The Covent Garden Theatre Part 1

The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir.

by Charles Macklin, et al.

INTRODUCTION

The Larpent collection of the Huntington Library contains the ma.n.u.script 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ma.n.u.scripts in a s.h.i.+pwreck in 1771 (p. 150) and that play ma.n.u.scripts 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 a.s.sessment 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 a.s.sociation 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 censors.h.i.+p 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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 ma.n.u.script 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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-t.i.tle 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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.

No cast remains, but presumably from references in the play itself, Macklin took the role of Pasquin who with the aid of Marforio calls in review characters representing all the foibles of the age. There is no plot. Act I simply ends while Pasquin and the Spectators retire to the Green Room to await the appearance of those characters whom Marforio has called in review.

In this ambitious attempt to list all the follies of his age, Macklin employs the popular technique of eighteenth-century plays such as Fielding's _The Author's Farce_--the play appears to be writing itself on the stage. He displays all the tricks of satire--exaggeratedly ironic praise, allegorical names (Miss Giggle, Miss Brilliant, Miss Bashfull), stock characters of satire (Pasquin, Marforio, Hydra, Drawcansir), lists of offenses, parodies of polite conversation reminiscent of Swift, and constant topical references: to the Robin Hood Society to which little Bob Smart belongs; to Mother Midnight; to playwrights (Fielding, Foote, Woodward, Cibber, and himself); to contemporary theatrical taste (Pantomime, Delaval's _Oth.e.l.lo_ which Macklin himself had coached, Harlequins, Masquerades, and various theatrical tricks); to Critics (Bonnell Thornton, who later reviewed this afterpiece, is called Termagent since Thornton's pseudonym was "Roxana Termagent"; John Hill is referred to as the "Inspector" of the _Daily Advertiser_; and Fielding is called Sir Alexander Drawcansir). The farce abounds in these topical references, from Pasquin's opening invocation to Lucian, "O thou, who first explored and dared to laugh at Public Folly," to its closing lecture against Sharpers like Count Hunt Bubble where the obvious allusions to Section III on Gaming of Fielding's _Enquiry_ ...

are applauded by Solomon Common Sense, the voice of Reason.

This vast parade of fas.h.i.+ons and foibles with frequent thinly veiled references to individuals may explain the numerous Licenser's marks on the ma.n.u.script. If all the marked lines were omitted, it is small wonder that this afterpiece was performed only once. Dramatic satire, without plot, is difficult to sustain even in farce, and if the marked lines were cut, there was little left to recommend the play. It is not surprizing that the Licenser objected to such pa.s.sages as the description of Miss Giggle's "nudities," but his frequent objections to topical and personal references took all the bite out of Macklin's satire.

Like Macklin's other early farces, THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE contains proto-characters for his later plays. Sir Roger Ringwood, a "five-bottle man," who rode twenty miles from a "red-hot Fox Chace" to appear before Pasquin, is an early study for Macklin's later hard-drinking, fox-hunting Squire Groom in _Love-a-la Mode_ or Lord Lumbercourt in _The Man of the World_. But Macklin's usual good ear for dialogue is missing from this play, nor is any character except his own as Pasquin followed long enough to make his characteristic speech identifiable. Since plot is absent too, all that remains is the wealth of topical and personal satire which in itself is interesting to the historian of the mid-eighteenth-century theatre. If THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE is studied along with his other two unpublished afterpieces in the Larpent collection (A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS and THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY), Macklin's skill at satiric comedy after his initial abortive attempt at tragedy can be seen as developing steadily toward such later full-length comedies as the better known _Love-a-la Mode_ (1759) and _The Man of the World_ (1764). His recognition that tragedy was not his forte and his self-criticism in THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE, where he exhorts the audience to "explode" him when he is dull, reveal the comic spirit operative in his sometimes cantankerous personality. It is that strain, here seen in genesis, which develops full-fledged in his later comedies.

A word should be added about the Dramatis Personae for the play. It does not contain the Stage-Keeper, who speaks only once, the Servant whose single word is accompanied by the stage direction "This Servant is to be on from the beginning," nor the Romp (probably the Prompter, who speaks twice off-stage during the play). Hic and Haec Scriblerus, however, although he is listed in the cast of characters, speaks only once, and his entrance on stage is never indicated.

The "naked lady," Lady Lucy Loveit, whose entrance causes so much excitement, is described as appearing in a Pett-en-l'air, which eighteenth-century costume books portray as a short, loose s.h.i.+ft!

_Coe College_

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[Footnote 1: The author of this introduction is indebted to the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, both for a research Fellows.h.i.+p in the summer of 1963 and for permission to reproduce this Macklin play as well as two others by the same author, A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS (Larpent 58) and THE NEW PLAY CRITICIS'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY (Larpent 64).]

[Footnote 2: George W. Stone, _The London Stage_, Part 4, I, cxlv.]

[Footnote 3: Dougald MacMillan, "Censors.h.i.+p in the Case of Macklin's _The Man of the World_," _Huntington Library Quarterly_, No. 10 (1936), pp. 79-101.]

[Footnote 4: W. Matthews, "The Piracies of Macklin's _Love-a-la Mode_," _Review of English Studies_, X (1934), 311-18.]

[Footnote 5: James T. Kirkman, _Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq._ (1799), II, 33. Kirkman quotes Macklin's letters both to his solicitor and to James Whitley of Leicester to stop all such pirated performances (II, 37-41).]

[Footnote 6: John Rich's application to the Licenser indicates that "Mr. Macklin designs to have [the play] performed at his Benefit Night...."]

1752

Covent Garden Theatre.

or

Pasquin turn'd Drawcansir

A

Dramatic Satyr.

Sr.

This peice ent'd Covt. Garden Theatre or Pasquin turn'd Drawcansir Mr.

Macklin designs to have perform'd on his Benefit Night wth the permission of his Grace the Duke of Grafton.

To William Chetwyne Esq.

I am Sr. yr humble Srvt Jno Rich

Dramatis Personae

Men.

Pasquin.

Marforio.

Sir Eternal Grinn.

Sir Conjecture Possitive.

Sir Roger Ringwood.

Bob: Smart.

Solomon Common Sense Count Hunt bubble.

Sr. Iohn Ketch.

Hic & haec Scriblerus.

Hydra.