FIGURE 16.1  David Garrick as Macbeth and Hannah Pritchard as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth by William Shakespeare, by Henry Robert Morland

Courtesy of the Garrick Club, London

16

THE MACBETH RIOTS

A pre-concerted design to drive an actor from the theatre and to promote his utter ruin.

(Lord Mansfield)

In December 1772 Charles Macklin, then in his seventies—some said his eighties—wrote to Covent Garden manager George Colman suggesting that he, Macklin, play three Shakespearean roles: Richard III, King Lear, and Macbeth, during the next season. These were all roles that David Garrick was famous for at Drury Lane. Colman agreed, not that he had any confidence that Macklin could compete with Garrick in Garrick’s most popular roles. Colman was not interested in Macklin playing the roles that he suggested, although he was willing to let him do so; he hired Macklin because he wanted him to play Shylock, which reliably drew crowds to the theatre. Colman signed a contract with Macklin for him to perform for three seasons at an annual salary of £400 plus a benefit night for each season.¹ On October 23, 1773, he appeared on the Covent Garden stage as Macbeth.²

It was the custom for the Drury Lane and Covent Garden managers to allow an actor to have a virtual monopoly on certain roles.³ Many playgoers—and perhaps Garrick himself—believed that Garrick “owned” the part of Macbeth, even when the play was performed at Drury Lane’s rival theatre. For thirty years Macklin had nursed his grievance against Garrick for breaking his word not to end the Drury Lane actors’ strike unless all of the striking actors, including Macklin, were allowed to return.⁴ Now he would challenge Garrick by playing Macbeth. The venture was risky; any actor who poached on Garrick’s property risked being booed and hissed, even to the point of being driven off the stage.

When Macklin took the stage as Macbeth, he created quite a stir in the audience by acting the part, perhaps for the first time ever, in the garb of a Highland chief, rather than the scarlet uniform of a British army officer.⁵ But the critics gave his performance mixed reviews. One joked that Macklin had murdered Macbeth instead of Duncan. At this stage in his life, Macklin was physically unconvincing in the role: what the audience saw was not a murderously ambitious warrior, but a clumsy old man.⁶ There also was some feeling that it was somehow inappropriate for an actor who was known principally as a comedian to assume that he could also play tragic roles.⁷ But Macklin had his supporters too; one critic wrote:

We look at his attempt on Saturday evening as the bold endeavour of a veteran actor, to. . .model, correct and amend the mode of performance of a very important figure in Shakespeare’s group of characters: the attempt, even if unsuccessful, is of infinite consequence to our national drama, and therefore laudable. . . . His design in the performance of Macbeth was visibly chaste, natural, and perfect: his execution in some parts of the play equal to his design, and superior to almost EVERY contemporary; in others, that insufficiency of faculties which declining nature is ever accompanied with, was but too apparent.⁸

There was some hissing during the performance; and Macklin’s wife, who was in the audience, took note of who appeared to be orchestrating the disturbance.⁹

Macklin was in a combative mood when he again played Macbeth a week later. His wife had told him that two men had orchestrated the hissing at the first performance: James Sparks, the son of an actor, and Samuel Reddish, a Drury Lane actor and the most popular stage villain of his day. Although Macklin’s anti-social, peevish behavior had earned him enemies, it is unclear why these two men were hostile to Macklin; but they saw in his attempt to play Macbeth an opportunity to humiliate him. Coming forward to the edge of the stage, Macklin appealed to the audience, pointing out Sparks and Reddish and accusing them of trying to disrupt the previous performance. John Taylor, a sixteen-year-old who was in the audience that night, described the scene:

He came forward in his usual dress, and was well received. The audience called for a chair, on which he sat, and began his story. He offered, however, no satisfactory proof, and the audience began to murmur. He then said he had authority upon which he could confidently rely; and in a pathetic tone, putting his hand before his eyes as if he was shedding tears, said: “It was my wife.” The audience then expressed their disapprobation, and would hear no more.¹⁰

Sparks and Reddish denied the accusation, and the audience loudly supported them. (Macklin later concluded that he had made an error of judgment when he offered the testimony of his wife).¹¹ The performance continued, and again there was hissing in the audience.¹²

Macklin’s Macbeth had become a cause célèbre in the theatre world. Affidavits swearing that Sparks and Reddish had, or had not, hissed were published in the newspapers. Sparks asked his brother-in-law Thomas Leigh, a master tailor, to collect a bunch of tailors and anyone else they could find to come to Covent Garden and make a noise the next time Macklin performed. For this, Leigh offered each man a shilling, all he could drink, and afterwards supper at the Bedford coffee house. Taylor, again in the audience when Macklin again appeared as Macbeth, recalled:

[The Sparks-Leigh forces] had gained the ascendant, and he was saluted with a violent hiss as soon as he appeared; and this hostility was so determined, that he went through the part in dumb show, for not a word could be heard; yet silence and applause attended all the other performers.¹³

Some suspected Garrick of having a hand in organizing this carefully prepared attack on Macklin, but there is no evidence that he did. It is unlikely that Garrick, in the 1770s the undisputed ruler of the London stage, saw Macklin as a serious competitor. But Garrick had an extraordinary ambition for fame; while he most likely did nothing to encourage the interruptions to Macklin’s performances at the rival theatre of Covent Garden, he may well have been content to see Macklin humbled.

By this time, Colman had had enough. He decided that Macklin would not appear again as Macbeth. Instead, the playbill announced that on November 18 Macklin would play Shylock, his most crowd-pleasing role. As soon as the curtain went up that evening, on a signal given by a man in the first row of one of the boxes, violent hissing, joined with a variety of noises, arose from the pit and the gallery. Macklin, costumed as Shylock, came on the stage and tried to talk to the audience, but there was so much noise that he couldn’t be heard. He withdrew and soon reappeared in his own clothes, apparently hoping to appeal to the audience to calm down and allow him to proceed with the performance, but he was unable to make himself heard.

Protesters shouted at Macklin to get down on his knees and ask their pardon, a demand that he indignantly refused. Instead, he again withdrew and reappeared, this time again dressed as Shylock; but the commotion redoubled. Colman, fearing that the protesters would destroy his theatre, sent another actor to the stage to ask the audience what they wanted him to do. A man sitting in the pit, later identified as William Augustus Miles, without consulting anyone else, wrote a few words on a sheet of paper and handed it to the actor. Within minutes, the actor came out holding up a large board, on which was written: “At the command of the public, Mr. Macklin is discharged.”

It now became clear that the audience was by no means unanimous in its hostility to Macklin; although those who were against him made most of the noise, Macklin had his followers. The anti-Macklin group applauded and called for another play, while those who were for him roared out: “Shylock, Shylock, Macklin, and Love à la Mode [the most popular of Macklin’s dramatic works].” Members of the cast began a performance of Oliver Goldsmith’s comedy, She Stoops to Conquer, which had premiered earlier that year at Covent Garden; but the pro-Macklinites, angry at the treatment Macklin had received, would not let the play proceed. Colman now came onstage and, after he had with some difficulty reduced the audience to silence, told the house that She Stoops to Conquer was the only play the company was ready to perform. But when the cast again tried it again, spectators in the gallery began pelting two of the actresses with half-eaten apples and other missiles. The curtain was dropped and the audience was given their money back.

Colman must have breathed a sigh of relief that the rioting ended without violence. The London Chronicle concluded:

This scene of riot stands from its nature almost without a parallel in theatrical annals, so much noise and yet no fighting, and very little damage done to the theatre . . .. The dispassionate part of the public think Mr. Macklin injuriously treated. Hard, indeed, is the situation of a public performer, if he cannot have a difference with another actor without losing his bread, and being driven from the theatre.¹⁴

One of those who agreed was David Garrick, who wrote to Miles: “You are the most thoughtless acquaintance I ever had . . . you make me almost lament that I ever had the pleasure of meeting you.”¹⁵

Macklin sued Sparks, Leigh, Miles, and three others for conspiracy and riot (English legal procedures permitted an individual to initiate a criminal case). Four of the defendants (including Sparks, Leigh, and Miles) were convicted of conspiracy and riot, one of riot only, and one was acquitted. But it was not until May 1775, eighteen months after the Macbeth riot, that the question of Macklin’s compensation for the injury done to him came up before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. Meanwhile, Macklin remained out of work. When the court met in the cavernous interior of Westminster Hall, Mansfield suggested to the defendants that they make a generous offer to Macklin, but they ignored the suggestion. Mansfield then gave his view of the case. He said that every person in a theatre has the right to express his approval or disapproval of a performance, but not to conspire to ruin a particular man. Then, referring to the defendants, he added that they had no right to “execute a pre-concerted design . . . to drive [an actor] from the theatre and to promote his utter ruin.”¹⁶

Mansfield was ready to send the case to a master, who would decide on the proper amount of Macklin’s compensation; but Macklin intervened. Showing the generous side of his character, Macklin said he was not looking for revenge; in fact, he felt compassion for the defendants. Speaking directly to them, he declared that he wished to restore mutual amity. He asked for compensation for his daughter, who had missed out on a benefit night because of the riot at Covent Garden. Specifically, he proposed that the defendants pay his legal costs, take £100 worth of tickets for Miss Macklin’s benefit night and £100 worth of tickets on a night when he would be playing, as compensation for the managers. After Macklin had finished, Mansfield addressed him: “Then I think you have done yourself great credit, and great honour by what you have now said; and I think your conduct is wise too, and I think it will support you with the public against any man that shall attack you . . .. You have met with great applause today. You never acted better.”¹⁷ All of the defendants paid their share of the damages, except for Miles, who absconded.¹⁸

When the rioters drove Macklin off the Covent Garden stage and made it clear that they would not accept his return, Colman took the position that Macklin was unable to perform his part of the engagement and that the contract was at an end. Macklin continued to demand his agreed-on salary and offered to play any part that Colman chose for him. When Colman, fearful that the mob might destroy his theatre, refused to allow Macklin on the stage, Macklin sued him for breach of contract.

The case wended its way through the courts for over ten years before it, too, landed on Lord Mansfield’s docket. When Colman’s lawyer began to argue his case, Mansfield cut him off. He said he would settle the matter if both parties agreed to his arbitration, which they did. Mansfield said he considered the rioting in the theatre “a common calamity by which the manager and performer were equal sufferers and therefore he would halve the matter.” Since Macklin had sued for £1,000, Mansfield awarded Macklin £500 and ruled that each party pay his own legal costs (under English law, the losing party usually pays the winner’s costs). Macklin and Colman accepted Mansfield’s Solomonic decision. Leaving the court, Macklin turned to Mansfield and, returning the compliment that the judge had paid him a decade earlier at the close of the lawsuit against the rioters, “assured his lords he had never known what justice or equity was before.”¹⁹

Macklin was well into his eighties, but his acting career was not yet over.

Notes

  1    Morning Chronicle, Feb. 24, 1784 (VC Box 327).

  2    Archer, ed., Eminent Actors, 159–60.

  3    “The Universal Museum and Complete Magazine,” in Thomas, Restoration and Georgian England 1660–1788), 350.

  4    See Chapter 5.

  5    Barnard Hewitt, History of the Theatre from 1800 to the Present, (New York: Random House, 1970), 22; Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, iii, 36; Archer, ed., Eminent Actors, 161. A newspaper correspondent mentioned that Macklin was wearing breeches, not a kilt: Price, Theatre in the Age of Garrick, 54.

  6    Cooke, Memoirs of Charles Macklin, Comedian, 284.

  7    West, The Image of the Actor, 146 (quoting the St. James’s Chronicle).

  8    Morning Chronicle, Oct. 25, 1773, in Goring, ed., Lives of Shakespearean Actors: Macklin, ii, 152.

  9    Appleton, Charles Macklin: An Actor’s Life, 178.

10    John Taylor, “Records of My Life,” in Goring, ed., Lives of Shakespearean Actors: Macklin, ii, 442–43.

11    Charles Macklin to John Hill Winboldt [1778], Y.c. 5380 (Folger).

12    Archer, ed., Eminent Actors, 164–65.

13    Taylor, “Records of My Life,” in Goring, ed., Lives of Shakespearean Actors:Macklin, ii, 443.

14    London Chronicle or Universal Evening Post, November 18–20, 1773.

15    David Garrick to William Miles, Mar. 15, 1775, Little and Kahrl, eds., The Letters of David Garrick, iii, 995.

16    James Paterson, Curiosities of Law and Lawyers (Albany, NY and New York: Banks and Brothers, 1883), 372.

17    Archer, ed., Eminent Actors, 172–77; Goring, ed., Lives of Shakespearean Actors:Macklin, ii, 45–53.

18    Little and Kahrl, eds., The Letters of David Garrick, iii, 995–96.

19    Morning Chronicle, Feb. 24, 1784 (VC, Box 327); Oldham, The Mansfield Manuscripts, i, 155–56.