The Newspaper “Trial” of Charles Macklin’s Macbeth and the Theatre as Juridical Public Sphere

Actor Charles Macklin’s 1773 production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for Covent Garden Theatre manager George Colman sparked a newspaper controversy over the actor’s appeal to his audience for the right to perform, even when that performance was not universally well received. Macklin staged a dramatic defence against bad reviews of his Macbeth in the London newspapers, which, in turn, precipitated rioting in the theatre and Macklin’s subsequent firing. The newspapers’ recordings of and reactions to this controversy over Macklin’s rights as an actor exploded into a larger print discussion of the rights of actors and audience members within the theatre that stressed the need for aristocratic, male representation and authority over women and their male “inferiors.” Macklin subsequently won a lawsuit against the actors who had been charged with barring him from his profession, a victory that reveals the sharp contrast between the British judicial system’s recognition of individual rights and how poorly those rights fared in the messy, subjective realm of the theatre’s classand gender-informed “tastes.”