A Will and No Will or A Bone for the Lawyers Part 1

A Will and No Will or A Bone for the Lawyers.

1746.

The New Play Criticiz'd, or the Plague of Envy (1747).

by Charles Macklin.

INTRODUCTION

The ma.n.u.script copies of these two plays by Charles Macklin, A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS (1746) and THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY (1747), are in the Larpent Collection of the Huntington Library along with a third afterpiece _The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir_ (1752) already reproduced in facsimile as Number 116 of the Augustan Reprint Society.[1] Since the introduction to _Covent Garden Theatre_ (ARS 116) already gives general biographical information on this actor-playwright, Charles Macklin, as well as an indication of the revived interest in his plays, this introduction will be limited to the two afterpieces here reproduced.

A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS (Larpent 58) was first produced in 1746 and revived many times up to March 29, 1756, unlike _The Covent Garden Theatre_ which was given only one performance in 1752. The Larpent ma.n.u.script 58 copy of A WILL AND NO WILL bears the handwritten application of James Lacy to the Lord Chamberlain for permission to perform the farce for Mrs. Macklin's benefit. It was first performed at the Drury Lane Theatre April 23, 1746, following _Humours of the Army_.[2] Sometimes advertised with a different subt.i.tle as A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A NEW CASE FOR THE LAWYERS,[3] it was revived March 22, 1748, for Macklin's own benefit and apparently was more popular in the revival since it was repeated five more times on March 29, 31 and April 11, 21, 22.[4] The last performance listed in _The London Stage_, Part 4, II, 535, was for Macklin's daughter's benefit on March 29, 1756.

Macklin's two-act farce, A WILL AND NO WILL, is based on Regnard's five-act comedy _le Legetaire Universel_ (1707), which is itself a composite of Italian comedy with echoes of Moliere, moving from scene to scene with little effort at logical consistency or structure but treating each scene autonomously for its own comic value.[5] Macklin condensed and tightened Regnard's five-act plot into a two-act afterpiece; the role of the apothecary is greatly reduced into the stock London-stage Frenchman, du Maigre, who can barely speak English; the servant Lucy is more the English maid than the French _bonne_ of the Regnard play who gave orders to her master; and the satire of Macklin's afterpiece is directed not only at lawyers and physicians, as in the Regnard play, but at Methodist itinerant preachers. Finally Macklin's plot was both complicated and tightened by having the lawyers summoned to draw up the marriage contract, also take down the will of the supposed Skinflint, thus making the marriage a condition of the will.

The rather long Prologue to A WILL AND NO WILL (11 pages of ma.n.u.script) makes fun of the convention of the eighteenth century prologues by the familiar dodge of having two actors chatting as though they were in the Pit waiting for the actors in the main play to dress for the afterpiece. The conversation of the Prologue is enlivened by the appearance of an Irish lawyer come to see the play about lawyers. His impossibly long name, Laughlinbulhuderry-Mackshoughlinbulldowny, contains hints of Macklin's own name, and this is also one of Macklin's wonderful Irishmen who never acted except in school where he spoke the Prologue, he says, of one of Terence's tragedies when the play was over. His misp.r.o.nunciations and inaccuracies put him at the head of the list of stage Irishmen whom Macklin, an Irishman himself, could portray with delight and authority.

Another feature of the long Prologue to this farce is Macklin's reference to the failure of his own tragedy _Henry VII_ (1745), for Snarlewit proclaims that he never had so much fun in his life as at Macklin's "merry Tragedy." The ability to laugh at his own failure to construct a tragedy hastily in time to capitalize on the invasion attempt of 1745, together with his reference to his own name in his caricature of the Irish lawyer undoubtedly help explain the success of this farcical afterpiece.

Occasional marks of the Licenser on the ma.n.u.script, most notably opposite Shark's lines about statesmen at the end of Act I, are all underscored in the typescript of the play.

The second afterpiece here reproduced, THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY (Larpent 64), is an amusing bit of dramatic criticism of Benjamin Hoadly's _The Suspicious Husband_ which had opened at the Covent Garden Theatre on February 12, 1747, and was given many times including performances on March 21, 24 and April 28, 30 of the same year.[6] Again the t.i.tle page of the Macklin afterpiece bears the handwritten request of James Lacy, dated March 17, 1747, for the Lord Chamberlain's permission to perform the play for Macklin's benefit at Drury Lane on March 24. Both performances, then, of Macklin's closely related afterpiece, THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, were given at Drury Lane on nights when Hoadly's _The Suspicious Husband_ was also being performed at the rival theatre, March 24 and April 30, 1747. It was even possible for a spectator to see Hoadly's play at Covent Garden and then catch Macklin's related farcical afterpiece at the Drury Lane Theatre on the same night. Or if that required too difficult a change of _locus_, it was still possible to see _The Suspicious Husband_ on March 21 or April 28 and THE SUSPICIOUS HUSBAND CRITICIZ'D (as Macklin's play is ent.i.tled in James T. Kirkman's _Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq._, II, 443) a few days later on March 24 or April 30; such was the immediacy of the appeal of Macklin's afterpiece.

While Macklin was capitalizing on the popularity of a new play, he also, in THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D, gave ironic portraits of rival playwrights who d.a.m.ned a play out of envy (note the subt.i.tle, THE PLAGUE OF ENVY) for such trivial faults as the use of _suspicious_ instead of _jealous_ in the t.i.tle, or for the lacing of Ranger's hat.

Macklin's satiric portraits of such envious scribblers who were ready to attack any new author in Journals, Epigrams, and Pamphlets are lively records of mid-eighteenth century subjective criticism. Canker, the envious playwright in the afterpiece, calls Ranger "a Harlequin"

and Mr. Strickland, "Columbine's husband." Canker objects to the escapes, scenes in the dark, and the rope ladder, though the young lovers, Heartly and Harriet in Macklin's afterpiece, vow the ladder is a device they themselves will use if Harriet is forced by her aunt to marry Canker. Again an Irishman, Sir Patrick Bashfull, enlivens the farce by his pretense of being a Frenchman, Fitzbashfull, "of Irish distraction." Bashfull's literal criticism of Hoadly's play serves as a good foil for the carping criticism of the envious playwrights: Plagiary, Grubwit, and Canker; or the nonsense of the foolish critics: Nibble and Trifle. The farce ends with Canker completely routed and Heartly's suggestion that their hour's conversation would make a _pet.i.t piece_ in itself if Lady Critick would only write it down.

The limited appeal of this kind of related, topical afterpiece probably explains why it was performed only twice, following a performance of _Hamlet_ on March 24, 1747, for Macklin's benefit, and following _Julius Caesar_ on April 30, 1747, for the benefit of Garrick who had appeared as Ranger in the original cast of Hoadly's play. The separate Prologue to Macklin's afterpiece is addressed to Mr. Macklin in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and attributed to Hely Hutcheson, Provost of Trinity College by William Cooke's _Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian_ (1804), p. 152.

These two afterpieces, A WILL AND NO WILL (1746) and THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D (1747) along with _Covent Garden Theatre_ (1752), ARS 116, bring up to date the publication of Charles Macklin's unpublished work. It is to be hoped that a definitive critical edition of his writing for the eighteenth-century stage will soon follow.

A word should be added about the editor's changes of these two plays in the typescript. From the facsimile edition of Macklin's _Covent Garden Theatre_ (ARS 116) it should already be evident that Macklin's scribes in these three plays in the Larpent Collection were inconsistent both in spelling and punctuation. The _Covent Garden Theatre_ appeared in facsimile in response to requests for an eighteenth-century facsimile for use in graduate seminars, because of the clarity of its handwriting. The other two plays are here reproduced in typescript since the condition of the ma.n.u.scripts made facsimile reproduction unfeasible. In the preparation of the typescript for these remaining two plays, certain problems had of necessity to be decided arbitrarily. Wherever it was possible, the ma.n.u.script spelling has been preserved. Punctuation and capitals had to be altered where sentences were run together or new sentences began with small letters. The number of capital letters was reduced since these followed no consistent pattern for emphasis and varied between the scribes of the ma.n.u.scripts. Nouns were left capitalized to preserve the eighteenth-century flavor. Proper names have been corrected to a recognizable form (Ranelagh for Renelagh, Zoilus for Ziolus, for example); French phrases have been left in the ma.n.u.script spelling for those characters who misuse French, such as Sir Patrick Bashfull in THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D. The occasional confusions of characters or speakers have been corrected, with separate notes explaining each change. All marks of the Licenser are in italics; all words or letters interpolated by the editor are in brackets; all stage directions are in parentheses. Applications by the Theatre Manager, James Lacy, for permission to perform the plays, appear in notes.

Coe College

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] As indicated in the Introduction to _The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir_, Number 116, Augustan Reprint Society, the author 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 the three Macklin plays in the Larpent Collection (Larpent 58, 64 and 96) which had not previously been printed.

[2] Arthur H. Scouten, _The London Stage_ (Carbondale, Ill., 1961), Part 3, II, 1235.

[3] James T. Kirkman, _Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq._ (London, 1799), II, 443, lists this subt.i.tle in an appendix of Macklin's unprinted plays.

[4] George Winchester Stone, _The London Stage_ (Carbondale, Ill., 1962), Part 4, 1, 38, 40, 41, 43, 47, 48.

[5] Cf. Alexandre Calame, _Regnard sa vie et son oeuvre_ (Paris, 1960), pp. 323-333.

[6] See _The London Stage_, Part 3, II, 1287-90, 1297, 1298, 1308, 1309 for the dates when Hoadly's _The Suspicious Husband_ and Macklin's THE NEW PLAY CRITICIZ'D were performed close together.

A WILL AND NO WILL:

OR

A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS[1]

PROLOGUE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE for the Prologue

RATTLE SMART DULLMAN IRISHMAN SNARLEWIT

(_The Curtain rises and discovers the Stage disposed in the Form of a Pit and crowded with Actors who make a great Noise by Whistling and Knocking for the Farce to begin_)

_Rattle._ Consume them, why don't they begin?

_Smart._ I suppose some of them that were in the Play are dressing for the Farce.

_Rattle._ Psha! d.a.m.n the Farce! They have had time enough to dress since the Play has been over.

_Smart._ d.i.c.k Rattle, were you at the Boxing Match yesterday?

_Rattle._ No, my Dear, I was at the breakfasting at Ranelagh.--Curse catch me, Jack[2], if that is not a fine Woman in the upper Box there, ha!

_Smart._ So she is, by all that's charming,--but the poor Creature's married; it's all over with her.

_Rattle._ Smart, do you go to Newmarket this meeting,--upon my Soul that's a lovely Woman on the right hand. But what the Devil can this Prologue be about, I can't imagine. It has puzzled the whole Town.

_Smart._ Depend upon it, d.i.c.k, it is as I said.

_Rattle._ What's that?

_Smart._ Why one of the Fransique's, the French Harlequin's Jokes; you will find that one of the Players come upon the Stage presently, and make a[n] Apologie that they are disappointed of the Prologue, upon which Macklin, or some other Actor is to start up in the Pit, as one of the Audience, and bawl out that rather than so much good Company should be disappointed, he will speak a Prologue himself.

_Rattle._ No, no, no, Smart. That's not it. I thought of that and have been looking carefully all over the Pit, and there is not an Actor in it. Now I fancy it is to be done like the Wall or the Man in the Moon in Pyramus and Thisbe; Macklin will come in dressed like the Pit and say:

_Ladies and Gentlemen, I am the Pit And a Prologue I'll speak if you think fit._

_Omnes._ Ha! ha! ha!