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‘The Gaiety of Meditated Success’: The Richard III of William Charles Macready

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

London Green
London Green
Affiliation:
London Green isAssociate Professor of Drama atBishop's University, in Quebec.
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Extract

William Charles Macready was, except for Edmund Kean, the greatest and most influential actor of his time. He was distinguished not only for the energy, design, and command of his own acting, but also for the introduction of thorough rehearsal procedures and a concern for all aspects of production: a policy which led to the carefully unified production work of his disciple Samuel Phelps and the lavish Shakespearian productions of Henry Irving at the end of the century. Macready was demanding, disciplined, outspoken, and widely admired. He in fact helped to establish the actor-manager/company relationship typical of the period. In his youth, relationships between leading actors had been typically combative and coercive, and actors who had developed successful individual styles exacted company submission as their due. Kean, when he could, had refused to act with other men of quality, and Macready himself had been kept from Shakespearian roles at Covent Garden by Charles Mayne Young, J. B. Booth, and Charles Kemble. In the face of such divisive factors, Macready, with continual hard work and a bustling dictatorial manner, rose to a position of such power and respect that twice he was able to gather around him some of the most respected actors of his time to form a company unequalled for the beauty and finish of its productions.

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Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Summer 1985 , pp. 107 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1985

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References

Notes

1. Macready, William Charles, Macready's Reminiscences, and Selections from His Diaries and Letters, ed. SirPollock, Frederick (London, 1875), I, p. 55.Google Scholar

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., II, p. 424.

4. Marston, Westland, Our Recent Actors (London, 1888), I, p. 99.Google Scholar

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15. Ibid., II, p. 441, letter to MrsPollock, , 20 06 1856.Google Scholar

16. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 159.Google Scholar

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26. Ibid.

27. British Stage and Literary Cabinet, V, No. 52 (04 1821), p. 116.Google Scholar

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34. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 66.Google Scholar

35. Macready, , Diaries, I, opposite p. 36.Google Scholar

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42. Unless otherwise specified, all line references come from Cibber, Colley, The Tragical History of King Richard III, in Spencer, Christopher, ed., Five Restoration Adaptations of Shakespeare (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1965), pp. 275–344.Google Scholar

43. Shakespeare, William, The Tragical History of King Richard III (London, 1793)Google Scholar. (Macready, William Charles promptbook, annotated after 12 03 1821 [Folger Shakespeare Library Promptbook No. 15])Google Scholar, p. 10.

44. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 274.Google Scholar

45. Rice, Charles, The London Theatre in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. Sprague, Arthur Colby and Shuttleworth, Bertram (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1950), p. 34, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

46. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 274Google Scholar. Something of Macready's gloating impetuousness and his stage business may perhaps be seen in the remarkable film which the English actor-manager Frank Benson and his company in 1911 at the Stratford Theatre made of what is essentially the Cibber scenario. Benson, a wiry, athletic actor who had worked with Irving, was a smiling and agile villain. At the height of a verbal battle that could be indicated only by gestures, he leaped upon Henry VI suddenly and stabbed him. At what would have been the line,

What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster

Sink in the ground? – I thought it would have mounted.

(1.3.61–62)

he shook his dagger free of blood and then stabbed the king a second time. Benson, who took every opportunity for action, especially, one imagines, in a silent film, afterward dragged the body from the room. The total impression was of a confident, gloating, remorseless prince, much like that whom Macready is said to have portrayed, though perhaps more active physically than Macready and lacking in his menace.

47. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 34, 3 04 1827.Google Scholar

48. His Henry V, for example, was to woo Katherine later in 1819 with ‘gallantry, dignity, frankness, sprightliness, and irony, so skillfully interwoven as to form a most harmonious and agreeable whole’. (Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, No. 142 [9 10 1819], p. 653.Google Scholar) Such a complex of qualities, turned to another purpose, to be sure, was certainly of use in Richard's very different courtship.

49. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 274Google Scholar; Rice, , London Theatre, p. 34, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

50. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready post-1821 promptbook, pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., p. 15.

52. Ibid.

53. Morning Chronicle, 1819Google Scholar, in Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 197Google Scholar. See also: New Monthly Magazine, XII, No. 71 (1 12 1919), p. 584.Google Scholar

54. Times, 26 10 1819Google Scholar; Rice, , London Theatre, p. 34, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

55. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, pp. 13 and 33.Google Scholar

56. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 34, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

57. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 274.Google Scholar

58. Ibid.

59. Macready, , King Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready, W. C., 1821, p. 32.Google Scholar

60. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready post-1821 promptbook, p. 32.Google Scholar

61. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 275.Google Scholar

62. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, p. 34.Google Scholar

63. Ibid.

64. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 275.Google Scholar

65. Ibid.

66. Even Macready could not dispense with some rewriting.

67. Times, 13 03 1821Google Scholar, in Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 224, fn.Google Scholar

68. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready post-1821 promptbook, pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

69. Ibid., p. 37.

70. British Stage and Literary Cabinet, V, No. 52 (04 1821), p. 116.Google Scholar

71. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready post-1821 promptbook, p. 37.Google Scholar

72. New Monthly Magazine, n.s., III, No. 4 (1 04 1821), p. 167.Google Scholar

73. Ibid.

74. Morning Herald, 13 03 1821Google Scholar, in Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 224, fn.Google Scholar

75. British Stage and Literary Cabinet, V, No. 52 (04 1821), p. 116.Google Scholar

76. Morning Herald, 13 03 1821Google Scholar, in Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 224, fn.Google Scholar

77. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready post-1821 promptbook, pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

78. British Stage and Literary Cabinet, V, No. 52 (04 1821), p. 116.Google Scholar

79. Authorship of these lines is unclear.

80. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 34, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

81. Ibid.

82. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 275Google Scholar. At its best, this must have been one of those moments of abandon planned by the actor and fostered by an innately-sensed audience sympathy – an abandon that Macready is unique in writing about in the period before Stanislavsky. At such moments there was, he wrote, ‘an air of unpremeditation to every sentence, one of the highest achievements of the histrionic art’. (Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 238.)Google Scholar He marvelled at the consistency of such abandon in Mrs Siddons: ‘forgetfulness of self was one of the elements of her surpassing power’. (Ibid., p. 149.) This was also, he thought, Kean's gift at his greatest, and the gift of the singer Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, whose acting in Fidelio he described: ‘It was as tender, animated, passionate and enthusiastic as acting in opera could be – she quite abandoned herself to her feelings; she was admirable.’ (Macready, , Diaries, I, p. 30, 6 05 1833.)Google Scholar Much later in the century, Stanislavsky devoted his life to establishing the disciplines necessary to achieve such artistic liberation, which he saw in the actor Salvini. Macready, in a more limited way, tried constantly to establish the psychological setting for the same flowering, as his diaries show. When he could, with complete sureness, act with perfect abandon, forgetting himself, he was satisfied. When he was at his best, the transformation seemed, indeed, complete: ‘He ceases to be Mr. Macready’, said a critic, ‘and is pro tempore the person he represents.’ (Drama; or Theatrical Pocket Magazine, VI, No. 8 [09 1824], p. 338.)Google Scholar

83. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready, post-1821 promptbook, p. 44.Google Scholar

84. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, p. 35.Google Scholar

85. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready, post-1821 promptbook, p. 44.Google Scholar

86. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 96.Google Scholar

87. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

88. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 196.Google Scholar

89. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

90. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 196.Google Scholar

91. ‘Richard’ is ‘Gloster’ in Macready's scripts.

92. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 196.Google Scholar

93. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 275.Google Scholar

94. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, p. 36.Google Scholar

95. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 275.Google Scholar

96. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

97. Anon., Critical Examination of … Mr Kean and Mr Macready, p. 37.Google Scholar

98. Ibid.

99. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

100. Times, 26 10 1819.Google Scholar

101. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

102. Mirror of the Stage, or New Dramatic Censor, I, No. 11 (30 12 1822), p. 163.Google Scholar

103. Shakespeare, , Richard IIIGoogle Scholar, Macready, post-1821 promptbook, p. 63Google Scholar. See also: Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

104. Macready's envisioning of the ghost of Banquo was reputed to be even more powerful than Kean's. Macready did not ‘bully the ghost of his deceased friend Banquo out of the supper-room’ as had been the custom, but

retreated, instead of advancing … trembling and shuddering at the past and the present – endeavouring to shield his eyes from a vision that almost seared them with horror; his manly nature peeping out a little from the cloud of fear and remorse that enveloped it, but sinking back at last exhausted and dismayed.

(Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, No. 178 [17 06 1820], p. 397.)Google Scholar

105. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

106. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 276).Google Scholar

107. Times, 26 10 1819Google Scholar; Mirror of the Stage, or, New Dramatic Censor, I, No. 11 (30 12 1822), p. 163.Google Scholar

108. Macready's occasional violence became legendary. At the climax of his greatest contemporary success, Virginius, for example, ‘every vein in his body seem[ed] about to burst with suppressed rage’ (Theatrical Journal, III, No. 125 [7 05 1842], p. 146)Google Scholar, and in another scene he more than once left bruises on the neck of his adversary, Appius. (Marston, , Our Recent Actors, I, pp. 11–12.)Google Scholar

109. Examiner, No. 379 (31 10 1819), pp. 699–700Google Scholar, in Houtchens, , ed., Leigh Hunt's Dramatic Criticism, pp. 220–1.Google Scholar

110. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

111. Ibid.

112. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, pp. 197–8.Google Scholar

113. Ibid., p. 196.

114. Theatrical Inquisitor, XV, No. 5 (11 1819), p. 276.Google Scholar

115. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

116. Anon., Critical Examination of Mr Kean. and Mr. Macready, p. 39.Google Scholar

117. ‘Memoir of Macready’, inserted in the extra-illustrated edition of Matthews, and Hutton, , Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States, IV, Pt. IGoogle Scholar, Harvard Theatre Collection, quoted in Downer, Alan S., The Eminent Tragedian, William Charles Macready (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Energetic effort was something Macready provided throughout his career. Years before his London debut, Charles Mayne Young told him that half of Macready's energy and fire would be more than sufficient for the most arduous role, a lesson that Macready took to heart only later as he realized that an economy of force increased his effect. (Macready, , Reminiscences, I, pp. 84–85.)Google Scholar His diaries are full of self-chastisement for excessive force, both on and off stage.

118. Drama, or Theatrical Pocket Magazine, VI, No. 8 (09 1824), p. 339Google Scholar. In ‘precision of detail and the truth of general effect Kean was thought generally superior even to Macready’. (Critical Examination of … Mr. Kean and Mr. Macready, p. 39.)Google Scholar Macready, like Kean, was careful to devise a different death agony for every character. As Hamlet, his death from poison was brilliantly illustrative without ‘trespass[ing] … on the physically disgusting’, and a ‘signal dramatic triumph’. (New Monthly Magazine, n.s., III, No. 7 [1 07 1821], p. 333.)Google Scholar In The Gamester, again poisoned, Macready looked ‘haggard, ghastly …. his sentences were broken by suffering … he expired with a dreadful but correct resemblance of the last mortal agony’. (Theatrical Inquisitor, IX [12 1816], p. 438.)Google Scholar When he died as John, King, ‘the groans … burst from him’ and the death ‘was a picture of horrible reality’. (Theatrical Journal, III, No. 151 [5 11 1842], p. 357).Google Scholar

119. Rice, , London Theatre, p. 35, 3 04 1837.Google Scholar

120. ‘Memoir of Macready’, in Downer, , Eminent Tragedian, p. 58.Google Scholar

121. Macready, , Reminiscences, I, p. 196.Google Scholar