Charles Macklin (1699?-1797)

[ top ]

Bibliographical details
King Henry VII or The Popish Plot, a tragedy as it is acted by His Majesty’s Servants at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (London: Printed for R. Francklin in Covent Garden; R Dodsley in Pall Mall; and J Brotherton in Cornhill M.DCCC.XLVI 1746] (Price 1s 6d) [see further under Quotations, infra.].

[ top ]

[ top ]

Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes [... &c.] (London: Routledge & Son [1872]), “This is the Jew that Shakespeare Drew”: ‘Macklin was the Peachum of The Beggars’ Opera, Scrub in The Beaux Stratagem, Marplot in The Busy Body, and obtained great applause in these and other such impersonations. To suit the bad taste of the audiences of a century and a half ago, Lord Lansdowne set about improving The Merchant of Venice. He called his adaptation The Jew of Venice, and converted the tragic Shylock into a low-comedy character. Macklin’s judgment decided that the play, as it came from Shakespeare’s brain, would prove a success. He put it, in rehearsal, merely read Shylock’s part without infusing any passion into it, and had the actors and actresses in dire distress, and expectation of an entire failure. Things were not improved when he appeared in the green room, not in the ludicrous costume of Lord Lansdowne’s Hebrew, but such as we ourselves have seen on Edmund Kean. Amid the awful stillness of a crowded house the play commenced, the actors and actresses not daring to call their souls their own, but from the first scene in which Shylock had anything to do, to the conclusion, the applause went on increasing and Macklin’s triumph was complete. Nineteen nights in succession the play was repeated to crowded houses. / On the third night of representation all eyes were directed to the stage box, where sat a deformed [176] little man, and while others watched his gestures as if to learn his opinion of the performers, he was gazing intently on Shylock, and as the actor panted in broken accents of rage, and sorrow, and avarice, “Go, Tubal: fee me an officer, bespeak him afortnight before. I will have the heart of him if he forfeit; for were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandise I will. Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue. Go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal”,—the little man was seen to rise, and leaning from the box as Macklin passed it, he whispered: “This is the Jew, / That Shakespeare drew.” / Macklin was the original Sir Pertinax MacSycaphant in his I own play of The Man of the World. In our days, Mr. Phelps has made the character personal property. Love à la Mode, in which he personated Sir Archy MacSarcasm, is seldom repeated; wherefore we know not. Charles MacLaughlin expired on the 11th of July, 1797, at the ripe age of 104.’ (p.177.)

[ top ]

Philip Highfall, Kalman Burnam, & Edward Langhans, A Biographical Dict. of Actors &c., London 1660-1800 (Southern Illinois UP 1984) [frontis. port. Macklin by Opie, NPGall.], [M vol] pp.3-37. See also port. as Shylock, by Zoffany, NGI, purchased at Christies 1888 being ead-and-shoulder detail of same full length, National Th., London; also port. as Sir Pertinax MacSycophant, by de Wilde [full length; NGI]; another group of Merchant of Venice, with Maria Macklin, et al. [Tate]. Lists 41 portraits, engravings, and caricatures incl. Hibernian Mag., Feb 1771. Calls Macklin the son of Terence McLaughlin, and Agnes, née Flanagan; belief in aristocratic origins found wanting in WW Appleton, Charles Macklin an Actor’s Life (1960); widowed mother married O’Meally, as told in Kirkman (1799); acted in Otway’s ‘Orphan as Monimia; coached for that performance by Mrs Pilkington, acc. Kirkman and Cook (1804); scout at TCD; Francis Congreve, Authentic Memoirs of the late Charles Macklin (1798), most conservative biographer; name spelt Macklin on bill of 1730, playing Sir Charles Freeman in The Beaux’ Strategem, Southwark; Lincoln Inn Fields, 1725; no firm foothold in London till 1731; Macklin lived with Mrs Anne Purvor Grace, widow; their dg. Maria b. 1733 Portsmouth; not acknowledged as Mrs Macklin till 1739, and Macklin never married her; ungovernable temper caused him to kill Hallam, 10 May 1735; stick in eye; Macklin added the detail at trial, ‘[Hallam] sat down, and said to Mr Arne’s son (who was dressed in woman’s clothes), “whip up your clothes, you little b--h, and urine in my eye” But he could not so I did’; coldbranded on the hand; Macklin’s service in country companies made him jack of all trades (carpenter, etc); lived at Wild Court, Covent Gardens, with Mrs Grace and their 17 year-old dg.; “Macklinana” feature of Monthy Mirror, 1798, his account of riot of 1740; George Granville Lord Landsdowne’s version of Jew of Venice. [Cont.]

Philip Highfall, Kalman Burnam, & Edward Langhans (A Biographical Dictonary of Actors, 1984) - cont.: Macklin studied Josephus’s History of the Jews; his version advertised as ‘written by Shakespeare’ docked Portia’s part but left Shylock’s whole; account in Cooke’s Memoir takes the form of dictated speech, ‘At this period I threw out all my fire ... I was Charles the Great for that night’; memoir of the night written after thirty years by German traveller Georg C Lichtenberg; Francis Gentleman, actor-critic, became his nearly constant advocate, summed up in Dramatic Censor (1770), ‘in his malevolence there is a forceful and terrifying ferocity’; Henry VII, dismal failure on 18 Jan 1746; 1753, Magnificent Coffee-Room and School of Oratory, in chambers under the Great Piazza leased from duke of Bedford; in Dublin from Jan. 1761, having signed in London to Rich; his Love a la Mode ‘in much higher reputation than ever it was in London’; True Born Irishman, 14 May [no remarks here]; with Henry Mossop at Smock Alley, 1763-64; with Barry at Crow St., 1764-65, turning out a Christmas trifle called The Whim, text lost; Macklin decided fair price for purchase of Woodwards’ share of Crow St. by Barry, £3,600; 17707-7, Macklin at Capel St. Theatre, Dublin; failed plan to enter managerial partnership with Dawson at Smock alley left him bitterly frustrated; residence at Tavistock St.; Monthly Mirror (in 1796) reports that Macklin is sleeping in armchair for fear of suffocating in bed. [Cont.]

Philip Highfall, Kalman Burnam, & Edward Langhans (A Biographical Dictonary of Actors, 1984) - cont.: gives b. date 1699, prob. in Donegal; a [not the] Mrs Pilkington took him into her house for further instruction afrer the Mominia performance (agreed by Kirk and Cooke); ‘among the few other credible assertions by early biographers and pamphleteers are those that he was for a time employed as a scout at Trinity College, Dublin, and that he found his first London employment as waiter in a coffee house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields which was kept by a relative. Evidently that service came just before he began a long apprenticeship as a performer at Bristol and with country companies in Wales and the Midlands. / Macklin may have made an early London stage appearance, around 1720, as a harlequin with strollers at Hockley-in-the-Hole near Clerkenwell Green, and sometime before 1725 he was probably playing at Richmond. His most conservative biographer, Francis Congreve (Authentic Memoirs, 1798), declared that he first appeared in London at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in 1725, as Alcandor in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus. No surviving playbill confirms that performance &c. [Cont.]

Philip Highfall, Kalman Burnam, & Edward Langhans (A Biographical Dictonary of Actors, 1984) - cont.: Macklin lived on in his house at 6 Tavistock Rd., when he had moved in 1788, sustained partly by his savings and partly by the aid of friends like Arthur Murphy who saw a subscription ed. of The Man of the World and Love à la Mode through the press enabling an annuity of £200 to be assured. Macklin died at the age of 98, morning of 11 July 1797, buried St Paul Covent Garden. He said he refused to deliver speeches ‘in the hoity-toity tone’ of Quin because his aim was to speak ‘familiar’. Also quotes lLines from Rosciad: ‘Macklin, who largely deals in half-formed sounds / Who wantonly transgresses nature’s bounds / Whose acting’s hard, affected, and constrained / Whose features, as each other they disdained / At variance set, inflexible and coarse / Ne’er know the workings of united force / Ne’er kindly soften to each other’s aid / Nor show the mingled power of light and shade.’ Further: To most, like “Anthony Pasquin” who gave him 82 lines of adulatory verse in The Pin Basket, To the Children of Thespis (1796 [sic; see Parry, Charles Macklin, London 1891]). ‘Like the Eddystone pillar, / His excellence braves / The rude dashing foam of the critical waves’. Furher: In spite of the evidence for his adequate schooling, Bishop Percy’s pocket diary (BL MS 32, 336) records of a visit with Johnson, Miss Williams, and Macklin, ‘Johnson says Macklin ... was 2 or 3 & 20 before he learnt to read’. Edmond [sic] Malone attacked Macklin’s assertion, in General Advertiser, Apr. 1748, that he had read a 17th c. pamphlet entitled Old Ben’s Light heart made Heavy by Young John’s Melancholy Lover, and was defended in a letter to Malone by Bosell, who had a high opinion of his honesty. Macklin’s library (Catalogue of the Library of the late Mr Charles Macklin, comedian deceased, 1-25 Nov. 1797), lists 117 items of history, poetry, fiction, drama, travel, philosophy and religion in several languages.

[ top ]

G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman: A History of the Irish Play and Stage Characters from the Earliest Times (1937; NY: Benjamin Blom; reiss. 1969), writes: Charles Macklin’s The True-Born Irishman, or the Fine Irish Lady (1762) held the stage for many years; edn. printed by William Spotswood in Philadelphia in 1784, reflecting the many political touches in it; two acts; set in Dublin; the story of a woman new-coming to Dublin society, who affects to despise everything Irish; her [corrig.] husband, Murrough O’Dogherty, a plain downright Irishman; ‘the Irish fine lady’s delirium’ afflicts his wife on returning from London, ‘she has brought over a new language with her ... a new kind of London English that’s no more like our Irish English, than a coxcomb’s fine gilded chariot is like a Glassmonogue noddy.’ His wife calls herself Mrs. Diggerty. There is much berating of the ‘patriot-mad’ in Parliament, while O’Dogherty has left his seat there convinced that there is more merit in someone who makes employment, or makes an ear of wheat grow where none grew before, than in ‘all the courtiers and politicians and prodigals that are unhanged.’ [cf. Jonathan Swift, in A Tale of a Tub, ‘whatever philosopher &c.’; Swift, q.v..] The plot: Mrs. Diggerty’s hanger-on is an Oxford educated pawnbroker’s son, soi-disant Count Mushroom, who becomes agent to her lover, Lord Oldcastle. There is some lease-business between O’Dogherty and Oldcastle, and Mushroom attempts to persuade Mrs.Diggerty on the basis of his interest in it that she permit him to become ‘the occasional lord of her ladyship’s matrimonial man[or].’ His letter is shown to O’Dogherty, and when disguised as a woman he comes to the house for his assignation, he is exposed to the whole social circle. Mushroom was seen in Dublin as a daring caricature of Single-Speech Hamilton, the Viceroy’s secretary, who had anti-Irish outlook. [Cont.]

G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman [...] (1937; rep. 1969) - cont.: The back-biting social crowd are represented by Lady Kinnegad, Lady Bab Frightful, Mrs. Gazette, and Major Gamble; the vocabulary runs to bun tun, Jenny-see-quee, and Ó Moundew. The play succeeded in Dublin where it was rightly viewed as an exposé of metropolitan snobbery; it was a failure in London. Further, Duggan discusses Charles Macklin, Love à la Mode (1760), in which three suitors of Charlotte, dg. of Sir Theodore Goodchild - Mordecai, Squire Groom, and Sir Archy MacSarcasm - combine to keep the Irishman Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan out. The plays ends with the same device as Sheridan’s when a false report of Goodchild’s lost fortune drives the suitors off. A rough soldier, [O’Brallaghan] he deals smartly with MacSacrasm: “The Scots are all Irishmen’s bastards”. Further: “My ancestor Terence Flaherty O’Brallaghan went over from Carrickfergus and peopled all Scotland with his own hands.” The play held Dublin audiences for more than a generation, and has an allusion in Thackeray’s The Virginians, where George Esmond, writing to a brother in America of an Irish actor, Geoghegan, refusing to act Sir Callaghan, who says “he does not keer to disgrace his tongue with the imiteeshion of that rascal brogue.”

Note: The speech [‘peopled Scotland’, &c.] from Macklin’s play as given in Bartley, ed., Comedies [ ... &c.] (1968), varies a little from Duggan’s version, reading as follows, ‘the youngest branch of our family, one Mac Fergus O’Brallaghan, was the very many that went from Carrickfergus, and peopled all Scotland with his own hands; so that, my dear Sir Archy, you must be bastards, you know.’ (Bartley, ed., pp.59-60). Sir Archy, by returns, calls him to defend himself, for ‘ye shall be reponsible for making us illegee-temate, Sir, illegeetemate.’(p.60). [Quoted in Claire Thompson, MA Thesis, UUC, 1993.]

[ top ]

Constantia Maxwell, Dublin Under the Georges 1714-1830 [1936] (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1961): Sometimes a play was produced in Dublin which fell flat there and was later a success in London - such as Foote’s piece the Minor, which made fun of the Methodists. Sometimes, as with Macklin’s comedy The True-born Irishman, or The Irish Fine Lady (first acted at Smock Alley in 1763), it was the other way about. “I believe the audience are right”, said Macklin when his play failed in London; “there is a geography in humour as well as in morals which I had not previously considered.”/ Apart from a few productions - which, of course, include the comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan - the ordinary plays of the period were dull enough. As museum pieces they are not without interest, but, judged on their merits, they are generally either too artificial or too sentimental for modern taste. The True-born Irishman, a farce extremely popular with Dublin audiences, has been mentioned, and is a case in point. The scene is laid in the Irish capital, where Mr. O’Dogherty, a country gentleman of ancient family, is at his wits’ end - for, having allowed his newly married wife to pay a visit to London (in compensation apparently for disparity of years between them), he finds she has returned to Dublin with a passionate admiration for everything English and a hearty contempt for all that is Irish. The lady has become full of fashionable affectations, and has even gone the length of changing her name - being no longer, as the old man bewails, the “modest, good-natured, domestic, obedient, Irish Mrs. O’Dogherty,” but the “travelled, rampant, high-lif’d, prancing, English Mrs. Diggerty.” Presently a Mr. Mushroom, the upstart agent of an Irish nobleman, appears and gives himself such airs that he passes for a Count, though in reality only the son of a London pawnbroker. [Cont.]

Constantia Maxwell, Dublin Under the Georges 1714-1830 [1936] (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1961) - cont.: This contemptible individual carries on an intrigue with the lady through her maid, by whom he finally makes an assignation in O’Dogherty’s own house. But the old gentleman has been intercepting his letters, and when Mushroom arrives disguised as a woman is ready to give him a stern reception Meanwhile the lady’s brother, who is a model of Irish good sense, reads her a lecture upon her folly and succeeds in reducing her to tears and wholesome repentance. The Count, [244] has now walked into the trap so cunningly laid for him, is exposed to the gaze and piquant remarks of the company assembled in the drawing-room, and is then forced to enter a trunk) in which he is carried to a fashionable ball to become the object of still greater ridicule. The Englishman in the play describes the Irish as “a damn’d honest, tory-rory, rantumscantum, daring, singing, laughing, boozing, jolly, friendly, fighting, hospitable people,” whom he professes to like mightily. This draws from the lady’s brother the sarcastic reply that “the people of Ireland’ are much obliged to him for his ‘helter-skelter, rantum-scantum portrait of them.” The hero of the piece is the old man, who has spent his life in draining bogs, planting trees, and giving employment to his tenants - a more profitable way of passing one’s time, one is given to understand, than in gadding about after London joys, which only ends in producing domestic jars by unsettling the character./A piece such as this of Macklin, without depth or probability, would scarcely have appealed to the reader of this book, but he will agree that it would have been hard to resist inspecting the cast, which included the great Macklin himself and the beautiful Mrs. Dancer.’ (pp.244-45; notes that there is Dublin printed copy of True Born Irishman, dated 1783, in National Library of Ireland, and none in the British Museum Library (ftn., p.245).

[ top ]

Jane Dunbar, Peg Woffington (London: Heinemann 1968), notes that Macklin was sent to boarding school with badtempered Scot, Nicholson, whom he mimicked; acted in school theatricals (elocution), playing Monimia; ran away from Mr. Nicholson’s Academy, 1708; found lodgings with a woman formerly a servant of his mother, in London; brought back; servant in TCD Dublin, his mother having kept rooms for students; got into army at 21, but absconded before joining; strolling players at Hockley-in-the-Hole, nr. Clerkenwell Green; practised boxing; mother, now remarried to a Mr O’Meally, with an inn in Cloncurry, sent friend to bring him home; helped his father-in-law; yearned for London, ‘that great theatre of the world’ where ‘some of inferior talents, weaker bodies, and no better education than himself, were bustling and pushing their fortune in life’ and where he knew ‘every man got to the last farthing the value of whatever commodity he brought to the market, be it what it might - merchanidise, intellectual talent, or bodily labour’. left Ireland again at 26 [1725] and travelled first to Bristol, debut-ed as Richmond in Richard III; peripatetic theatre; in love with an actress who drank rum; separated; married happily, and acted in The Beggar’s Opera with his wife; played with Peg Woffington in 1741 season [69-73]; close friend of Garrick and Woffington, entertaining with them in their Bow St. apartments ‘persons of the first rank ... of the greatest character and the most eminent for learning’; told William Cooke, ‘What illutrious men assembled in her [Woffington’s] rooms [Sam. Foote, Johnson, Fielding, Fanny Burney, &c. [91]; with Delane, Hallam, Sus. Cbber, Kitty Clive, Hannah Pritchard, et al., at Drury Lane company [95]; sought licence with Garrick and others in secession from Drury Lane, 1743; refused by Lord Chamberlain, Duke of Grafton; Macklin refuses to release Garrick from signed agreement to leave Drury Lane, and if necessary go to Ireland; Fleetwood at Drury Lane took the seceeders back, all except Macklin, whom he had previously helped in a court case; Corbyn Mooris wrote pamphlet in Macklin’s name ‘showing up Mr Garrick’s perfidy; Garrick writes to the papers in answer and excuse, Dec. 1743, complaining of ‘false and injurious assertions, calculated merely to prejudice me this night &c’ [97-98]; Macklin’s report of Peg Woffington’s confidental account of the end of her affair with Garrick ‘has an authentic ring’ [103]; a purported eye-witness account of the last scene given in ‘Mackliniana’, in 1800 issue of European Magazine; similar account in Ryan’s ‘Table Talk’ [104]; Macklin and wife acting again under Garrick at Drury Lane, 1747; in 1750 Macklin had been in Dublin for a season, and was taken on by Rich at Covent Gdn. [168].

Micheal Ó hAodha, Theatre in Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell 1974), notes that Macklin excelled as Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in his The Man of the World. The True Born Irishman or The Fine First Lady, 1762, concerns Mrs. Diggerty [who] despises everything Irish and suffers from ‘the Irish Fine Lady’s delirium or the London vertigo’ and cultivates ‘a new kind of English’.

[ top ]

Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior To The Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub. Co. 1986), Mere Irish and Fíor Ghael (1986): ‘Macklin’s impact’ [sect.]: ‘As from the 1760s virtually all Irish characters on the British stage are sympathetically characterised ... Although Macklin’s Patriot tendencies were not fully adopted in London (where The True Born Irishman failed after its Dublin success), his influence can be registered in a number of plays ... since his stature was for a while second only to Garrick [Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael, 1986, p.140]. Further, Charles Macklin, Love a la mode, Drury Lane in late 1759; rivalry of four suitors for the hand of witty, wealthy Charlotte, incl. Sir Callaghan Brallaghan, in Prussian service, the all-too-soldierly soldier. Sir Brallaghan’s martial pride takes the form of an expression of British patriotic pride which exempts him from ridicule, disappointing the convention. The play is a moral lesson on the need for honesty to overcome prejudice. [134] The true-born Irishman, performed Dublin 1761 [recte 1762], and unsuccessfully in London 1767; the London ed. is prefaced by a prologue stating the intention of presenting ‘a Milesian spring, confess’d in every part / Hibernia’s Seal impress’d on Tongue and Heart. / Nay more, our Bard still rises in Offence, / And dares give Irish Tones a sterling sense. / But what is stranger still, indeed a wonder. / He hopes to make him please without a Blunder.’ And finally, ‘This is his plan, on this you must decide, / He’s on his Country fairly to be tried.’ In the treatment of Mrs. O’Dogherty’s anglicising pretensions on returning from the coronation of George III, Macklin represents her social polishing as a fall from grace. Mr O’Dogherty - styled Diggerty by his wife - remonstrates against her, ‘[...] let me have our good, plain, old Irish English, which I insist is better than all the English English that ever coquets and coxcombs brought into the land.’ [136] When O’Dogherty utters his paean to ‘fine sounding Milesian names - O’Callaghans, O’Sullivans, O’Brallaghans, O’Shagh-nesses [sic], O’Flahertys, O’Gallaghers, and O’Doghertys - Ogh, they have courage in the very sound of them’ - the irony is that Macklin himself has refashioned his name. O’Dogherty whiggishly refuses to accept preferral for a title at the price of supporting the Government, thus exemplifying the stance of the Patriotic party. [138]. The True Born Irishman also includes a denunciation of absenteeism, and other ills. Leerssen comments, ‘after Macklin one can see the Stage Irishman undergoing a sentimentalisation’ [139]. [Page refs. to Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fhíor Gael, 1986.]]

John McVeagh, ‘“A Kind of Comhar”: Charles Macklin and Brian Friel’, in Alan Peacock, ed., The Achievement of Brian Friel (Colin Smythe 1993), 215-28, incls. note: ‘On 24 February 1775 Covent Garden Theatre five rioters were found guilty of conspiring to endanger the life of Charles Macklin; as ringleaders, they had plied certain individuals with drink on 18 Nov. 1774 and paid their entrance to the Theatre to halt the performance of the Merchant of Venice. Macklin, playing Shylock, was called to kneel in submission on front of stage, and refused; he was dismissed by Colman to prevent further rioting, and retaliated by bringing the successful suit against the ringleaders.’ (n.14.)

[ top ]

Christopher J. Wheatley, ‘“Our own good, plain, old Irish English”: Charles Macklin (Cathal McLaughlin) and Protestant Convert Accommodations’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 4, 1 (Autumn 1998), pp.81-102. Quotes: ‘Sir Theodore is my uncle only by moder’s side, which is a little upstart family that came in vid one Strongbow but t’other day - lord, not above six or seven hundred years ago: whereas my family, by my fader’s side, are all the true old Milesians, and related to the O’Flaherty’s, and O’Shocknesses, and the McLaughlins, the O’Donnegans O’Callaghans, O’Geogaghans, all the tick blood of the nation - and I myself, you know, am an O’Brallaghan, which is the ouldest of them all.’ (Love à la Mode, in Bartley, ed, Four Comedies, pp.58-59; Wheatley, p.88). Also cites narrative concerning Macklin and Dr. Johnson: ‘Johnson, growing more determined from the failure of his attempts, at last addressed him with a string of sounds perfectly unintelligible. “What”s that, Sir? inquired Macklin. “Hebrew!” answered Johnson. “And what do I know of Hebrew?” - “But a man of your understanding, Mr. Macklin, ought to be acquainted with every language!” The Doctor’s face glowed with a smile of triumph. “Och neil en deigen vonshet hom boge vaureen!” exclaimed Macklin. Johnson was now dumfounded, and inquired the name of the lingua. “Irish, Sir!” “Irish!’ exclaimed the Doctor. “Do you think I ever studied that?” “But a man of your understanding, Doctor Johnson, ought to be acquainted with every language!”’ (Quoted in Appleton, Charles Macklin, p.198; Wheatley, p.89.) [Cont.]

Christopher J. Wheatley, ‘“Our own good, plain, old Irish English”: Charles Macklin (Cathal McLaughlin) and Protestant Convert Accommodations’ (Autumn 1998) - goes on to quote Kirkman, ‘At that time family pride ran as high in Ireland, as it ever did in any part of the world; and the families of M’Laughlin, or O’Kelly, would not have thought themselves very much honored by any union with those of Llewellin, Douglas, or Howard.’ (Kirkman, Memoirs, p.9; Wheatley, p.92.) Wheatley cites undated notice of Macklin’s Love à la Mode: ‘though this piece does not want character and satire, yet it must be observed, his partiality for his country has transported him a little from the strictness of drama; for, out of four lovers, he makes an Irish officer the only one that is disinterested - a character so widely different from what experience has, in general, fixed on the gentlemen of that kingdom, that, although there are undoubtedly many amongst them possessed of mind capable of great honour and generosity, yet [95] this exclusive compliment to them, in opposition to received opinion, seems to convey a degree of prejudice, which as a dramatic writer, and a countryman, he should be studious to avoid.’ (Anon., An Account of the life and genius of Mr Charles Macklin, Comedian, in Mackliana, 2 vols. (n.d.), Vol. II, p.37, in Folger Shakespeare Library, Cat. No. PN 2598, M2 A3 Cage; Wheatley (p.95-96.) Wheatley remarks on the role of Scotsmen in the plays: ‘Macklin, the victim of racism, succeeds in English and Protestant Irish society but having done so, substitutes another object for victimisation.’ (p.97.)

A. N. Jeffares & Peter Van de Kamp, eds., Irish Literature: The Eighteenth Century - An Annotated Anthology (Dublin/Oregon: Irish Academic Press 2006): ‘The Irish playwrights differed in their treatment of the stage Irishman. For instance, Charles Macklin, following on Thomas Sheridan’s Captain O’Blunder, created in Love à la Mode (1759) Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan, another forerunner of Sir Lucius O’Trigger [in The Rivals by R. B. Sheridan]. Macklin founded his character on an Irish officer in the Prussian service whom he had met in a tavern near Covent Garden. His Sir Callaghan is an Irish gentleman, a man of honour, given to witty speeches. His liveliness was continued in Macklin’s The True-Born Irishman: or, The Irish Fine Lady (1762). Macklin well conscious of the differences between Irish and English concepts of the gentleman [sic].’ (Introduction, p.13.)

[ top ]

Quotations
Love à la Mode (1759): Sir Archy says: ‘.. why ye of Ireland, sir, are but a colony frae us, an oot cast!’ - to which Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan replies - in a parody of the historical tradition represented by [Roderick] O’Flaherty - ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Archy, that is the Scotch account, which, you know, never speaks truth, because it is alway partial - but the Irish history, which must be the best, because it was written by an Irish poet of my own family, one Shemus Thurlough Shannaghan O’Brallaghan; and he says, in his chapter on genealogy, that the Scots are all Irishmen’s bastards.’ (Quoted in Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor Ghael, 1986, p.393, citing J. O. Bartley, ed., Charles Macklin, Four Comedies, 1968, p.59.)

Love à la Mode (1759): Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan: ‘the youngest branch of our family, one Mac Fergus O’Brallaghan, was the very many that went from Carrickfergus, and peopled all Scotland with his own hands; so that, my dear Sir Archy, you must be bastards, you know.’ Sir Archy, by returns, calls him to defend himself, for ‘ye shall be reponsible for making us illegee-temate, Sir, illegeetemate.’ (Quoted in J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin, and Sawney, 1954, pp.59-60.)

True-Born Irishman (1783), O’Dogherty [to his wife, reproaching his wife for changing her name in London]: ‘Ogh, that’s right, Nancy - O’Dogherty for ever O’Dogherty - there’s a sound for you - why they have not such a name in England as O’Dogherty - nor as any of our fine sounding Milesian names - what are your Jones and your Stones, your Rice and your Price, your Heads and your Foots, and Hands and your Wills, and Hills and Mills, and Sands, and a parcel of little pimping names that a man would not pick out of the street, compared to the O’Donovans, O’Callaghans, O’Sullivans, O’Brallaghans, O’Shagnesses, OFlahertys, O’Gallaghers, and O’Doghertys. - Ogh, they have courage in the very sound of them, for they come out of the mouth like a storm, and are as old and stout as the oak at the bottom of the bog of Allen, which was there before the flood - and though they have been dispossessed by upstarts and foreigners, buddoughs and sassanoughs, yet I hope they will flourish in the Island of Saints, while grass grows or water runs.’ (Quoted in Bridget O’Toole, review of A. N. Jeffares & Peter Van der Kemp, ed., Irish Literature: The Eighteenth Century [Dublin: IAP 2006, p.169], in Books Ireland, April. 2006, p.77; for longer quotation, see attached.)

True-Born Irishman (1783), Mrs Diggerty: ‘Veest! Imminse! extatic! I never knew life before - everything there is high, tip top, the grand monde, the bun tun - and quite teesty’ (quoted Bartley, ed. 1968, p.94); Mr Diggerty, ‘Sir, it is called the Irish Fine Lady’s delirium, or the London Vertigo ... such a phrenzy of admiration for every thing in England.... She is no longer the plain, modest, good-natured domestic, obedient Irish Mrs O’Dogherty, but the travelled, rampant, high-lifed, prancing English Mrs Diggerty.’ (Bartley, ed., p.85; in La Tourette Stockwell, Dublin Theatres and Theatre Customs 1637-1820, New York: Benjamin Blom 1968 [p.394].)

True-Born Irishman (1783) - O’Dogherty: ‘though we have a great many among us that call themselves patriots and champions, who, at the same, time, would not care if poor old Ireland was squeezed as you would squeeze an orange - provided they had but their share of the juice.’ (q.p.)

[ top ]

School for Husbands (q.d.), O’Dogherty: ‘though we have a great many among us that call themselves patriots and champions, who, at the same, time, would not care if poor old Ireland was squeezed as you would squeeze an orange - provided they had but their share of the juice.’ (Quoted in Stockwell, op. cit, 1968, p.394.)

King Henry VII or The Popish Plot (1746). PERS, King Henry; Oxford; Dawbney; Bish of York; Sir Robt Clifford; King of Scotland; Perkin Warbec [sic]; Huntley; Sevez, the Pope’s Legate; Sir David Bruce; Frion; Lady Cath. Gordon; Jane. PLOT, Catherine, wedded to James, escapes to the final battle scene in man’s clothing, and is captured by the English army, happily spared by a common soldier, and delivered to Huntley, whom the epilogue indicates she will marry. Preface: The following piece was design’d as a Kind of Mirror to the present Rebellion; and the imagined advantage of having it acted before that unnatural Flame could be extinguished, was the Reason why it was so hurry’d in the writing; being begun and finished in less Time than is necessary for the forming the Fable only of a correct Play. [Further excuses of busy professional actor; craves indulgence for errors especially for: ] the measure and Diction; the author having neglected them so much, that he cannot call the Manner, in which it is written, either Prose or Verse, but accidentally both. [&c.; cont.]

King Henry VII or The Popish Plot (1746) - cont. Prologue [spoken by Macklin], Breathes there a Briton longs for Popish chains, / While Smithfield Fire our English Annals stains; / When Popish rage and Persecution blaz’d / With British blood on altars Rome had raised; / When Matrons saw their sons in Flames expire, / Their Husbands crackling in religious Fire ... While Albion mourned her liberties betray’d ... Under GEORGE such practice is unknown / The free-born Subjects guard and grace his Throne / A Prince like him out author shews tonight / Who fought for Freedom and his regal Right.

King Henry VII or The Popish Plot (1746) - cont. [1.i.] Holy Rood Palace, [Catholic] Legate speaks. SEVEZ, ‘A Nobleman who knew him, when a Child / Avowed him an Imposter, born at Tournay’. FRION, ‘Th’ Apostate Slaves are fallen off from Rome / And firmly fixt the Usurper’s Cause; / Kildare, Clanrikard, with many others / On whom we built absolute assurance, / Have, at their own Charge, arm’d their Friends and Followers / And joined the English general, Poinings / For which may divine Vengeance taint the Air, / And visit them to late Posterity.’ SEVEZ, ‘Is Perkin well prepared? Can he affect the Blush of Innocence? [3]: K. SCOT: ‘France and Spain are tardy / Where are those Troops were to be pour’d / Into Ireland. And the South and West of England?’ [72]‘Most royal James, France and Spain / Are prompt as Revenge and Hatred can inspire / But as yet they cannot stir - the English / With their fleets will not let them / Look forth .. / [84] YORK, My Liege, it hurts not me. I am the Church’s / Advocate, but as it befriends religion, / And the Happiness, and Freedom of our Land! / But when with Tyranny and Persecution / It perverts those Blessings / As a priest, I disown / That Church; and as an Englishman will fight / Against it. EPILOGUE [spoken by Mrs Woffington]: ‘By Hal delivered from my marriage vows / Catherine again is free to chuse a Spouse / The Man ... / Is british born .. / Of Rome nurst husbands I have had enough ... / That I myself equip’d in Cap and Jerkin, / Am every whit as good a Prince as Perkin. [&c.]’ (From Wells Microcards.)

[ top ]

Letter to his Son (London, June 23rd, 1770): ‘Dear John / [...] You write me a letter, and never tell me by what ship you send it, what the captain’s name is, whence the ship sailed, when she was to sail from Fort St. George, or when you expected that she would arrive in England. All these points are necessary, and shew a man of business, - never omit such circumstances again, and always take notice to your correspondent of the time, the ship, the captain, through whose hands you receive your correspondent’s letter. - Have you no book of letters upon business that you can form yourself upon? - Certainly you have. You request me to send you a little money, to keep you from borrowing. Surely you cannot want money more than Mr. Corbet, or any other young man. Mr. Corbet tells his father, that the allowance from the Company is small; but that he will make it do. Cannot you do so too? You talk of buying a share in a country ship; which is the only way of making money in your situation, you say. Pray who is to freight that ship? To lay out money, in the purchase of a ship, is easily said; but it seems to me to be a very absurd, or, at least, a very precarious scheme for a young man to engage in an undertaking of that nature, before he has any knowledge of markets, commodities, or of any of the conditions or circumstances of commerce, or the persons concerned in it; and it appears to me, at this distance, that this must be your case in every respect. Is Mr. Corbet’s son engaged in such an adventure? John, do not be impatient; be sure that you know, always, before you judge, speak, or adventure. But why did you not send me an account of the nature of your country ship, its commerce, and of all the circumstances of the undertaking? as well as to send to me for money for such a business. You had a letter from Lord Clive to the late Governor, and one from Mr. Nuthall to Mr. Chaneau. Pray do you not think that it would have been, in some degree, proper, that you should have given me some account of the particulars how you were received in consequence of these letters, that I might know how to address, or to thank Lord {171} Clive, or Mr. Nuthall, on that business. O fie! fie! never be guilty of such shameful omissions again! You desire me to procure you some letters of recommendation: - how can you expect me to ask for any letters, after such a shameful neglect in you? I charged you to keep a journal, or book of memorandums, of ordinary as well as extraordinary occurrences. - Have you done so? I am sure you have not. From such a book, had you kept one, you might, at any time, when you were to write to me, or to any person, take extracts, or heads of intelligence, and commit them to your letter, according to order. Remember, Sir, as an invariable rule, that a merchant, or a man in any kind of business, is to trust nothing to memory; every thing is to be committed to paper. Again I charge you to practise it. I can tell by your letter, at first sight, whether or no you do it: so do not deceive yourself, by thinking that you can deceive me, by telling me that you do it. Remember that business has but one profitable rule - I mean a governing rule - and that is METHOD; without which, no man in business can be sure of ease, peace, character, or profit. Pray oblige me, and practise this journalising; ten minutes a day will be sufficient for that business; and I request that you will read Dr. Lowth’s Grammar critically, and commit his observations to your memory. Get the instances that he gives, of the mistakes and errors of other writers, by heart; and, particularly, read his account of punctuation - for you are deficient in it. Send me the names of the Council at Madras, and, if you can, of their friends and connections in England; that I may apply properly for letters of recommendation for you. Your list of things shall be duly answered.’ (Source: A. N. Jeffares & Peter Van de Kamp, eds., Irish Literature: The Eighteenth Century - An Annotated Anthology, Irish Academic Press 2006, pp.170-73; for full text, see attached. )

[ top ]

References

See Sinéad Sturgeon & Francis Clarke, “Charles Macklin”, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA; Cambridge UP 2004) -available online (since 2009)

D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) lists a single poetical work, Henry VII., or The Popish Imposter, a tragedy (1746) but remarks at some extent: ‘[Charles Macklin, a]uthor of the successful plays, The Man of the World, and Love-a-la-Mode, etc., and a great actor. Born in Co. Westmeath, probably in 1700, though 1690 has been given as the date. His father was a William McLaughlin, of Co. Down, it is said, and commanded a troop of horse at the Battle of the Boyne, on the Stuart side. His mother was, it appears, a Miss Alice O’Flanagan, of Blackcastle, Co. Westmeath. These statements are made in Whitelaw and Walsh’s History of Dublin. He ran away to London in youth, and went on the stage, where he had, eventually, few equals, and where his innovations stamped him as an epoch-making actor. He played up to a great age, if the date of his birth is correct, leaving the stage finally in 1789. His comedies, above-mentioned, were produced respectively in 1780 and 1793. He died July 11, 1797, at the age, it is said, of 107, and was buried in St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. The dramatic history of the 18th century largely concerns him. There is a brochure, Zanga’s Triumph, or Harlequin and Othello at War (Dublin, 1762, 8vo), by Charles McLaughlin, which refers to the rivalry between Barry and Woodward, the actor." (End; p.256.)

Note that the identity of his father is at variance here with the received one - viz., Terence McLaughlin, or Meleghin [vide RIA Dict. of Irish Biog., 2004; online 2009].

Dictionary of National Biography, notes that he played in Lincoln’s Inns Th., in 1730; Drury Lane, 1733-44 and 1744-8; made reputation by interpretation of Shylock; appeared for Sheridan in Dublin, 1748-50, and also in 1761 and 1763-70; Covent Garden, 1750-3, 1761, 1772, 1775, 1781-9; retired 1789; best works, Love à la Mode, farce (1759) and The Man of the World, successful com. (1781). ODNB gives date for True Born Irishman as London 1793 [JMV].

[ top ]

Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), cites the birth-date 1690; gives extract from The Man of the World (Scene with Sir Pertinax MacSycophant and his son Charles Egerton, the former lecturing the latter on his conduct towards Lord Lumbercourt whose dg. he intends him to marry], and also anecdotes of Macklin, including that in which Johnson quotes Greek to support his opinion, and defends his doing so to Macklin’s admission of ignorance, ‘Sir, a man who undertakes to argue should know all languages’, at which Macklin answers, ‘Oh very well, how will you answer this argument?’ and immediate treated him to a long quotation in Irish’. BIOG., b. Westmeath; father died in 1704; mother remarried, 1707; ran away with two others to London, 1708; brought back and acted as badgeman at TCD; became strolling player; returned to London in 1725; engaged by Rich at Lincoln’s Inn Fields career began in 1734; fellow actor wounded by him in the eye dies; tried for manslaughter; resumed acting in 1736; revised farcical Shylock as tragic figure; a gentlemen in the pit exclaims, ‘This is the jew that Shakespeare drew’; opened Haymarket with Foote, Hill and others, 1744; wrote tragedy, King Henry the Seventh (1746), failed; A Will or No Will, or a Bone for Lawyers, farce (Apr. 1746), no success; The Club of Fortune Hunters, or the Widow Bewitched also failed; quit stage and established tavern at Covent Garden on new principle, 1753, inviting ladies and providing lectures on the arts; venture ultimately failed; Love à la Mode (1760), successful, and The Man of the World (1764 [err for Dublin version, The True-born Scotsman]), his masterpiece; played on till his memory failed; publication of his two most popular plays when he was almost a hundred brought £2,600 to purchase an annuity; d. 11 July, 1797, at 107 years; visited theatre nightly.

[ top ]

Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), b. McLauglin, Westmeath [sic]; ran away from his mother to England and seduced to marry a widow when under age in 1708, was returned to his mother; badgeman at TCD; ran away to England at 21; returned to his mother and TCD; left again in 1716. Restored The Merchant of Venice to the stage (14 Feb. 1741), having been supplanted by Lord Landsdowne’s Jew of Venice [NOTE: Lord Landsdowne is George Granville]. WORKS, King Henry VII or the Popish Imposter, hist. trag. (DL 18 Jan. 1745/6), in prose and verse; A Will or No Will or A Bone for the Lawyers, farce (DL 23 Apr 1746); The Suspicious Husband Criticised, or the Plague of Envy (DL Mar 24 1747), a criticism of Hoadly’s com.; The Fortune Hunters or the Widow Bewitched (1748; printed 1759), for his own benefit; Covent Garden Theatre or Pasquin Turn’d Drawcansir, Censor of great Britain (CG 8 Apr 1752), about Field, not printed. Love à la Mode (DL 12 Dec. 1759; pirated Dublin ed., 1784; printed ?1893), with the char. Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan [a leading Irish char. for generations], who wins the bride; The Married Libertine (CG 28 Jan 1761); The True Born Irishman (Crow St., May 1762), produced CG 21 Nov 1767 [London Stage, 23 Nov.] as The Irish Fine Lady, but failed there; The Whim, or A Christmas Gambol (Crow St. 26 Dec. 1764); The Man of the World, 5 acts (CG 10 May 1781), first produced in Dublin as The True Born Scotsman, 3 acts (Crow St. 10 July 1764), the title being set aside at the instance of the Lord Chamberlain who refused it at first appearance, and for many years; it centres on Sir Pertinard [err. for Pertinax] Macsycophant; he raises a son qualified to make a fortunate marriage, but produces a man of honour.

William Smith Clark, Irish Stage in the County Towns (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), Appendix A, gives list of the favorites among Macklin’s plays on the Irish stage.

Michael Ó hAodha, Theatre in Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell 1974), cites The True Born Irishman or The Fine First Lady (1762), a play concerning Mrs. Diggerty [who] despises everything Irish and suffers from ‘the Irish Fine Lady’s delirium or the London vertigo’ and cultivates ‘a new kind of English’.

Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979), remarks that he was born in 1699 by his own account; appeared on English stage in 1733; according to legend Alex ander Pope said, “This is the jew that Shakespeare drew” [but see also Spranger Barry, and note Dictionary of National Biography, supra]; plunged the tip of his cane in another actor’s eye in a green-room quarrel, in 1735, and was condemned to branding with a cold iron; date and place of staging of The True-Born Irishman not given. [WORKS & CRIT as supra.]

A. N. Jeffares and Anthony Kamm,, eds., An Irish Childhood, An Anthology (Collins 1987), ‘Schooling of an Actor’, from Kirkman’s Life of Macklin.

A. N. Jeffares & Peter Van de Kamp, eds., Irish Literature: The Eighteenth Century - An Annotated Anthology (Dublin/Oregon: Irish Academic Press 2006), gives extract from The True-Born Irishman; or The Irish Fine Lady, Act. II [167]; Letter to his Son [170]. ]

Seamus Deane, gen. ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. , lists first Dublin edn. of The True-Born Irishman as 1783; Bibl., J. O. Bartley, Four comedies by Charles Macklin (London 1968) standard ed.; BIBL as supra. FDA2, name cited with Mossop, Sheridan, and Barry, in Le Fanu’s House by the Church-yard; acted in Dublin under Sheridan’s auspices, 1762-70 [W. J. McCormack, ed.], 889n; Thomas MacDonagh (Literature in Ireland, 1916), ‘the few Irish dramatists of the nineteenth century, from Macklin to the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre, have little importance in literature’ (1916), p.990.

[ top ]

British Library holds The True-Born Irishman, or Irish fine Lady, a comedy ... as performed at the Theatre royal, Drury-lane, Covent Garden, and Smock Alley, &c. [titlepage 1793] in Jones’s British Theatre, Vol 6 (1793), pp.101-161; 12o; also Man of the World, and Love à la Mode, ed. A[rthur] Murphy 2 pt. (London 1793), fol.; Love à La Mode (London 1784); & numerous eds.; Love à la Mode, 25pp., in Theatre Royal, Smoke Alley: A Volume of Plays ... containing School for Scandal [sic], etc., pt. 5 (Dublin 1785) - viz.,

Ulster Libraries: BELFAST CENTRAL PUBLIC LIBRARY (1956 Catalogue) holds Four Comedies, Charles Macklin. BELFAST LINENHALL LIBRARY holds The Ma cklins of Ireland (photocopy, n.d.) by William Macklin, Jacksonville Florida, formerly of Balgowan House, Lisburn.

[ top ]

Notes
Love à La Mode: Three other characters - English, Welsh, and Scots - combine to keep the Irishman Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan out of a suit for the hand of a rich widow. The plays ends with the same device as Sheridan’s when a false report of Goodchild’s lost fortune drives the [other] suitors off. A rough soldier, he deals smartly with the Scot: “The Scots are all Irishmen’s bastards,” and: “My ancestor Terence Flaherty O’Brallaghan went over from Carrickfergus and people all Scotland with his own hands.” The play held Dublin audiences for more than a generation. (See Peter Kavanagh, Irish Theatre, 1946 - who notes that there is a pirated Dublin edn. of 1784.)

Sir John Gilbert, History of Dublin (1854-59; rep. edn. Shannon 1972), contains extensive references to Macklin including some lines by Anthony Pasquin noticing his appearance at 95 yrs of age at Smock Alley for Richard Daly, ‘Revere sturdy Macklin, the dramatic sire / For nor age nor disease can extinguish his fire ...’; See also Anthony Pasquin, The Children of Thespis (1792)

Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes (q.d.), reports that he died 11 July, at 104; note also that the remark, ‘This is the Jew/That Shakespeare drew’, is spoken by ‘a deformed little man’, leaning over the box as Macklin passed it (presumably intended for Alexander Pope), and further: ‘Macklin’s judgement decided that the play, as it came from Shakespeare’s brain, would prove a success’. (p.176); in the event, it played for nineteen nights in succession and was repeated to crowded houses.

Maria Macklin (d.1781), his daughter, appeared at Drury Lane in Richard III, 1743; left stage 1777; played Portia, Desdemona, and Rosalind;

[ top ]

Sales catalogue of his extensive library includes titles by [Sir John] Davi[e]s (1747), John Bush, Hibernia Curiosa (1766) [recte 1769], Charles, O’Conor, Dissertations (1766); Charles Vallancey, Collecteana (1770), Smith’s Cork, Waterford and Kerry (1784), Wynne’s History of Ireland (1773), and Twiss’s Tour (1775) [Folger Pn 2598 M2 A3].

G. J. Cooke played Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in Man of the World, and Archy MacSarcasm in Love a la Mode, see J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney: Being an Historical Study of the Earliest Irish, Welsh and Scottish Characters in English Plays (Cork UP 1954), p.227, and plate 19 [after p.254].

The National Theatre, London, permanently displays a portrait by Zoffany of Macklin in the role of Shylock in Act 3 of The Merchant of Venice (Covent Garden, 1767-68) [BREF 147].

Portrait: John Opie’s oil portrait of Macklin is held by the Garrick Club [see Philip Highfall, supra, and Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition [Cat,], Ulster Mus. 1965.

[ top ]