EDITORS’ NOTE
Although of considerable interest in itself, this hitherto unpublished manuscript play is reprinted in facsimile in response to requests by members of the Society for a manuscript facsimile of use in graduate seminars.
[INTRODUCTION]
The Larpent collection of the Huntington Library contains the manuscript copy of Charles Macklin’s COVENT GARDEN THEATRE, OR PASQUIN TURN’D DRAWCANSIR in two acts (Larpent 96) which is here reproduced in facsimile.[1] It is an interesting example of that mid-eighteenth-century phenomenon, the afterpiece, from a period when not only Shakespearean stock productions but new plays as well were accompanied by such farcical appendages.[2] This particular afterpiece is worth reproducing not only for its catalogue of the social foibles of the age, but as an illustration of satirical writing for the stage at a time when dramatic taste often wavered toward the sentimental. It appears that it has not been previously printed.
As an actor Charles Macklin is remembered for his Scottish dress in the role of Macbeth, for his realistic portrayal of Shylock, for his quarrel with Garrick in 1743, and for his private lectures on acting at the Piazza in Covent Garden. He is less well known than he deserves as a dramatist although there has been a recent revival of interest in his plays stimulated by a biography by William W. Appleton, Charles Macklin: An Actor’s Life (Harvard University Press, 1960) and evidenced in “A Critical Study of the Extant Plays of Charles Macklin” by Robert R. Findlay (PhD. Thesis at the State University of Iowa, 1963). Appleton mentions that Macklin lost books and manuscripts in a shipwreck in 1771 (p. 150) and that play manuscripts may also have disappeared in the sale of his books and papers at the end of his long life at the turn of the eighteenth century. It is possible that more of Macklin’s work may come to light, like The Fortune Hunters which appeared in the National Library in Dublin. Until a complete critical edition of Macklin’s plays appears, making possible better assessment of his merit, such farces as THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE will have to stand as an example of one genre of eighteenth-century theatrical productions.
There are many reasons why Macklin’s plays are less well known than is warranted by his personality and acting ability during his long association with the British stage. His first play, King Henry VII, a tragedy hastily put together to capitalize on the anti-Jacobite sentiment following the invasion attempt of 1745, was an ambitious failure. After this discouragement, he also had trouble with the Licenser so that his comedy Man of the World was not presented until 1781, twenty years after a portion of it first appeared at Covent Garden.[3] Nor were censorship and a bad start his only problems as a playwright. He also, and apparently with good reason,[4] was fearful of piracy and was thus reluctant to have his plays printed. His eighteenth-century biographer Kirkman mentions Macklin’s threats to “put the law against every offender of it, respecting my property, in full force.”[5] His biographers also mention his practice of giving each actor only his own role at rehearsals while keeping the manuscript copy of the whole play under lock, but this did not prevent whole acts from being printed in such magazines as The Court Miscellany, where Act I of Love-a-la-Mode was printed as it was taken down in shorthand by the famous shorthand expert Joseph Gurney. If Macklin had not been required to submit copies of his plays to the Licenser, it is doubtful that as much would have survived. The contentious Macklin had reason for zealously guarding his manuscripts, with such provincial theatre managers as Tate Wilkinson at York always anxious for new plays.
Finally, Macklin’s best work as a playwright was satiric enough and topical enough to be short-lived in popularity even in his own day. Sir Pertinax McSychophant in the Man of the World is a good character, especially in his famous speech on the necessity of bowing to get ahead in the world, as is Sir Archy MacSarcasm in Love-a-la-Mode, but the latter produced A Scotsman’s Remarks on the Farce Love-a-la Mode in the Gentleman’s Magazine for June, 1760, and Macklin’s additional troubles with the Licenser would indicate that his satiric barbs were not always well received.
Larpent manuscript 96, here reproduced, bears the application of John Rich to the Duke of Grafton, dated 1752, for the Licenser’s permission and an inscription to William Chetwynd, Esq. (spelled “Chetwyne” on the MS.). It was extensively advertised before its one and only performance in the Covent Garden Theatre on April 8, 1752. The advertisement printed in The London Stage, Pt. 4, I, 305, is taken from the General Advertiser and warns the public not to confuse this farce with Charles Woodward’s A Lick at the Town of 1751. The fact that the sub-title PASQUIN TURN’D DRAWCANSIR carried an obvious allusion to Fielding’s pseudonym Alexander Drawcansir in his Covent Garden Journal, and the fact that the Covent Garden Journal carried the advertisement for Macklin’s play on March 14, 17, 21 and 28, 1752, before the single performance on April 8, 1752, might suggest that Fielding may possibly have seen the script before the play was produced. Esther M. Raushenbush in an article on “Charles Macklin’s Lost Play about Henry Fielding,” MLN, LI (1936), 505-14, points out that Macklin was not attacking Fielding in this play as W. L. Cross and G. E. Jensen had earlier suggested, but instead was trading on the popularity of Fielding’s Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, which had appeared in January, 1751. Macklin’s farce makes clear reference to Section III of Fielding’s pamphlet near the end of THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE where Pasquin delivers a lecture against Sharpers.
The advertisement for Macklin’s play in Fielding’s Covent Garden Journal is the same as that printed in The London Stage from the General Advertiser:
a New Dramatic Satire ... written on the model of the Comedies of Aristophanes or like Pasquinades of the Italian Theatre in Paris: with the Characters of the People after the manner of Greek drama—The parts of the Pit, the Boxes, the Galleries, the Stage, and the Town to be performed By Themselves for their Diversion. The Parts of several dull, disorderly characters in and about St. James, to be performed by Certain Persons, for Example: and the part of Pasquin Drawcansir, to be performed by his Censorial Highness, for his Interest.[6] The Satire to be introduced by an Oration and to conclude by a Peroration. Both to be spoken from the Rostrum in the manner of certain Orators by Signior Pasquin.