Macready relates in his Memoirs that the practice of “calling on” the principal actor was first introduced at Covent Garden Theatre, on the occasion of his first performance of the character of Richard the Third, on October 19th, 1819.  “In obedience to the impatient and persevering summons of the house I was desired by Fawcett to go before the curtain; and accordingly I announced the tragedy for repetition amidst the gratulating shouts that carried the assurance of complete success to my agitated and grateful heart.”  But while loving applause, as an actor needs must, Macready had little liking for the honours of calls and recalls—­heartily disapproving of them, indeed, when they seemed to him in any way to disturb the representation.  Thus, of his performance of Werner at Manchester, in 1845, he writes:  “Acted very fairly.  Called for. Trash!” Under date December 23rd, 1844, he records:  “Acted Virginius [in Paris] with much energy and power to a very excited audience.  I was loudly called for at the end of the fourth act, but could not or would not make so absurd and empirical a sacrifice of the dignity of my poor art.”  Three years later he enters in his diary:  “Acted King Lear with much care and power, and was received by a most kind, and sympathetic, and enthusiastic audience.  I was called on, the audience trying to make me come on after the first act, but of course I could not think of such a thing.”  But these “calls” relate to the conclusion of an act, when, at any rate, the drop-scene was fallen, hiding the stage from view, and when, for a while, there is a pause in the performance, suspension of theatrical illusion.  What would Macready have said to “calls” in the course of the scene, while the stage is still occupied, with certain of the characters of the drama reduced to lay figures by the conduct of their playfellows and the public?  Yet in modern times Ophelias, after tripping off insane to find a watery grave, have been summoned back to the stage to acknowledge suavely enough by smiles and curtsies the excessive applause of the spectators, greatly to the perplexity of King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, and Laertes, and seriously to the injury of the poet’s design—­and this is but a sample of the follies of the modern theatre in this respect.

Such calls, recalls, and imbecile compliments are indeed wholly reprehensible, and should be suppressed as strenuously as possible.  The managers of the Theatre Royal at Dresden some few years since forbade the performers to accept calls before the termination of an act, as “the practice interrupted the progress of the action on the stage,” and respectfully requested the audience to abstain from such demands in future.  Would that this ordinance had obtained more general obedience.