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WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY
(1793-1873) |
ENGLISH
actor William Charles Macready was born in London on the 3rd
of March 1793, and educated at Rugby. It was his intention to
go up to Oxford, but in 1809 the embarrassed affairs of his father,
the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share
the responsibilities of theatrical management. On the 7th of
June 1810 he made a successful first appearance as Romeo at Birmingham.
Other Shakespearian parts followed, but a serious rupture between
father and son resulted in the young man's departure for Bath
in 1814. Here he remained for two years, with occasional professional
visits to other provincial towns. On the 16th of September 1816,
Macready made his first London appearance at Covent Garden as
Orestes in The Distressed Mother, a translation of Racine's Andromaque
by Ambrose Philips. Macready's choice of characters was at first
confined chiefly to the romantic drama. In 1818 he won a permanent
success in Isaac Pocock's (1782-1835) adaptation of Scott's Rob
Roy. He showed his capacity for the highest tragedy when
he played Richard III at Covent Garden on the 25th of October
1819. Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose
in public favour, his most conspicuous success being the title
rôle of Sheridan Knowles' William Tell (May 11,
1825). In 1826 he completed a successful engagement in America,
and in 1828 his performances met with a very flattering reception
in Paris. On the 15th of December 1830 he appeared at Drury Lane
as Werner, one of his most powerful impersonations. In 1833 he
played in Antony
and Cleopatra, in Byron's Sardanapalus, and in
King
Lear. Already Macready had done something to encourage
the creation of a modern English drama, and after entering on
the management of Covent Garden in 1837 he introduced Robert
Browning's Strafford, and in the following year Bulwer's
Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, the principal
characters in which were among his most effective parts. On the
10th of June 1838 he gave he gave a memorable performance of
Henry V, for which Stanfield prepared sketches, and the
mounting was superintended by Bulwer, Dickens, Forster, Maclise,
W.J. Fox and other friends. The first production of Bulwer's
Money took place under the artistic direction of Count
d'Orsay on the 8th of December 1840, Macready winning unmistakable
success in the character of Alfred Evelyn. Both in his management
of Covent Garden, which he resigned in 1839, and of Drury Lane,
which he held from 1841 to 1843, he found his designs for the
elevation of the stage frustrated by the absence of adequate
public support. In 1843-1844 he made a prosperous tour in the
United States, but his last visit to that country, in 1849, was
marred by a riot at the Astor Opera House, New York, arising
from the jealousy of actor Edwin Forrest, and resulting in the
death of seventeen persons, who were shot by the military called
out to quell the disturbance. Macready took leave of the stage
in a farewell performance of Macbeth at Drury Lane on the 26th
of February 1851. The remainder of his life was spent in happy
retirement, and he died at Cheltenham on the 27th of April 1873.
He had married, in 1823, Catherine Frances Atkins (d. 1852).
Of a numerous family of children only one son and one daughter
survived. In 1860 he married Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer
(1827-1908), by whom he had a son.
Macready's performances always displayed
fine artistic perceptions developed to a high degree of perfection
by very comprehensive culture, and even his least successful
personations had the interest resulting from thorough intellectual
study. He belonged to the school of Kean rather than of Kemble;
but, if his tastes were better disciplined and in some respects
more refined than those of Kean, his natural temperament did
not permit him to give proper effect to the great tragic parts
of Shakespeare,
King Lear perhaps excepted, which afforded scope for his
pathos and tenderness, the qualities in which he specially excelled.
With the exception of a voice of good compass and capable of
very varied expression, Macready had no special physical gifts
for acting, but the defects of his face and figure cannot be
said to have materially affected his success.
This article was originally
published in Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition.
Cambridge: University Press, 1911.
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