cess 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 friend Macready, and the friendship between author
and actor continued. Sheridan Knowles had a kindly simplicity of
character, and the two qualities for which an actor most prizes a
dramatist, skill in providing opportunities for acting that will tell,
and readiness to make any changes that the actor asks for. The
postscript to his first letter to Macready was, "Make any alterations you
like in any part of the play, and I shall be obliged to you." When he
brought to the great actor his play of _William Tell_--_Caius Gracchus_
had been produced in November, 1823--there were passages of writing in it
that stopped the course of action, and, says Macready, "Knowles had less
of the tenacity of authorship than most writers," so that there was no
difficulty about alterations, Macready having in a very high degree the
tenacity of