this morning, and Macready was there. As
far as I could judge, he was less unfair in his mode of acting than I
had been led to expect. To be sure, at night, he may stand two yards
behind me while I am speaking to him, as I am told he often does. He is
not courteous or pleasant, or even well-bred; remains seated while one
is standing talking to him; and a discussion having arisen as to the
situation of a table, which he wished on the stage, and I wished
removed, he exhibited considerable irritability and ill-humor.

He is unnecessarily violent in acting, which I had always heard, and
congratulated myself that in Lady Macbeth, I could not possibly suffer
from this; but was much astonished and dismayed when at the exclamation,
"Bring forth men-children only," he seized me ferociously by the wrist,
and compelled me to make a demivolte, or pirouette, such as I think that
lady did surely never perform before, under the influence of her
husband's admiration.

God bless you, dear,

Ever yours,
FANNY.

[I have always had a cordial esteem and respect for Mr. Macready's
character, which has been increased by reading the record he has
himself left of his life. Of his merits as an actor, I had not a
very high opinion, though in one or two parts he was excellent, and
in the majority of the tragical ones he assumed, better than his
contemporaries, my father, Charles Young, and Charles Kean. He was
disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was
without comic power of any kind. _Parts_ of his Macbeth, Lear,
Othello, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of
musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse
defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It
may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of
blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the
natural style of speaking it; which was simply chopping it up into
prose--a method easily followed by speakers who have never learned
the difference between the two, and that blank-verse demands the
same care and method that music does, and when not uttered with due
regard to its artificial construction, and rules of rhythm and
measure, is precisely as faulty as music sung out of time.

The school of "natural speaki