Certain historians delight in pinpointing moments of change, the intersection of trends that mirror social progress. Charts are drawn to establish the point in time when ascending television viewing crosses descending newspaper circulation, or where rising city surpasses falling rural population. Dramatic history is rarely the product of such simplistic trends, but perhaps such a nexus may be cited in London in the spring of 1820. On 17 May of that year, William Charles Macready opened in Sheridan Knowles's Virginius at Covent Garden. It was a great success and established Macready as the leading actor in England, confirming the supremacy of a new style based on “domesticity” and “humanity.” On 29 May 1820, Edmund Kean opened at Drury Lane in another version of the Virginius story and failed completely. This was Kean's first London defeat and started him on a ten-year slide to oblivion, a slide which took much of romantic acting and dramaturgy with him.