ad heard
he was _pleasant_ to act with, remembering, as I did while he spoke
to me, the various accounts I had received of actors whose eyes had
been all but thrust out by his furious fighting in Macbeth; of
others nearly throttled in his paternal vengeance on Appius
Claudius; of actresses whose arms had been almost wrenched out of
their sockets, and who had been bruised black and blue, buffeted
alike by his rage and his tenderness. One special story I thought
of, and was dying to tell him, of one pretty and spirited young
woman, who had said, "I am told Mr. Macready, in such a part, gets
hold of one's head, and holds it in chancery under his arm, while he
speaks a long speech, at the end of which he releases one, more dead
than alive, from his embrace; but I shall put so many pins in my
hair, and stick them in in such a fashion, that if he takes me by
the head, he will have to let me instantly go again."

My personal experience of Macready's stage temper was not so bad as
this, though he began by an act of unwarrantable selfishness in our
performance of "Macbeth."

From time immemorial, the banquet scene in "Macbeth" has been
arranged after one invariable fashion: the royal dais and throne,
with the steps leading up to it, holds the middle of the stage,
sufficiently far back to allow of two long tables, at which the
guests are seated on each side, in front of it, leaving between them
ample space for Macbeth's scene with Banquo's ghost, and Lady
Macbeth's repeated rapid descents from the dais and return to it, in
her vehement expostulations with him, and her courteous invitations
to the occupants of both the tables to "feed, and regard him not."
Accustomed to this arrangement of the stage, which I never saw
different anywhere in all my life for this scene, I was much
astonished and annoyed to find, at my first rehearsal, a long
banqueting-table set immediately at the foot of the steps in front
of the dais, which rendered all but impossible my rapid rushing down
to the front of the stage, in my terrified and indignant appeals to
Macbeth, and my sweeping back to my place, addressing on my way my
compliments to the tables on either side. It was as much as I could
do to pass between the bottom of the throne steps and the end of the
transverse table in front of them; my train was in