age of seventeen, begun his career as an actor at his father's
theatre in Birmingham, had, on Monday, October 5th, 1819, at the age
of twenty-six, taken the Londoners by storm in the character of
Richard III Covent Garden reopened its closed treasury. It was
promptly followed by a success in Coriolanus, and Macready's place
was made. He was at once offered fifty pounds a night for appearing
on one evening a week at Brighton. It was just after that turn in
Macready's fortunes that a friend at Glasgow recommended to him the
part of Virginius in Sheridan Knowles's play lately produced there.
He agreed unwillingly to look at it, and says that in April, 1820,
the parcel containing the MS. came as he was going out. He
hesitated, then sat down to read it that he might get a wearisome
job over. As he read, he says, "The freshness and simplicity of the
dialogue fixed my attention; I read on and on, and was soon absorbed
in the interest of the story and the passion of its scenes, till at
its close I found myself in such a state of excitement that for a
time I was undecided what step to take. Impulse was in the
ascendant, and snatching up my pen I hurriedly wrote, as my agitated
feelings prompted, a letter to the author, to me then a perfect
stranger." Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall) read the play next day
with Macready, and confirmed him in his admiration of it.

Macready at once got it accepted at the theatre, where nothing was
spent on scenery, but there was a good cast, and the enthusiasm of
Macready as stage manager for the occasion half affronted some of
his seniors. On the 17th of May, 1820, about a month after it came
into Macready's hands, Virginius was produced at Covent Garden,
where, says the actor in his "Reminiscences," "the curtain fell
amidst the most deafening applause of a highly-excited auditory."
Sheridan Knowles's fame, therefore, was made, like that of his