The Man of the World (1792)

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Charles Macklin THE MAN OF THE WORLD (1792)
With an Introduction by Dougald MacMillan
Publication Number 26
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1951
H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los Angeles
W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, Duke University LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale University JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles
Himself irascible and passionate, Macklin had been the most admired Shylock of his century. His specialty was the performance of character parts, often dialect roles, either broadly comic or cruel and ironic. The central figure of this, his best comedy, is such a part. It combines those features that the author could portray so effectively, the broad dialect, the callous selfishness, the hypocrisy, the passionate resistance to all appeals to sentiment and the imperviousness to affection. One can detect in the creation strong resemblances to Macklin's interpretation of Shylock, something of Sir Giles Overreach, who was also known to eighteenth-century play-goers, and possibly of Tartuffe. In his resolute defiance of the conventions of comedy of sensibility, Macklin resisted the pressure to allow Sir Pertinax to soften in the end and terminate the play on a note of happy reconciliation and family harmony.
The Man of the World was first published in England, with Macklin's farce Love a la Mode , by subscription, in a handsome quarto. Facing the title-page is a portrait of the author, in his 93.^d Year, engraved by John Condé after Opie, for which the trustees of the fund paid 25 guineas. Preceding the text of the play are the list of subscribers, which contains many eminent names, an Advertisement from the Editor, explaining the occasion and method of publication and giving an account of the handling of the fund by the trustees, and a dedication to Lord Camden, dated 10 December 1792, and signed by Macklin, though one rather suspects that Arthur Murphy had a hand in its composition. These pieces of front matter have been omitted from the present reproduction as containing nothing material to the reading or interpretation of the play. The Dramatis Personae follow, and the text begins with signature B page 1, and runs to signature K2^{V}. Love a la Mode , not reprinted here, then follows, with separate title-page and pagination.