MACRAUCHENIA, a long-necked and long-limbed, three-toed South American ungulate mammal, typifying the suborder Litopterna (q.v.).
MACREADY, WILLIAM CHARLES (1793-1873), English actor, 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 in the title-rôle of Sheridan Knowles’s 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 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 the 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 especial physical gifts for acting, but the defects of his face and figure cannot be said to have materially affected his success.
See Macready’s Reminiscences, edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, 2 vols. (1875); William Charles Macready, by William Archer (1890).
MACROBIUS, AMBROSIUS THEODOSIUS, Roman grammarian and philosopher, flourished during the reigns of Honorius and Arcadius (395-423). He himself states that he was not a Roman, but there is no certain evidence whether he was of Greek or perhaps African descent. He is generally supposed to have been praetorian praefect in Spain (399), proconsul of Africa (410), and lord chamberlain (422). But the tenure of high office at that date was limited to Christians, and there is no evidence in the writings of Macrobius that he was a Christian. Hence the identification is more than doubtful, unless it be assumed that his conversion to Christianity was subsequent to the composition of his books. It is possible, but by no means certain, that he was the Theodosius to whom Avianus dedicates his fables.
The most important of his works is the Saturnalia, containing an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Praetextatus (c. 325-385) during the holiday of the Saturnalia. It was written by the author for the benefit of his son Eustathius (or Eustachius), and contains a great variety of curious historical, mythological, critical and grammatical disquisitions. There is but little attempt to give any dramatic character to the dialogue; in each book some one of the personages takes the leading part, and the remarks of the others serve only as occasions for calling forth fresh displays of erudition. The first book is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of the Saturnalia and the festivals of Janus, which leads to a history and discussion of the Roman calendar, and to an attempt to derive all forms of worship from that of the sun. The second book begins with a collection of bons mots, to which all present make their contributions, many of them being ascribed to Cicero and Augustus; a discussion of various pleasures, especially of the senses, then seems to have taken place, but almost the whole of this is lost. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth books are devoted to Virgil, dwelling respectively on his learning in religious matters, his rhetorical skill, his debt to Homer (with a comparison of the art of the two) and to other Greek writers, and the nature and extent of his borrowings from the earlier Latin poets. The latter part of the third book is taken up with a dissertation upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended to check it, which is probably a dislocated portion of the second book. The seventh book consists largely of the discussion of various physiological questions. The value of the work consists solely in the facts and opinions quoted from earlier writers, for it is purely a compilation, and has little in its literary form to recommend it. The form of the Saturnalia is copied from Plato’s Symposium and Gellius’s Noctes atticae; the chief authorities (whose names, however, are not quoted) are Gellius, Seneca the philosopher, Plutarch (Quaestiones conviviales), Athenaeus and the commentaries of Servius (excluded by some) and others on Virgil. We have also two books of a commentary on the Somnium Scipionis narrated by Cicero in his De republica. The nature of the dream, in which the elder Scipio appears to his (adopted) grandson, and describes the life of the good after death and the constitution of the universe from the Stoic point of view, gives occasion for Macrobius to discourse upon many points of physics in a series of essays interesting as showing the astronomical notions then current. The moral elevation of the fragment of Cicero thus preserved to us gave the work a popularity in the middle ages to which its own merits have little claim. Of a third work, De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, we only possess an abstract by a certain Johannes, identified with Johannes Scotus Erigena (9th century).
See editions by L. von Jan (1848-1852, with bibliog. of previous editions, and commentary) and F. Eyssenhardt (1893, Teubner text); on the sources of the Saturnalia see H. Linke (1880) and G. Wissowa (1880). The grammatical treatise will be found in Jan’s edition and H. Keil’s Grammatici latini, v.; see also G. F. Schömann, Commentatio macrobiana (1871).