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'CULDAFF MANOR '
Charles Macklin
Brigid O'Donnell has succeeded in giving the reader an insight into the complexities, strength and successes of a native of Inishowen.
Kings and Prime Ministers, great poets and writers, prosperous London merchants and humble artisans came to see his stage performances. He was a prominent figure in the theater of the eighteenth century. It is very fitting that he should be remembered on the tercentenary of his birth in the Inishowen Peninsula. Brigid O'Donnell's biography has made this possible.
Sean Beattie September 1990
Brigid O'Donnell was asked to write this book to commemorate Charles Macklin, on the tercentenary of his birth. It was launched in Culdaff during the first Charles Macklin Autumn School, on October 19th, 1990.
The Jew that Shakespeare Drew
"The parish of Culdaff was the birthplace of the celebrated comedian and dramatic writer Macklin. Charles Macklin was born in 1690, his real name was McLaughlin which he in turn changed to Macklin. He became a performer in the Lincoln's Inn Company in 1725 and not long afterwards was tried for killing another player in a quarrel and found guilty of manslaughter. He also had so repulsive a set of features that Quinn one day exclaimed "if God writes a legible hand, that man is a villian." (1) His greatest character was Shylock, his performance of which drew from the poet Pope this very remarkable comment . . .
This is the Jew That Shakespeare drew.
The local tradition that he was born in Culdaff is undeniable. It is supported by
(A) Edward Chicester in "Mason's Statistical Survey" and Chicester, rector of Culdaff and Cloncha gives his birthplace as Culdaff. The Rev. Chicester, rector of Culdaff and Cloncha was writing within 20 years of Macklin's death.
(B) lnis-Owen & Tirconell by Wm. James Doherty 1895 states that an inquiry by the Rev. Philip O'Doherty into local tradition had confirmed his birthplace as Gortanarin, Culdaff.
(C) Congreve, one of Macklin's early biographers states that the actor was born in Inis Eoghan.
A Mr. Kellett who resides in Greencastle says that his grandmother's grandmother was McLaughlin from near Malin. He has in his possession a sample showing Eilish Macklin in the year 1827. He says that his grandmother said that her grandmother hinted that they had a very famous relative but never said in what field.
Macklin's Ireland
To give some background to Charles Macklin's childhood and to the severe circumstances under which the native Irish population attempted to survive in the seventeenth century, we must relate to Irish history. The defeat of the Irish Chieftains at Kinsale in 1603 and the flight of the Earls from Rathmullan.
Co. Donegal marked the turning point in Irish history. Gaelic kingdoms were at an end. The Irish were leaderless; English and Scottish settlers were given the confiscated lands of the
people. An apt description is the quotation from Merriman's "The Midnight Court", "An ancient race without land or freedom". Education was denied to the people and their religion was treated with contempt. Into an Ireland of oppression Charles Macklin was born in 1690. There is no doubt that his name was McLaughlin and for a time the McLaughlins had been the ruling family in Inis Eoghan. If circumstances had been different Charles McLaughlin might never have become Charles Macklin and would, along with the great Toland of Clonmany, have flourished as leading lights in their native Gaelic culture in Inis Eoghan. (see note).
Macklin's Ancestry
"The inhabitants of Donegal had strong Jacobite leanings but no William McLaughlin or Melaghlin appears on King James' Irish Army Lists, nor does William McLaughlin's marriage to Alice O'Flanagan appear on the genealogical chart of the Melaghlins in the archives of the office of arms, Dublin Castle. The Chart does record, however, the marriage of one Terence Melaghlin to one Agnes Flanagan. Unfortunately the entry is undated but it can be estimated to have occured towards the close of the seventeenth century". (2)
This might be taken to dispense with the idea that his father was William but christian names were often wrongly written in birth registers even to the present day.
Kirkman says that one Wm. McLaughlin commanded a troop of horsemen in the army of James II and that he had one daughter, Mary, and a son, Charles, who was born two months previous to the battle of the Boyne - in April or May 1690. No mention is made further of Mary or if she really existed.
Macklin's Education
Macklin's childhood language would have been Irish. The rudiments of learning would have been received in the nearby hedge school. He would have seen early in life that the only hope for advancement on the social scale would be to forget that he was Irish and Catholic. "There is no certain information about his schooling and early career. On the death of his father, Kirkman states his mother married Luke Meally, a Dublin tavern keeper sufficiently prosperous to send his stepson to a boarding school in nearby Island Bridge. There Kirkman says he studied under the tutelage of Mr. Nicholson, a harsh Scottish pedagogue which left Macklin with a lifelong aversion to Scots but Macklin's own one specific allusion to those days does not bear this out. He records merely "Nicholson's advice to his boys 'never offend or injure without making atonement' which he made us practice daily and hourly, if a strong boy forced a weak boy out of his seat of pre-eminence and the weak boy complained, the strong boy was degraded and punished." (4).
Macklin's first steps on stage.
At this school he first developed a liking for the stage and was given a part which he played well. He was interested in boxing and swimming and his already ugly features were added to by the former. Macklin acted as a scout at Trinity College. When he was seventeen he joined a strolling company in Bristol and toured England, sometimes coming to London. Macklin adapted himself to the most stringent of hardships. He studied elocution with an English lady but when he returned to Bristol and applied to the manager of a newly formed company, he was told he needed four inches more cut from his Irish brogue.
I n 1733 Macklin came to Drury Lane. He had a liaison with Mrs. Ann Grace, an actress, and they had an illegitimate daughter Maria. In 1735, Macklin dressing for his part as a servant, was unable to find the wig he wanted as another actor, Hallam, had it. Hallam was eventually persuaded to find another which he did and contemptuously threw the wig at Macklin. Infuriated, Macklin lunged at him with the cane he was carrying and thrust the cane through Hallam's eye. Hallam died and Macklin, full of remorse, gave himself up. He conducted his own defence and was acquitted. Macklin married Ann Grace about 1739. He had by this time renounced his Catholic faith and dispensed with his Irish nationality.
Macklin
as Shylock
Macklin did not approve of the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice as
being comedy, so he set about with great intensity to prepare himself for the
role of Shylock as he thought it
should be done. He sought to make his costume as authentic as possible, tracking
down such obscure data as the fact that Italian Jews, particularly those in
Venice, habitually wore Red
Hats. He studied the history of the Jews so that when he appeared as "Shylock",
he was Shylock - his piercing eyes, jutting chin and peaked nose was the incarnation
of Shakespeare's Jew so at Drury Lane on February 14th, Macklin became what
he set out to be, a Shakespearian actor
unequalled and unparalled. Macklin's daughter played Portia:
No finer contrast could there ever be
When Macklin, Shylock played and Portia she. (6)
In an inconspicuous theatre an unknown actor overnight rose from anonymity
to become the most famous actor the English theatre has ever known. In 1748
the Macklins undertook the journey back to Dublin where Macklin appeared in
the Smock Alley Theatre. After some time, a disagreement with the manager Sheridan
made Macklin return to England. In December 1758, his wife died and was buried
in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. In 1759 he married Elizabeth Jones. (7)
An amusing proof of the terrific effect of Macklin's interpretation of Shylock
upon the average mind of the day is recorded in the following story as told
by Bernard. "When Macklin established his fame in that character, King
George Ii went to see him and the impression he received was so powerful that
it deprived him of rest throughout the night. In the morning, the Premier,
Sir Robert Walpole, waited on the king, to express his fears that the Commons
would oppose a certain measure, then in contemplation "I wish your Majesty",
said Sir Robert, "it was possible to find a recipe for frightening a House
of Commons." What do you think?" replied the king, "of sending
them to the theatre to see the Irishman play Shylock?"
"Whether the king's hint was taken or not, I cannotsay, butthe jest helps
us to realize how novel and striking in that day was this interpretation of a
terrible and terrifying Jew. All who saw him were impressed with awe and admiration
at his acting."(8)
"In January 1788, he broke down in Shylock and appealed to the audience
to forgive him for his loss of memory, but he was able to pull himself together
enough to complete the
performance and he continued to act occasionally. He appeared for the last
time as Shylock on May 7th, 1789. Before the performance he was bewildered
and confused. He did go on stage and made an effort but to little effect. He
was obliged to yield and leave his understudy, Ryder, to carry on. Cooke concludes
his account of the event thus . . ." The audience accepted his apology
with a mixed applause of indulgence and commiseration and he retired from the
stage for ever: This was the beginning of the end, but he had eight more years
to live. They were rather sad years, for he does not seem to have been depressed
in his senility, with his mind more often clouded than lucid. The death of
his son in 1790 arid, though it ended too late, the financial drain that had
been going on for years, hardly affected him. He often visited taverns and
the theatres and sometimes was able to talk and reminisce with a little of
his old fire for a short time, but such moments were few and far between. He
died peacefully in his sleep on 1 1 th July, 1797 so ended the longest and
one of the most distinguished of British theatrical careers - a native son
of Culdaff in Inishowen. When he had played Shylock for the last and well over
the hundreth time, he recalled the first night of triumph in touching words: "No
money, no title, could purchase what I felt. And let no man tell me what Fame
will not inspire a man to do, and howfarthe attainment of it will not inspire
his greatest labours. By God, Sir, though I was not worth E50 in the world
at that time, let me tell you, I was Charles the Great for that night." (9)
Macklin as Playwright
While the name of Macklin will be forever associated with acting, he also secured
a measure of success in the writing of plays. His first, written in 1746, was
entitled "King Henry V/l" or "The Popish Impostor". It
was not a success. In 1746 he wrote "A Will and No Will" and in 1747 "The
New Play Criticised.- Neither of these received any worthwhile notice. In 1759,
he wrote and produced "Married Libertine" which only ran nine nights.
In 1763, he produced at Smock Alley Theatre his "The True-Born Irishman".
It was well received there but when produced in Covent Garden under the title
of "Irish Fine Lady", it was a failure because the humour of a London
audience was different to an Irish one.
His four best comedies were "Love a La mode"; "The True Born
Irishman", "The School for Husbands" and "The Man of the
World".
"The True Born Irishman", for its Irishness, is of special interest.
The play is satirically anti-English. The main theme, of which Mrs. Diggerty
is the focus, is to make fun of the pretentious aping of English manners and
behaviour by Irish people even to the extent of changing the name Doherty to
Diggerty. The introduction of the names O'Gallagher and O'Dogherty are not coincidences
but must reflect Macklin's Inishowen association. Perhaps if circumstances had
been different, Macklin might have been in the same position as the character
of O'Dogherty in the play and would have been able to object to English manners
and influences and taxes, to dislike and distrust politicians and to praise Irish
traditions and the names symbolising them
"Love a !a Mode" gave Macklin his first real success as a dramatist
and it was a great one, perhaps the most popular and often revived farce of the
later eighteenth century. The author's performance in it was one of his most
celebrated and it held the stage long after his retirement. (10)
"The School for Husbands" or "The Married Libertine"(Covent
Garden 28th January 1761; Larpent M.S., here printed for the first time) is a
five-act comedy. On the whole, farcical in tone, but not without elements of
genuine characterisation and intelligent thinking. The audience was hostile and
included a group of Scotsmen offended by the character Sir Archy: others objected
because Lord Belville was taken to be a hit at a notorious nobleman. The satirical
element which was never far away when Macklin was writing is in evidence, but
not strongly - most so in the presentation of Lord Belville and in Angelica's
impersonation of a military officer: indeed one is sometimes tempted to suspect
that the playwright had a little bit of his tongue in his cheek during sentimental
passages. Even if the conception of a complementary degree of sexual freedom
for men and women - "Because the husband is vile - should the wife be vile?",
asked Lady Windermere, is in terms of the place of women in the eighteenth century
society - it is unhumanly treated. Harriet and especially Angelica an energetic
breeches part which suited Maria Macklin - are lively and amusing. Lord Belville
has his moments, though he does not offer enough for an actor of Macklin's force
to work with and there is a real woman inside Lady Belville, trying to get out.
Among the minor characters the Sergeant and Lucy have theatrical life at least.
The tempo of the dialogue, ranging from
not ineffectual rhetoric to stichomythic snip-snap, shows the ear skilled in
stage speech. Many worse comedies had more contemporary success. Perhaps the
play hovers too much between broad and sentimental comedy: satire one of Macklin's
strengths, is weak here; the sentiment and the sentimental pronouncements,
never things he was very good at are superficially at least less related to
genuine human feeling than, say in "The Man of the World". "The
Man of the World" was Macklin's last play, and in many ways a great one.
It was first performed (in three acts) as "The True Born Scotsman" (Crow
Street, Dublin, June 10th, 1764) with great success.(11)
Macklin and The Censor
The Lord Chamberlain's writ did not run in Ireland, but when a five-act version
of the first Man of the World was submitted for his license (under the Licensing
Act of 1737, an Act against blasphemy, libel, obsenity, etc.) in 1770, it was
turned down. A third version, only slightly altered from the second, was licensed
in 1781. (These scripts are among the Larpent M.S.S.). The last 'Man of the
World'(Covent Garden 10th May, 1781) was received with great enthusiasm. Somewhat
tightened up after the first performance, it was presented again and again
with never failing success during the next eight years. After Macklin's retirement,
Cooke took it over as he had "Love a la Mode" and gained great applause
in it. It held the stage for a long time.
Pirated texts were published in London and Dublin in 1785, 1786 and 1791. The
first authorised printing was the subscription edition, with Love a la Mode'
published by Arthur Murphy in 1793 and thereafter it appeared in various collections
of plays. Murphy's text was facsimilied in Augustan Reprints in 1951. In the
last version, 'The Man of the World' is a much improved play. Alterations to
the plot were negligible but in addition to trying to meet the Lord Chamberlain's
objections, Macklin tightened up both action and dialogue to good effect. Indeed,
the toning down of the political satire was an artistic advantage in stressing
the genuine human comedy rather than topical matters. (12)
Macklin as Teacher
John O'Keefe gives an amusing account of Macklin in 1765 when in Dublin: "In
Macklin's garden there were three long parallel walks and his method of exercising
their voices was thus: his two young pupils with blackboards walked firmly,
slow and well, up and down the two side walks: Macklin himself paraded the
centre walk. At the end of every twelve paces he made them stop and turning
gracefully, the young actor called across the walk, "How do you do, Miss
Ambrose?" She answered, "Very well, I thank you, Mr. Glenville." Then
they took a few more paces andthe next question was, "Do you not think
it a fine day, Mr. Glenville?" "A very fine day indeed, Miss Ambrose," was
the answer . . . And this exercise continued for an hour or so . . . Such was
Macklin's method of training the management of the voice, if too high, too
low, a wrong accent, or a faulty inflection, he immediately noticed it and
made them repeat the words twenty times till all was
` right." (13)
In 1967, Radio Eireann produced "The Man of the World." In 1968,
a London firm of publishers issued "Four Comedies by Charles Macklin." The
plays included were "The True Born Irishman": "Love a la Mode"; "The
Man of the World" and "The School for Husbands." Charles Macklin's
impact on the mind of the people of his time can be seen by the fact that before
he was ten years dead, three full-length biographies of him had been written.
In 1798 appeared the work of Francis Aspry Congreve, in 1799 was published
the second biography by James Thomas Kirkman, reputed by some to have been
an illegitimate son of Macklin. The third biography was printed in 1804 by
William Cooke, a man who knew Macklin in London. In 1891, almost a century
after his death, a biography was written by Judge William Edward Abbot Parry.
In 1960, a full-length biography was published by Harvard university Press.
The author was William W. Appleton. This work is welldocumented and is beyond
doubt the most satisfactory biography to date. (14)
It is hoped that the foregoing will give an insight into the talent of an Inishowen
actor in the eighteenth century.
Charles Macklin was buried in a vault under the chancel of St. Paul's Church,
Covent Garden, London. His coffin bore the simple inscription - "Mr. Charles
Macklin. Comedian. Died the 11 th July 1797. Aged 97 years."
St. Paul's was a fitting resting place for the great actor. Around him lie
buried many other famous men and women - authors, painters and actors. Each,
like Macklin, had excelled in his or her chosen field. The visitor to St. Paul's
can still see the memorial tablet erected to the memory of Macklin. Above the
tablet was placed a carving of the two masks, comedy and tragedy. The tragic
mask had a dagger thrust through the eye a reference to the fatal dispute.
The inscription reads:
"Sacred to the Memory of Charles Macklin, Comedian. This Tablet is erected
(with the aid of Public Patronage) by his affectionate widow, Elizabeth Macklin.
Obiit 1 1 th July 1797 Aetatis 107. Macklin! the father of the Modern Stage.
Renown'd alike for Talents and for Age. Whose years a Century and longer ran.
Who lived and died as may become a Man. This lasting Tribute to thy worth receive."
'Tis all a grateful Public now can give
Their loudest Plaudits now no more can Move.
Yet hear! the Widow's still final voice of Love." (15)
John Toland of Clonmany
"John Toland was a man of great parts. He was born in 1669 in Clonmany but
I have found upon full inquiry that there is not one living can claim affinity
with him. He was brought up a Roman Catholic. At the age of fifteen he turned
Protestant and afterwards went to the University of Glasgow from which he later
removed to Edinburgh. After having visited Leyden and Oxford, he returned to
Ireland which he was soon obliged to leave to avoid prosecution for writing a
book styled "Christianity not Mysterious." In 1698 he published his
life of Milton which was followed by a deistical book entitled "Nazarenus" and
another "The Atheist's Liturgy" together with several other pieces
of alike tendency." Toland in his latter life, was a pantheist. (Magh Tochair's
Inishowen, page 100)
List of Plays written by Charles
Macklin
1. King Henry VII/The Popish Impostor. (Tragedy). 1746.
2. A Will or No Will/A Bone for The Lawyers. (Farce). Not printed.
3. The Suspicious Husband Criticized/The Plague of Envy. (Farce). 1747. Not
printed.
4. The Fortune Hunters/The Widow Bewitched. (Farce). 1748. Not printed.
5. Covent Garden Theatre. (Dramatic Satire). 1752. Not printed.
6. Love a la Mode. (Farce). 1760.
7. The Married Libertine. (Comedy). 1761. Not printed.
8. The True Born Irishman. (Farce). 1763. Not printed. This was afterwards
staged under the title The Irish Fine Lady in 1767.
9. The True Born Scotsman. (Comedy). 1766. Not printed. Afterwards staged at
Covent Garden under the title of The Man of the World in 1781.
For more info on Macklin & special events
visit www.charlesmacklin.com
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