MR. MACREADY.
MACREADY, after an absence of nearly two years from the London stage, made his re-appearance on Monday, at Drury Lane. He was enthusiastically received, and for the most part justified his reception. He has made the character of Virginius peculiarly his own ; no part, indeed, occurs to us, at this moment, more specially adapted to the development of his talents, or the exempli- fication of his defects.
MACREADY belongs to what is called the natural, in contradis- tinction to the declamatory school of acting. But quietism may be carried too far- " Serpit liumi nimium timidus proceltm."
And thus, in the familiarity of his tone and action he is sometimes almost vulgar. The Centurion, though of noble mind, may have been a man of coarse manners ; but there is a beau ideal in poetry, as in sculpture, and tragic heroes must be invested with artificial dignity. In departing from this, MACREADY was sometimes faulty. In every passage which gave legitimate opportunity for passion or pathos, he was excellent ; nothing could be better than his last scene.
We do not comment on the other characters, farther than to say, that WALLACK played Icilius well, and COOPER did not dis- please us in Dentatus. Here we should have stoppedv but for a foolish comment of a writer in the Times, who wonders why Miss PHILLIPS should have played a part so far (as he thinks) below her talents as Vir- ginia, and hints some unfairness in the management which as- signed it to her. Now, admitting her merit (though we will not admit that this very character has not been better played) we must protest against this twaddle of the green-room. The public have a right to see all parts of a play filled by the best abilities that the manager can obtain. We should not endure an historical picture in which the hero was painted by a master, while the surrounding figures were daubed in by his pupils ; neither is there any good reason why the fiction of a tragic scene should be destroyed by a mawkin, because a prima donna is too proud to sustain that which she may consider a secondary character. The less we mi- nister to the vanity of performers, the better shall we secure the interests of the public.
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