Charles Dickens & William Macready
Macready, of Irish Decent, An Actor And Theatre Manager, Is His Own Man With His Own Story To Be Told And Stratford Tells It Well. But To Tell It Without Mention of Charles Dickens Would Be Folly Indeed. Kind of Like Telling The Story of Actor & Activist George Clooney Without Mention of Brad Pitt or Matt Damon. Those Guys Like Hanging Out Together, As Did Macready And Dickens, Which Stratford Shares With Us.
George Clooney Born May 1961 (Kentucky, Virginia, America) Currently Aged 63
Brad Pitt Born December 1963 (Shawnee, Oklahoma, America) Currently Aged 61 (Two Years Younger Than George Clooney)
Matt Damon Born October 1970 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, America) Currently Aged 54 (Nine Years Younger Than George Clooney)
Charles Dickens Born February 1812 (Portsmouth, Hampshire, England) Died 1870 Aged 58
William Macready Born March 1793 (London, England, United Kingdom) Died April 1873 Aged 80 (19 Years Older Than Dickens But Still Very Good Friends With Him And Godfather To One of His Children)
Ultimately, Even If Macready’s Story Is Not As Well Known or Sexy As Other’s In Theatreland And Showbusiness It’s A Bloody Good One, One Worth Telling, And One That Includes An Uncanny Relationship With And Similarity To One of The Greatest Storytellers of All Time Britain’s Second Greatest Writer (After Shakespeare) Charles Dickens. So Much So That The Novelist Would Name One of His Many Children After His Unlikely Friend. His Daughter Catherine Elizabeth ‘Macready’ Perugini (Nee Dickens) No Less. And Her Namesake Would Also Be Her Godfather.
Both Macready And Dickens As Children Had Father’s Who Found Themselves In Debtor’s Jail, Which Impacted Their World View As Adults.
Both Had Personal Knowledge of How Being Working Class And Later Middle Class At Different Stages In Their Lives Deeply Impacted Their Lived Experiences And Their Storytelling.
Both Had Mixed Blessings When It Came To Their Own Later Personal & Family Lives.
Both Had A Great Fondness For Each Other And A Deep Subsequent Friendship Despite Dickens Being 20 Years Macready’s Senior. Dickens Loved The Company of Lawyers Writers And Those From Theatre As Well As Observing The Lives of Those Whose Backgrounds Were Desperately More Humble.
Both Performed National And International Tours of Their Creative Works, Personal Readings And Performances Delighted Fans Around England, Italy, And America For Instance At A Time When Such Travels Involved Rough Sea Voyages.
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