ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century actor, like his predecessor, was the repository of the accumulated conventions of the stage, and, while adhering to them, was continually in revolt against them. William Macready found his great rôle in a stage version of Lord Byron’s Werner although it gave little opportunity for the domestic touches for which he was famous. The combination which he perfected of grace and passion, of the lofty and the familiar, was ideally suited to the temper of the period and enabled the romantic drama of Shakespeare to maintain a grip on an increasingly naturalistic stage. The English stage, of course, was ripe for a change or the new style could have taken hold: economic, social, and political forces affect acting techniques as much as they affect poets, and Cooke stood no more chance against Kemble than Kemble did against Kean once the spirit of the age had decided for romanticism.
