During a life that spanned almost the entire eighteenth century, Charles Macklin distinguished himself as a playwright, an actor / manager, and a champion of artists' rights. Apart from his life in the theater, Macklin enjoyed a brief period as a tavern keeper, which was a short-lived mid-career venture. His plays exhibit a passionate desire to reveal society's irrationality through the use of madcap humor; his theatric style, it is said, initiated a revolution in acting technique. Besides his work as an actor and a playwright Macklin was well known for his excellent method of teaching acting, his emphasis always falling on the improvement of elocution.

He was the first actor of his generation to make a clean break from the old declamatory style, in which the words being uttered did not necessarily carry any emotional content pertinent to the psychological reality of the character the actor was portraying...