ittle left to recommend the play. It is not
surprizing that the Licenser objected to such passages as the
description of Miss Giggle's "nudities," but his frequent objections
to topical and personal references took all the bite out of Macklin's
satire.

Like Macklin's other early farces, THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE contains
proto-characters for his later plays. Sir Roger Ringwood, a "five-bottle
man," who rode twenty miles from a "red-hot Fox Chace" to appear before
Pasquin, is an early study for Macklin's later hard-drinking,
fox-hunting Squire Groom in _Love-a-la Mode_ or Lord Lumbercourt in _The
Man of the World_. But Macklin's usual good ear for dialogue is missing
from this play, nor is any character except his own as Pasquin followed
long enough to make his characteristic speech identifiable. Since plot
is absent too, all that remains is the wealth of topical and personal
satire which in itself is interesting to the historian of the
mid-eighteenth-century theatre. If THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE is studied
along with his other two unpublished afterpieces in the Larpent
collection (A WILL AND NO WILL, OR A BONE FOR THE LAWYERS and THE NEW
PLAY CRITICIZ'D, OR THE PLAGUE OF ENVY), Macklin's skill at satiric
comedy after his initial abortive attempt at tragedy can be seen as
developing steadily toward such later full-length comedies as the better
known _Love-a-la Mode_ (1759) and _The Man of the World_ (1764). His
recognition that tragedy was not his forte and his self-criticism in THE
COVENT GARDEN THEATRE, where he exhorts the audience to "explode" him
when he is dull, reveal the comic spirit operative in his sometimes
cantankerous personality. It is that strain, here seen in genesis, which
develops full-fledged in his later comedies.

A word should be added about the Dramatis Personae for the play. It does
not contain the Stage-Keeper, who speaks only once, the Servant whose
single word is accompanied by the stage direction "This Servant is to be
on from the beginning," nor the Romp (probably the Prompter, who speaks
twice off-stage during the play). Hic and Haec Scriblerus, however,
although he is listed in the cast of characters, speaks only once, and
his entrance on stage is never indicated.

The "naked lady," Lady Lucy Loveit, whose entrance causes so much
excitement, is described as appearing in a Pett-en-l'air, which
eighteenth-century costume books portray as a short, loose shift!

_Coe College_

NOTE