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78 Notes on the Newspapers .
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are all instances which may be freely quoted in proof of Macready ' s glorious intellect and imagination . < No ! I'll die here , 'with the motion of the sword—the instantly struck picture of attitude , came on the spectator like a lightning flash . Let any one compare and contrast the records of his memory with that . But it was in the scene with Volumnia in this act , that Coriolanus shone preeminently in all the variety of moral form , mental action , and physical expression , with which genius tasking skill , and skill responding to genius , can hope to illustrate the character . The scene as it was acted by Macready renders the succeeding conduct and passion , and ultimate events of the play , the most perfect dramatic harmony I ever witnessed . He was the living body of Shakspeare ' s imaginative creation The least controllable of his violent dispositions , the most irrepressible of his passions ; a resolution binding up scorn , indignation , hate , and abhorrence , and held together by as much reason and justice as liis excitability will permit him to collect , shake , falter , yield , not on conviction of truth or necessity , but to the filial reverence , it cannot be called affection , with which he regards his mother . She it is who has taught him the lessons of conduct which he is now practising , yet strong as is his bitterness to her , he uses no word of accusation or reproach when she now counsels that which is so opposite to what she has hitherto taught him . Surprise , grief , and regret that his conduct is not approved by her , is so clearly blended and so discriminatingly tempers the commingling turbulence of passion , that to one who has made the anatomy of human feelings any part of his study , this is a living picture which cannot but appear as extraordinary in the talentjt combines , as to see and hear it is most delightful and instructive . The look of pain and doubt with which he listens , as if wishing she would not give such counsel , yet showing that he hears it , for that it is his duty to hear her , he looks I shall not be convinced , though I obey . ' Then came ,
* Well I must do it . Away my disposition , and possess me Some harlot ' s spirit . ' &c . Till ' My knees hcnd like his that hath received an alms /
Its delivery was most eloquent , let me say consummately beautiful , compelling his voice into a calm , while each syllable was distinctly pronounced : the thoughts gradually swelling with disgust at the picture which they drew , the face increasing in its flush of shame , at the prospect of so degrading his habit and las nature . Nothing more perfect , more quietly beautiful , of its kind , was ever heard , till the appealing indignation , which it was no longer possible to hold back , burst out , —how / not in a loudness of voice ; but in a dense , hard , iron tone , which told the full mastery with which the passion had grappled him in these words , < I will not do it , ' &c . This was succeeded , again , by that painful reluctance with which he expressed his yielding to his mother ' s reproachful remonstrances : Mother , I'm going to the market-place ; Chide mo no more . ' The scene was throughout a combination of clear judgment and discrimination , with tact and genius in execution . An anxious admirer oi
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 78, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/80/
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