The distinguished English actor, William Charles Macready, with whom circumstances brought the American into a professional rivalry which deepened into bitter enmity, was a man in every respect of a very different type. All his life he had an extreme distaste and a moral aversion to his profession; yet, by dint of incessant intellectual and mechanical drill, he placed himself for a term of years at its head in Great Britain. He was of vanity and irritability and egotistic exactingness all compact, insanely sensitive to neglect and censure, greedily avid of notice and admiration. He seemed scarcely to live in the direct goals of life for their own sakes, but to be absorbed in their secondary reflections in his own self-consciousness and in his imaginations of the opinions of other people concerning him and his affairs. A man of a morbidly introspective habit, a discontented observer, a spiritual dyspeptic, he coveted social preferment and shrank from the plebeian crowd,—
"And 'twas known
He sickened at all triumphs not his own."
This severe estimate is unwillingly recorded, but it is amply justified by his own memoirs of himself, posthumously published under the editorship of his literary executor. His diary so abounds in confessions and instances of bad temper, vanity, arrogance, angry jealousy, and rankling envy, that it serves as a pillory in which he exhibits himself as a candidate for contempt. In an article on "Macready's Reminiscences," the "Quarterly Review" (English) says, "Actors have an evil reputation for egotism and jealousy. No one ever lay more heavily under this imputation than Mr. Macready while on the stage. We have heard the greatest comedian of his time say of him, 'Macready never could see any merit in any actor in his own line until he was either dead or off the stage.' The indictment was sweeping, but this book almost bears it out. In his own words, the echo of applause, unless given to himself, fills him 'with envious and vindictive feelings.' He abhors and despises his own profession. While still on the stage he says, 'It is an unhappy life. We start at every shadow of an actor, living in constant dread of being ousted from popularity by some new favorite.' After leaving the stage he says, 'I can now look my fellow-men, whatever their station, in the face and assert my equality.' And these things he says in the face of the fact that he owed all his consequence to his success as an actor."
Macready had played a successful series of engagements in the United States in 1843. He was well received, much praised, and carried home a handsome sum, though the profit was mostly his own, since the managers generally made little, and many of them actually lost by him. He was not popular with the multitude, but was favored by the selecter portion of the public. His enjoyment, too, of the eulogies written on his acting was a good deal dashed by the censure and detraction in which some of the writers for the press indulged. His social success, however, was unalloyed. He and Forrest up to this time were on good terms, terms of genuine kindness, though any strong friendship was out of the question between natures so incompatible. Forrest had honorably refused urgent invitations from several managers of theatres in different cities to play for them at the time Macready was acting in rival houses. The two or three weeks of his engagement in New York Macready spent in the house of Forrest, who received a very cordial letter of thanks from Mrs. Macready, in London, in acknowledgment of his generous attentions and hospitality to her absent husband.
There were at that time many Englishmen connected with the leading newspapers in this country. They naturally felt that the cause of Macready was their own, and expatiated on the beauties of his performances, not a little to the disparagement of the American player. On the other hand, the national feeling of other writers affirmed the greater merits of their own tragedian. By natural affinity the English party drew to themselves the dilettante portion of the upper stratum of society, the so-called fashionable and aristocratic, while the general mass of the people were the hearty admirers of Forrest. The cold and measured style of the foreigner, his rigid mannerism and studied artificiality, were frequently spoken of in unfavorable contrast with the free enthusiasm, the breathing sincerity and impassioned power, of the native player. Forrest was called a rough jewel of the first water, who scorned to heighten his apparent value by false accompaniments; Macready a paste gem, polished and set off with every counterfeit gleam art could lend. The fire of the one was said to command honest throbs and tears; the icy glitter of the other, the dainty clappings of kid gloves. Such expressions plainly betray the spirit that was working. These comparisons—though there were enough of an opposite character, painting the Englishman as a king, Forrest as a boor—greatly irked and nettled Macready. And it was known that he went back to England with a good deal of soreness on this point.
When Forrest made his first appearance in London, at Covent Garden Theatre, a few months after the return of Macready from his American trip, the latter, as well as all his compeers, Charles Kemble, Charles Kean, and Vandenhoff, was without any London engagement. This circumstance of itself was calculated to quicken jealousy towards an intruding foreigner who threatened to attract much attention. However, as it is known that Forrest had nothing to do with the depreciating notices of Macready written in America, it is to be supposed that none of the English tragedians had any hand whatever in the scurrilous critiques of Forrest written in their country, or in the attempt made to break him down and drive him from the London stage. But such conspicuous personages always have in their train, among the meaner fry of dramatic critics and their hangers-on, plenty of henchmen who are eager to do anything in the fancied service of their lords, even to the discredit and against the will of those whose cause they affect to sustain.
On the evening of the 17th of February, 1845, as Forrest appeared in the character of Othello, he was saluted with a shower of hisses, proceeding from three solid bodies of claqueurs, packed in three different parts of the house. So often as the legitimate audience attempted any expression of approval, it was overpowered by these organized emissaries. Beyond any doubt it was a systematic plan arranged in advance under the stimulus of national prejudice and personal interest, whoever its responsible authors were or were not. Forrest, though profoundly annoyed, gave no open recognition whatever of the outrage, but went steadily on with his performance to the end. The next evening, when he played Macbeth, the disturbances were more determined than before; but the large majority of the crowded assembly upheld the actor by their applause, and again he gave no heed to the interruptions and insults. The force of the conspiracy was broken, and gave no further overt signal, and the engagement was played through triumphantly. But Forrest left Covent Garden with a bitter and angry mind. He ruminated unforgivingly, as it was his nature to, on the injurious and unprovoked treatment he had received. For the hisses, suborned as they evidently were, did not constitute the worst abuse he had to bear. Three or four of the London newspapers, known as organs of special dramatic interests, most notably the organ of the bosom friend of Macready, noticed him and his performances in a tone of comment shamefully without warrant in truth. A few specimens will suffice to prove the justice of this statement:
"Mr. Forrest's Othello is a burlesque of the elder Kean's mannerisms, his air of depressed solemnity, prolonged pauses, and startling outbursts, with occasional imitations of Vandenhoff's deep-voiced utterance, varied by the Yankee nasal twang. His presence is not commanding, nor his deportment dignified; for the assumption of grandeur is not sustained by an imaginative feeling of nobleness. His passion is a violent effort of physical vehemence. He bullies Iago, and treats Desdemona with brutal ferocity. Even his tenderness is affected, and his smile is like the grin of a wolf showing his fangs. The killing of Desdemona was cold-blooded butchery."
"Our old friend Mr. Forrest afforded great amusement to the public by his performance of Macbeth. 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!'"