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Charles Macklin

Charles Macklin (September 26, 1690 – July 11, 1797), originally Mclaughlin, was an actor and dramatist born in the village of Culdaff in Inishowen, Co. Donegal, Ireland, and one of the most distinguished actors of his day, equally in tragedy and comedy. He gained his greatest fame in the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

As a youth he was an active swimmer and boxer; the latter activity was alleged to have made him even uglier than he was naturally. He spent his early manhood as an itinerant actor in troupes travelling around Britain; his thick Irish accent was an obstacle to success. He was acting at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1725; he eventually achieved a place at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1733.

In 1735 Macklin quarrelled with a fellow actor named Hallam and accidentally killed the man by thrusting his cane through Hallam's eye. He was tried for murder, conducted his own defense, and won an acquittal. He married his former mistress, Ann Grace, in 1739; by this time he had left his accent and his Roman Catholicism behind. Their daughter, Mary Macklin (ca. 1734 – 1781), was a well-known actress in her own era. His wife died in December 1758; he married again the next year, to an Elizabeth Jones.

Macklin resisted playing Shylock as a comic figure, as had been done for half a century; he prepared for his role in an almost Stanislavskian manner, researching Italian Jews like a modern method actor. He debuted on Feb. 14, 1741, in a production that returned to Shakespeare's original text. His Shylock thrust him from being an obscure player to the most famous actor of his time. King George II saw the production and was so moved he couldn't fall asleep that night.

He played the role for nearly the next fifty years, as well as Iago in Othello and the Ghost in Hamlet. In Ben Jonson's Volpone, he played the part of Mosca. He was the creator of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, a famous burlesque character; and he was Macbeth at Covent Garden in 1772, in a production with authentic Scottish costumes.

He wrote many plays, some failures, and some successful comedies, like Love a la Mode (1759), The School for Husbands, or The Married Libertine (1761), and The Man of the World (1781). The True-Born Irishman (1763) was a hit in Ireland, and a flop in England.

Macklin lived a tempestuous life, often involved in lawsuits – sometimes acting as his own lawyer as he had in his murder trial, and sometimes winning. He died at least a centenarian; his wife gave his birth year as 1690, making him 107 at his death (see tablet below).

Macklin is remembered today in his native Inishowen, where the Charles Macklin Autumn School is held each October in the village of Culdaff.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.

• Works by Charles Macklin at Project Gutenberg
• Tablet at St. Paul's Churchyard