lighted Troth': having
done so, he wrote to me that the former had been unsuccessful in
money-drawing, and the latter had 'smashed his arrangements altogether':
but he would still produce my play. I had--in my ignorance of certain
symptoms better understood by Macready's professional acquaintances--I
had no notion that it was a proper thing, in such a case, to 'release
him from his promise'; on the contrary, I should have fancied that such
a proposal was offensive. Soon after, Macready begged that I would call
on him: he said the play had been read to the actors the day before,
'and laughed at from beginning to end': on my speaking my mind about
this, he explained that the reading had been done by the Prompter, a
grotesque person with a red nose and wooden leg, ill at ease in the love
scenes, and that he would himself make amends by reading the play next
morning--which he did, and very adequately--but apprised me that, in
consequence of the state of his mind, harassed by business and various
trouble, the principal character must be taken by Mr. Phelps; and again
I failed to understand,--what Forster subsequently assured me was plain
as the sun at noonday,--that to allow at Macready's Theatre any
other than Macready to play the principal part in a new piece was
suicidal,--and really believed I was meeting his exigencies by accepting
the substitution. At the rehearsal, Macready announced that Mr.
Phelps was ill, and that he himself would read the part: on the third
rehearsal, Mr. Phelps appeared for the first time, and sat in a chair
while Macready more than read, rehearsed the part. The next morning Mr.
Phelps waylaid me at the stage-door to say, with much emotion, that it
never was intended that _he_ should be instrumental in the success of a
new tragedy, and that Macready would play Tresham on the ground that
himself, Phelps, was unable to do so. He added that he could not expect
me to waive such an advantage,--but that, if I were prepared to waive
it, 'he would take ether, sit up all night, and have the words in his
memory by next day.' I bade him follow me to the green-room, and hear
what I decided upon--which was that as Macready had given him the part,
he should keep it: this was on a Thursday; he rehearsed on Friday and
Saturday,--the play being acted the same evening,--_of the fifth day
after the 'reading' by MacReady_. Macready at once wished to reduce the
importance of the 'play',--as he styled it in the bills,--