Drawing on his own papers and first published in 1799, this two-volume account traces the colourful life of the actor and playwright Charles Macklin (c.1699-1797). His long career serves as the focal point in a history of the eighteenth-century theatre and its most celebrated performers. Hailed for his enduring interpretation of Shakespeare's Shylock, a role he played for some fifty years, Macklin has been credited with the theatre's move towards realism. His life was just as dramatic offstage, marked as it was by a series of controversies and fierce rivalries. In 1735 he was convicted of the manslaughter of a fellow actor in a quarrel over a wig, and in 1775 he successfully pressed charges of conspiracy against theatregoers who had rioted during his performances. Volume 1 covers Macklin's childhood and early career, including his trial for the killing of Thomas Hallam.

Drawing on his own papers and first published in 1799, this two-volume account traces the colourful life of the actor and playwright Charles Macklin (c.1699-1797). His long career serves as the focal point in a history of the eighteenth-century theatre and its most celebrated performers. Hailed for his enduring interpretation of Shakespeare's Shylock, a role he played for some fifty years, Macklin has been credited with the theatre's move towards realism. His life was just as dramatic offstage, marked as it was by a series of controversies and fierce rivalries. In 1735 he was convicted of the manslaughter of a fellow actor in a quarrel over a wig, and in 1775 he successfully pressed charges of conspiracy against theatregoers who had rioted during his performances. Volume 2 covers the latter part of Macklin's career up to his death. Also included is a selection of letters written to his son.

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“Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography” examines theatrical biography as a nascent genre in eighteenth-century England. This study specifically focuses on Thomas Davies’ 1780 memoir of David Garrick as the first moment of mastery in the genre’s history, the three-way war for the right to tell Charles Macklin’s story at the turn of the century and James Boaden’s theatrical biography spree in the 1820s and 1830s, including the lives of John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, Dorothy Jordan and Elizabeth Inchbald. This project investigates the extent to which biographers envisioned themselves as artists, inheriting the anxiety of impermanence and correlating fear of competition that plagued their thespian subjects. It traces a suggestive, but not determinative, outline of generic development, noting the shifting generic features that emerge in context of a given work’s predecessors. Drawing heavily on primary sources, then-contemporary reviews and archival material in the form of extra-illustrated or “scrapbooked” editions of the biographies, this text is invested in the ways that the increasing emphasis on materiality was designed to consolidate, but often challenged, the biographer’s authority. This turn to materiality also authorized readerly participation, allowing readers to “co-author” biographies through the use of material insertions, asserting their own presence in the texts about beloved thespians.