Philadelphia, 176; southern tour, 177 ; first riot in New York, 178 ; second riot, 179; scene inside theatre, 180; military called in, 181 ; they fire on the mob, 182 ; M.'s escape, 183; the episode summed up, 184 ; farewell per- formances at Haymarket, 185, 186; at Windsor Castle, 185; last appearance at D. L., 186; G. H. Lewes's description, 187 ; public dinner, 1S8; in retire- ment, 188; second marriage, 1S8; death, 189 ; his rank as an actor not clearly determined, 191 ; compared with Kean by Leigh Hunt and others, 192; an eclectic actor, 193 ; physiognomy and costume, 194 ; voice and vocal mannerisms, 195, 196; treatment of verse, 197 ; criticism from Daily Neivs, 198 ; a progressive actor, 198; letter to Wighlwick, 199; a "Shakespearian" or INDEX. 221 " melodramatic " actor ? (criticisms by Lewes and Tomlins), 199, 200 ; his best parts, 201 ; self-expres- sion in acting, 203 ; statistics of leading parts, 203 ; was he a comedian? 205 ; struggle of higher and lower elements in character, 207 ; extenuating circumstances, 209 ; artistic scrupulousness and artistic egoism, 210; M. at re- hearsal, 211; violence of lan- guage, 212; character summed up by Miss Martineau and Mr. Browning, 214; M.'s CHILDREN, 81, 93, 126, 131, 187-190; M.'s CHARACTER, 12, I9, 29, 61, I4I, 142, 207-214; ANECDOTES, 22, 24, 46, 61, 72, 73, 78, 85, 115, 121, 122, 131, 142, 186, 196, 198, 207, 209, 2II-213; PRIN- CIPAL CHARACTERS : Alfred Evelyn, 127, 206 ; Antony {An- tony and Cleopatra), 22, 87 ; Benedick, 25, 26, 28, 137, 205, 206 ; Bertulphe, 92 ; Beverley, 21, 130; Bragelone, 99 ; Brutus, 168, 185; Caius Gracchus, 69; Cassius, 48, 59, 199, 203 ; Claude Melnotte, 113, 205, 206 ; Corio- lanus, 51, 112, 199; Damon, 56; Dumont, 46 ; Duke {Measure for Measure), 70 ; Edmund, 52 ; Faulconbridge, 24 ; Francesco Foscari, 115; Friar Lawrence, 141 ; Ford, 90; Gambia, 39, 73, 90 ; Ghost {Hamlet), 83 ; Gisip- pus, 132 ; Grimwood, 132 ; Hal- bert Macdonald, 126; Hamlet, 21, 27, 56, I 2, 162, 163, 173, 194,202; Harii.iny, 130 ; Henri Quatre, 52; Henry IV,, 56, 89, 164, 167, 202; Henry V., 28, 73, 112, 121 ; Hotspur, 27, 75 ; Lachimo, 56 ; lago, 37, 199, 200, 202, 206, 210; Ion, 96, 205; James V., 166; Jaques, 71, 121, 133, 141 ; King John, 61, 71, '^Zl-: 199. 203 ; Joseph Surface, 49, 82, 206; Kitely, 29, 84, 117; King Lear, 86, 89, 112, 199-202; Leontes, 29, 69, 71 ; Ludovico, 47; Macbeth, 55, 61, 77, 80, 91, 95. "2, 143, 162, 176, 178, 179, 187, 197-201; Melantius, 90, 107, 205 ; Mentevole, 29, 37 ; Michael Ducas, 46 ; Mirandola, 56 ; Mordaunt, 135 ; Mordent, 49 ; Norman, 125 ; Young Nor- val, 19, 21 ; Mr. Oakly, 83, 168, 205, 206 ; Orestes, 34 ; Othello, 26, 37, 81, 112, 162, 163, 194, 202, 210; Pescara, 41 ; Petruchio, 83 ; Philip van Artevelde, 166 ; Prospero, 56, I18 ; Richard II., 22, 27, 186, 199; Richard III., 22, 50, 56, 68, 83, 93, 193 ; Richelieu, 120, 162, 201, 205, 206 ; Rob Roy, 43, 73, 84, 206 ; Romeo, 18, 26, 43 ; Romont, 71 ; Sardanapalus, 88 ; Shylock, 124, 130; Spinola, 128; Strafford, 100; Stranger, 26; Thoas, I17; Lord Townly, 29 ; Valentine {Tivo Gentlemen), 130; Virginius, 53, 76, 80, 201, 204; Wallace, 55 ; Werner, 65, 82, 201, 204 ; William Tell, 65, 72, 80, 162 ; Wolsey, 61, 168 Macready, Mrs. W. C. (first wife), 28, 55, 70, 188 , Mrs. W. C. (second wife), 188 222 INDEX. Maddox, J. M., 165, 166, 171, 213 Malibran, Madame, 85, 88, 95 Manvers, — (vocalist), IIO ^ Mardyn, Mrs., 88 Mars, Mdlle., 59 Marshall, — (scene-painter), in, 129 Marston, Henry, 129, 168 • , J. Westland, 120, 121, 135, 201, 206, 213 Martineau, Harriet, 214 Mathews, C. J., 123, 133, 134, 168 Matthews, T., in Mattocks (Liverpool manager), 2 Meadows, Drinkwater, no Melesville, A. K. J. (Duveyrier), 165 Milnes, Monckton (Lord Hough- ton), 123 Mitchell, J. (manager), 162, 170 Mitford, Miss, 60, 73, 96, 195 Montague, Miss Emmeline, 167 Mudford (editor of Courier), 66, 67 Munden, Joseph, 10, 13, 49, 60, 69, 70, no, 129 Murdoch, James, 196, 198 Murray, Leigh, 165, 166, 168 Musset, Alfred de, 47 Nelson, Lord, 6 Niblo, — , 178 Nisbett, Mrs. (Lady Boothby), 107, 133. 134, 168 Noel, Rev. J., 28 Novello, Clara, 137 Nugent, Lord, 123 O'Neill, Miss (Lady Bechcr), 28, 32, 33. 38. 41. 43, 45.46,48,49. 199 Orsay, Count d', 127 Osbaldiston C. G. (manager), 95, 96, 99, 100, 106 Oxenford, John, 171, 194, 206 Payne, W. H., in Phelps, Samuel, 108, in, Il8, 121, 124-126, 129, 133, 136, 142, 161, 168, 187, 191 Phillips, H., 129 , Miss, 82, 87 Piozzi, Mrs., 14, 29 Planche, J. R., 74, 91, 138 Plessy, IMadame, 164 Polhill, Captain, 82, 83, 91 Pollock, Lady, 202, 2o5 Poole, Miss, 129 Pope, Mrs. Coleman, 180 Porch ester. Lord, 78 Power, Tyrone, 84, no Prescott, W. H., 162 Price, Stephen, 76-78, 170 Pritchard, J., 98, 109 Procter, B. \V. See Cornwall, Barry Piickler-Muskau, Prince, 77, in Rachel, 191 Reed, Mrs. German. See Horton, Miss P. Rees, David, 127 , James, 171 Reeves, Sims, 134 Reynolds, Frederick, 77 , J. H., 54 , Miss, 185 Roberts, " Split-crow," 212 Robinson, H. Crabb, 45 Robson, William ("The Old Play- goer"), 22, 133, 195 Rogers, James, 185 Konier, Miss, 1 29 INDEX. 223 Rooke, T. B., 113 Roscius, Young. See Betty, W. H. Ryder, John, 133, 161, 165-168, 174 Sala, G. A., 213 Sand, George, 163 Sandford, General, 182 Scharf, George, 194 Schiller, 113 Schroder-Devrient, Madame, 85 Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 84 Scribe, Eugene, 165 Serle, T. J., 83, 109, 113, 126, 129 Shaw, Mrs. Alfred, 138 Shell, Richard Lalor, 41,42,44,45, 47. 56, 60, 123, 204 Shelley, P. B., 59 Shirley, James, 47 Shirreff, Miss, no Smith, C. J., Ill , James, 1 15 , William, 138 Smithson, Harriet (Madame Ber- lioz), 78-80 Somerville, Miss. See Bunn, Mrs. Soult, Marshal, 164 Spedding, James, 202 Spencer, Miss C. L. F. See Mac- ready, Mrs.^W. Q. (second wife) Stanfield, Clarkson, 96, 113, 121, 130, 134 Stephens, "Kitty" (Countess of Essex), 39, 43, 48, 49, 51, 52, 58-60, 63 Stirling, Mrs., 128, 133, 165, 166, 168 Strickland, Robert, no, 125, 127 Sue, Eugene, 164 Sussex, Duke of, 123 TalfoLird, Justice, 45, 96-98, loi, 117, 123, 126, 204 Talma, 42, 59, 80, 191, 194, 199 Taylor, Miss (Mrs. W. Lacy), 107, no , Sir Henry, 166, 167 Telbin, W., 129, 133 Tennyson, Alfred, 188 Ternan, Mrs., 165 Terry, Daniel, 43, 53, 71 Thackeray,;W. M., 86, 125, 188, 189 Thesiger (Lord Chelmsford), 97 Tieck, Ludwig, 41 Tilbury, W. H., no Tomlins, F. G., 199, 203 Tree, Ellen (Mrs. C. Kean), ^T, 88, 92, 96, 97, 128 Trollope, Mrs., 175 Troughton, R. Z,, 128 Trueba, Telesforo de, 85 Twiss, Mr. and Mrs., 28 VandenhofF, George, 210 , John, 92, 99, 100, loi , Miss, 117 Vestris, Madame, 60, 123, 133, 134, 168 Vigny, A. de, 79 Vincent, Miss, no Vining, F., no, 127 , James, 167 Waldron, — (actor), 109 Walker, C. E., 55 Wallace, William, 45, 94 Wallack, James, 66, 69, 71, 77, 82, 126-128, 165, 185, 1S6, 191 Warde, James, 109, 125 Warner, Mrs., 82, 83, 106, 107, 109, n7, 124-126, 129, 166, 168, 185, 187 224 INDEX. Watson, — (Cheltenham manager), II Watts, Alaric, 45 Webster, Benjamin, 106, 117, 124- 127, 168 , Daniel, 162 , J., 100 Wellington, Duke of, 206 West, Mrs. W., 60, 66, 69, 71, 98 White, Rev. James, 166 , Richard Grant, 1 79 Whitlock, Mrs., 21 Wigan, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred, 138 Wightwick, George, 46, 108, 199 Willett, — (Covent Garden manager), 58 Willmott, — (prompter), 94, 136, 142 Wilson, John, no Wood, Mr. and Mrs. (Miss Paton), 90, 91 Wordsworth, William, 45, 96 Woulds, — (Bath manager), 90 Wrench, Benjamin, 127 Wynn, — 213 Yates, Edmund, 213 , Mrs., 71 Young, Charles Mayne, 13, 25, 33, 35. 37, 41 > 44, 48, 49, S7-6o, 70, 73, 83, 123, 192, 195 THE END. PRINTED DV WILL7AM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONLON AND BECCLES. UNIVEHPITY OF TALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES LIBRARY i University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. Form L-P 3 1158 00435 4659 AA 000 411 622 4 Univeri Sout Lib -^ ':'•' vrtf>oc>o;/i>irvf>f>;>.K>,; . ^'iit» t