Page 68 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

STAGE-HISTOR Y kin
West. Lear, however, was not one of his greatest parts;
1
Hazlitt declared his bitter disappointment; and his
partial restoration proved abortive. Meanwhile Young
had continued, in Bath in 1823, and in London at
Covent Garden in 1824 (C. Kemble as Edgar), and at
Drury Lane in 1829 (Mrs West now Goneril, and
Miss Phillips Cordelia).
Lear was the latest of Macready's Shakespearian parts,
but one of his best. He had played Edmund to Booth's
Lear in 1820; his first Lear was not till 1834, when on
23 May he acted with Young's Cordelia, Miss Phillips,
at Drury Lane. A few days later he was seen twice at
Covent Garden. 'Excessively nervous' at first, as his
diary records, he gained confidence by act 3, and was
loudly applauded; but The Times' notice on the 24th was
chilly. On this, his first revival, he restored, with some
3
cuts and dislocations, Shakespeare's text, but not yet
with the Fool. This last-step in the rejection of Tate he
took in his next production, at Covent Garden from
2 5 January 1838, when he assigned the Fool to a young-
actress, Priscilla Horton, who played the part till his last
King Lear? In Helen Faucit he now had a very fine
Cordelia, and the play was shown ten times, winning
'very great applause', as The Times, still grudging in
praise, admitted. The following February it Was repeated
six times; on the 18th the Queen was present.- Elaborate
1
For Hazlitt on Kean as Lear, see his essay from the
London Magazine (June, 1820), in Dramatic Essays {Works,
ed. Waller and Glover, vin, 443-51), 1903.
2
See Odell, r, 95-6 for some details. In particular the
blinding does not occur even behind the scenes.
3
On Macready's Lear see J. C. Trewin, Mr Macreddy:
igth Century Tragedian (1955), pp. 139-40; on Miss Horton,
Miss M. St C. Byrne's Note 74, Catalogue of the Arts
Council's Exhibition (A History pf Shakespearean Produc-
tion (1947), pp. 18-19).