William Macready
British stage actor (1793-1873)
William Charles Macready (3 March 1793 – 27 April 1873) was an English stage actor. The son of Irish actor-manager William Macready the Elder he emerged as a leading West End performer during the Regency era.
Career
Macready was born in London the son of William Macready the Elder, and actress Christina Ann Birch. Educated at Rugby School where he became head boy, and where now the theatre is named after him, it was his initial intention to go to University of Oxford, but, in 1809, financial problems experienced by his father, the lessee of several provincial theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical management. On 7 June 1810, he made a successful first appearance as Romeo at Birmingham. Other Shakespearian parts followed, but a serious rupture between father and son resulted in the young man's departure for Bath in 1814. Here he remained for two years, with occasional professional visits to other provincial towns.
On 16 September 1816, Macready made his first London appearance at Covent Garden as Orestes in The Distressed Mother, a translation of Racine's Andromaque by Ambrose Philips. Macready's choice of characters was at first confined chiefly to the romantic drama. In 1818, he won a permanent success in Isaac Pocock's (1782–1835) adaptation of Scott's Rob Roy.
“William Macready” enters the record as british stage actor (1793-1873). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Macready and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q637374. VIAF identifies the subject as 5743196. The Library of Congress control number is no91005705. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1793, 1873, 1809 and 1810.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Macready” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.