Bristol Theatre Royal keeps it in the family

M'Cready and Macready team up at Bristol Theatre Royal.

This playbill dated March 29th, 1819 depicts a father and son team at the Theatre Royal, Bristol. The father is William Macready the elder (1755 - 1829) an Irishman.

After a career as an actor manager around the regions, Macready took on the lease of the Theatre Royal in Bristol in 1819 – the date of this playbill.

This is Macready’s first night as manager and he wants to make an impact. He’s going to address the audience, possibly to tell them about his plans and his pride to be working with his son, an established actor at a prestigious London theatre, who has persuaded his manager to release him for the first night of the Bristol theatre.

He’s also brought in the actress Elizabeth Yates who had launched her theatrical career in her father’s theatre as Desdemona a few years earlier.

Unlike his father, William Charles Macready, (1793 - 1873), had enjoyed a gentleman’s education.

Destined for a legal profession, financial problems forced him to make a living in a profession he disliked - as an actor.

Initially a temporary occupation as an actor-manager, his way of working was to pave the way for modern theatre.

In 1810 he made his debut as Romeo in his father’s company in Birmingham, and quickly made his name in provincial theatres.

Here he is appearing as Othello which alongside Iago, Hamlet, Lear, and Richard II were the roles he became best known for.

He managed Covent Garden and then Drury Lane a few years later.

Although he was a good actor, he was best known for the idea that everyone from actors to those behind the scenes should be guided by the central ideas of the dramatist. This principle of unity is at the heart of theatre today.

Until then leading actors learned their lines in private and performed their roles any way they wished. Macready established rehearsals where actors worked together to create a performance.

Historically accurate costumes and scenery were used.

He shunned the corrupted versions of Shakespeare’s plays that were widely used, and returned to the earliest printed versions of the texts

Plays that received this treatment included As You Like It, Macbeth, King Lear, Henry V, and The Tempest.