William Charles Macready in a portrait by William Etty (1787–1849)
Not Hamlet but Sheridan Knowles’s Virginius
Robin Simon
1 William Charles Macready by William Etty (1787–1849), said to show the actor as Hamlet, here identified as the title role in Virginius by Sheridan Knowles, painted c1827–8. Oil on canvas, 93 x 70 cm. Dreweatt, 11 February 2025, Lot 101
This portrait of William Charles Macready (Pl 1) has been glimpsed on the auction circuit since 2015 at least. It was up for sale again on 31 January 2024, and again at Dreweatts on 11 February this year (2025, £14,000 hammer). It was consistently identified as showing Macready as Hamlet – even describing him as ‘in a toga’ – which never made any sense: Macready, obviously yes; Hamlet decidedly no.
The portrait, featuring Etty’s characteristic reds, shows William Charles Macready (1793–1873), one would guess, in his early to mid-30s, which would suggest a date in the mid- to late-1820s. For comparison, the Garrick Club has a portrait of Macready as Henry in 2 Henry IV by John Jackson (Pl 2), which was commissioned by Charles Mathews to mark Macready’s performance in that play at Covent Garden from 25 June 1821 (the first version, which was actually Macready’s, is in the National Portrait Gallery).[1] Macready was then 29 or 30 years old. The present portrait clearly shows him a few years older.
2 William Charles Macready as Henry in 2 Henry IV by John Jackson (1778–1831). Oil on canvas, 74.3 x 60.3 cm. Garrick Club, G0451. It was commissioned by Charles Mathews to mark Macready’s performance at Covent Garden in the premiere on 25 June 1821. The first version, which was actually Macready’s, is in the NPG
Macready is of the greatest importance to the modern theatre in that he was the first to establish the principle of rehearsals in which all actors were involved. Prior to that, the usual method was for actors to learn their parts on their own with little involvement in the overall direction. He was young when he introduced this system (with his production of Virginius) as actor-manager at Covent Garden from 1820–1823, and it was not very popular. The rehearsal method only really took off with his move to Drury Lane in the autumn of 1823, when he joined other actors who had just left Covent Garden, fed up with the economies of the new co-owner, Charles Kemble. One attraction was that Drury Lane trebled their salaries and Macready himself was appointed at a very substantial £20 per night. As will become apparent, this portrait marks Macready’s theatrical revolution in a particular way. It is also a much more compelling portrait of Macready in character than Jackson’s.
There is nothing in Hamlet that could excuse portraying the hero in this manner. Rather, I am convinced that this painting portrays Macready in his first smash hit, the title role in Virginius by Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862). Lucius Virginius was a leading Roman centurion in the 5th century BC, and so Macready, who was keen on bringing authentic costume to the English stage, wears a Roman paludamentum – a red military cloak, not a toga. The play marked Macready’s début at Drury Lane on 13 October 1823, but he had, as noted above, created the part at the rival Covent Garden on 18 May 1820 (see Pl 3), when it was the first production in which his new system of intense rehearsal as a company was experienced. It was never out of Macready’s repertoire for the next 30 years. And no less a critic than Hazlitt considered it the ‘best acting tragedy of the modern stage’. A print by Charles Picart of Macready in the role was published by Colnaghi on 20 June 1820 and described as ‘after John Jackson’ (see Pl 3).
3 Playbill for first performance of Virginius by James Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862), 18 May 1820, Covent Garden Theatre, with Macready in the title role. Scrapbook, Garrick Club, LIB/Macreadiana/2
To be precise, Etty’s portrait shows the moment immediately before Virginius kills his much-loved daughter, Virginia, in order to prevent her becoming the sex-slave of Appius, a besotted and corrupt Roman judge. It therefore offers a gruesome dilemma – and outcome – of just the sort that features in Otway’s Venice Preserv’d, which was thought in the 19th century to be the only tragedy that could possibly compare with Knowles’s Virginius – other than Shakespeare.[2] A little oddly, although the timing works, this desperate action occurs not in the final, fifth, Act but in Act IV, Scene 2, but it is certainly the pivotal moment of the play and its most heart-wrenching. Appius is having Virginia dragged away while Virginius frantically thinks of what he can do to save her. And the key to identifying the portrait lies in the stage directions, in square brackets, at this point (note instruction here in bold):
[Virginius, perfectly at a loss what to do, looks anxiously around the Forum; at length his eye falls on a butcher’s stall, L., with a knife upon it.]
Vir. This way, my child. No, no! I am not going to leave thee, my Virginia! I’ll not leave thee.
App. Keep back the people, soldiers! Approach Virginius! Keep the people back!
Let them not.
[Virginius secures the knife in the folds of his toga.]
This is what Etty shows: ‘Virginius secures the knife in the folds of his toga’. As we can see (Pl 4), Macready holds the handle of the knife in his right fist beside his left shoulder, the blade hidden within the folds of the toga. I think some unobservant cleaning has muddled this detail, but the knife handle is unmistakeable. Virginius plays for time, asking Appius for a last embrace with his daughter, whereupon he kills Virginia with the knife.
4 Detail of portrait in Pl 1, showing the handle of the fatal knife in Virginius’s right fist, the effect apparently distorted by uncertain cleaning
In the painting he is shown seated, which is not true to the text, and so Macready is simply shown dressed for the part, in a chair suggestive of ancient Rome, rather than in dramatic action – although at a specific moment of the play. Etty, as a matter of fact, tended to ignore the strict rules of history painting that governed British theatrical portraiture. And so this picture more resembles what the Germans call a Rollenporträt – a portrait of an actor dressed for a particular part.[3]
Macready was a great admirer of William Etty (he knew a number of artists well, including Clarkson Stanfield, James Pickersgill and David Wilkie) whom he met in 1822 en route from Naples to Rome, when they shared a coach and, as he says in his memoirs, they became friends for life. Macready was back in London in 1822, while Etty returned in early January 1824, and they saw each other regularly from then on. Macready bought Etty’s Bridge of Sighs in 1835, tracking it down to Colnaghi after its exhibition at the RA and paying £40 instead of the asking price of £30. It was, he said, ‘poetry on canvas’.
There would have been ample reason for Macready to choose Virginius as the role in which to be shown in a portrait in the 1820s and, having renewed his friendship with Etty after January 1824, he was the obvious person to paint it. And there was a further reason to choose this play: it was as Virginius that Macready made his American début, in New York 2 October 1826, at the start of a triumphant first American tour from which he returned in the summer of 1827. He starred thereafter at Drury Lane in other roles, until taking on the challenge of Shakespearian performances in Paris in the spring and summer of 1828. Thereafter he starred in provincial engagements before basing himself at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, following the death of his father (its leaseholder) on 11 April 1829. He did not return to Drury Lane until October 1830. The latter part of 1827 to early 1828 would therefore have provided a window of opportunity when this portrait could have been commissioned.
Link to the text of Virginius by Sheridan Knowles:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000958182&seq=87
- Charles Mathews was painted by Rembrandt Peale in about 1822 (NPG) and he also painted Macready as Lear in a painting which has been wrongly identified as showing Macready as Virginius. The wreath and the whiskers in this latter painting proclaim that it shows Macready as Lear, a part he took on reluctantly and with a great deal of self-criticism. It presumably dates from Peale’s later stay in London 1832–3, the time when Macready was agonising over playing the role. He was to revive Shakespeare’s original for the first time in 1838, in place of Nahum Tate’s ‘happy ending’ Lear that had held the stage since 1681. There is evidence of a particularly close-knit circle of actors and artists of which Macready, Jackson and Mathews were a part. ↑
- Typically, Drury Lane quickly concocted a rival version with the same name, but even starring Edmund Kean it flopped and vanished from the stage after two nights. ↑
- For these distinctions see Robin Simon, Shakespeare, Hogarth & Garrick: Plays, Painting & Performance, London 2023, esp ch 2, ‘History Painting and the theatre’. ↑