Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company edition ,
THE HUNCHBACK.
THE LOVE-CHASE.
by
JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london, paris, new york &melbourne.
1887.
INTRODUCTION
James Sheridan Knowles was born at Cork in 1784, and died at Torquay inDecember, 1862, at the age of 78. His father was a teacher ofelocution, who compiled a dictionary, and who was related to theSheridans. He moved to London when his son was eight years old, andthere became acquainted with William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. Theson, after his school education, obtained a commission in the army, butgave up everything for the stage, and made his first appearance at the CrowStreet Theatre, in Dublin. He did not become a great actor, and whenhe took to writing plays he did not prove himself a great poet, but hisskill in contriving situations through which a good actor can make hispowers tell upon the public, won the heart of the great actor of his day,and as Macready’s own poet he rose to fame.
Before Macready had discovered him, Sheridan Knowles lived partly byteaching elocution at Belfast and Glasgow, partly by practice of elocutionas an actor. In 1815 he produced at the Belfast Theatre his firstplay, Caius Gracchus. His next play, Virginius wasproduced at Glasgow with great success. Macready, who had, at the ageof seventeen, begun his career as an actor at his father’s theatre inBirmingham, had, on Monday, October 5th, 1819, at the age of twenty-six,taken the Londoners by storm in the character of Richard III Covent Gardenreopened its closed treasury. It was promptly followed by a successin Coriolanus, and Macready’s place was made. He was atonce offered fifty pounds a night for appearing on one evening a week atBrighton. It was just after that turn in Macready’s fortunesthat a friend at Glasgow recommended to him the part of Virginius inSheridan Knowles’s play lately produced there. He agreedunwillingly to look at it, and says that in April, 1820, the parcelcontaining the MS. came as he was going out. He hesitated, then satdown to read it that he might get a wearisome job over. As he read,he says, “The freshness and simplicity of the dialogue fixed myattention; I read on and on, and was soon absorbed in the interest of thestory and the passion of its scenes, till at its close I found myself insuch a state of excitement that for a time I was undecided what step totake. Impulse was in the ascendant, and snatching up my pen Ihurriedly wrote, as my agitated feelings prompted, a letter to the author,to me then a perfect stranger.” Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall)read the play next day with Macready, and confirmed him in his admirationof it.
Macready at once got it accepted at the theatre, where nothing was spenton scenery, but there was a good cast, and the enthusiasm of Macready asstage manager for the occasion half affronted some of his seniors. Onthe 17th of May, 1820, about a month after it came into Macready’shands, Virginius was produced at Covent Garden, where, says theactor in his “Reminiscences,” “the curtain fell amidstthe most deafening applause of a highly-excited auditory.” Sheridan Knowles’s fame, therefore, was made, like that of his friendMacready, and the friendship between author and actor continued. Sheridan Knowles had a kindly simplicity of character, and the twoqualities for which an actor most prizes a dramatist, skill in providingopportunities for acting that will tell, and readiness to make any changesthat the actor asks for. Th