Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/185

Rh M A C M A C 167 MACREADY, WILLIAM CHARLES (1793-1873), was born in London 3d March 1793, and educated at Rugby. Ills intention was to proceed to Oxford, but the embarrassed affairs of his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, c died him to share the responsibilities of theatrical man agement, in which he showed great prudence and address. In 1810 he made a successful debut as Romeo at Birming ham ; and the fame which he had acquired in the provinces gave exceptional interest to his appearance in 1816 at Covent Garden, in the character of Orestes in the Distressed Mother. In London his choice of characters was at first confined chiefly to the romantic drama, but he showed his capacity for the highest tragic parts when he played Richard III. at Covent Garden in 1819, and in the follow ing year his performance of Virgiuius, in the new play of Sheridan Knowles, assisted to give solidity to his reputa tion. Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradu ally rose in public favour, till, on the retirement of Kean and Young, he was regarded as the legitimate successor of thess tragedians. In 1826 he completed a successful engagement in America, and in 1828 his performances met with a very flattering reception in Paris. Already he had done something to encourage the creation of a modern English drama through the interest awakened by his performances in Viryinius, Gaiiis Gracchus, and William Tell, and after entering on the management of Covent Garden in 1837 he introduced, besides other new plays, Bulwer s Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, the principal characters of which were among his most effective parts. Both, however, 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 hampered and finally frustrated by the sordid aims of the proprietors and the absence of adequate public support. In 1843-44 lie 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 Forrest, and resulting in the death of twenty- two persons, who were shot by the military called out to quell the disturbance. Macready retired from the stage in 1851 ; and the remainder of his life was occupied chiefly in superintending the education of his family, and in schemes for the welfare of the poorer classes. He died at Cheltenham 27th April 1873. Macready s performances always displayed fine artistic perceptions developed to a high degree of perfection by very comprehensive cul ture, 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 pro per effect to the most characteristic features of the great tragic parts of Shakespeare, King Lear perhaps excepted, which in some degree 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 was not in a special degree gifted physically for acting, but the defects of his face and figure cannot be said to have mate rially influenced his success. He created a considerable number of parts, which still retain their hold on the stage, and, although not by virtue of natural genius worthy of a place among tragedians of the first rank, he is almost entitled to this on account of the high degree of perfection to which he had cultivated his powers, and from the fact that there is no tragedian of the second rank who can be named his equal. See Macready s Reminiscences, edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, 2 vols., 1875. MACROBIUS, AMBROSIUS THEODOSIUS, a Roman grammarian and philosopher, who wrote towards the beginning of the 5th century after Christ. He is described in the superscription of the best MSS. as vir clarissimus et illastris; hence it has been supposed that lie is the Macrobius who was prsefectus preeiorius Hispaniarum in 399 A.D., proconsul of Africa in 410, and chamberlain (prxposit iis sacri culiculi) in 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. On the contrary, he shows great interest in the deities of paganism ; his friends seem to have belonged wholly to the pagan party ; and his philosophical views are those of the Neo-Platonists. Hence the identification is more than doubtful. It is possible, but by no means certain, that he was the Theodosius to whom Avianus dedicates his fables. From the date of the persons who are mentioned by him as contemporaries, he appears to have flourished in the time of Honorius. The most important of his works is the Convivionon Saturnaliorum Libri tieptem, containing an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Prcetextatus during the holiday of the Saturnalia. The latter part of the second book and the beginning of the third, the second half of the fourth book, and the end of the seventh have been lost ; otherwise the work is in fairly good preserva tion. It was written by the author for the benefit of his son Eustachius, and contains a great variety of curious historical, mythological, critical, and grammatical disquisi tions, the value of which is much increased by the frequent quotations from earlier writers. The machinery is some what cumbrous ; for, as in some of Plato s dialogues, the discussions are not ..directly reported, but a certain Postumianus reproduces, for his friend Decius, the account which he had received from a rhetorician Eusebius, who had been present at them. 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 bans mots, to which all present make their contributions, many of them being ascribed to Cicero and Augustus ; it then appears to have passed into a discussion of various pleasures, especially of the senses ; but almost the whole of this is lost. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth books are devoted to Virgil, dwelling respec tively 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 disserta tion upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended to check it, which is probably a dislocated portion of the second book, being entirely out of place where it stands. The seventh book is of a more miscellaneous character, consisting 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 com pilation, and has little in its literary form to recommend it. We have also two books of a commentary on the Somnium Scipionis narrated by Cicero in his De Kepiiblicn. 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. There is a good critical edition of Macrobius, with a commentary by L. van Jan (2 vols., Leipsic, 1848-52), and a convenient and excellent edition of the text by F. Eyssenhardt (Leipsic, 1868).