The Man of the World (1792) | Page 2

is it not just and salutary that the subtilty [_sic_], pride, insolence, cunning, and the thorough-paced villany [_sic_] of a backbiting Scotchman should be ridiculed? What a wretched state the Comic Muse and the Stage would be reduced to, were the prohibition of laughing at the corruption and other vices of the age to prevail!"[3] True the Comic Muse, long sick, as Garrick said in his prologue to _She Stoops to Conquer_, had almost died, though farces had done something to sustain her. Fielding's and Garrick's little satires had largely avoided sentiment; and the personal, often gross farces of Foote had continued to use ridicule. But even these lack the forceful pertinacity of Macklin's denunciation of hypocrisy and vice. It is perhaps too bad that he fell so far into caricature in the portraits of Lord Lumbercourt and his daughter, that the main love stories do smack of sensibility, and that he turned his hero into a mouthpiece for the opposition to the Tory ministries of the early years of George III. And it is perhaps true that all the characters, including Sir Pertinax, are more true to the theatre than to the actual life of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Still, Sir Pertinax is vigorous, and the author's position is unmistakable.
The earliest portion of The Man of the World in the Larpent Collection is a passage in the fourth act of _The School for Husbands_, performed at Covent Garden as The Married Libertine on 28 January 1761, twenty years before The Man of the World was finally presented in London. Elsewhere I have compared the three complete versions submitted to the Examiner and have shown why the Lord Chamberlain could not permit it to be licensed.[4]
The Man of the World was first published in England, with Macklin's farce _Love a la Mode_, by subscription, in a handsome quarto. Facing the title-page is a portrait of the author, "in his 93.^d Year," engraved by John Condé after Opie, for which the trustees of the fund paid 25 guineas. Preceding the text of the play are the list of subscribers, which contains many eminent names, an "Advertisement from the Editor," explaining the occasion and method of publication and giving an account of the handling of the fund by the trustees, and a dedication to Lord Camden, dated 10 December 1792, and signed by Macklin, though one rather suspects that Arthur Murphy had a hand in its composition. These pieces of front matter have been omitted from the present reproduction as containing nothing material to the reading or interpretation of the play. The Dramatis Personae follow, and the text begins with signature B page 1, and runs to signature K2^{V}. _Love a la Mode_, not reprinted here, then follows, with separate title-page and pagination.
Dougald MacMillan
The University of North Carolina
Notes to the Introduction
[Footnote 1: See Catalogue of the Larpent Plays in the Huntington Library (1939), Nos. 55, 58, 64, 96, 184, 274, 311, 500, 558.]
[Footnote 2: Biographia Dramatica (1812), III, 15.]
[Footnote 3: Quoted by Edward Abbot Parry, Charles Macklin (1891), p. 179.]
[Footnote 4: See _The Huntington Library Bulletin_, No. 10 (October, 1936), pp. 79-101.]

THE MAN OF THE WORLD.
A COMEDY.
BY
MR. CHARLES MACKLIN.
AS PERFORMED AT THE
_THEATRES-ROYAL, DRURY-LANE AND COVENT-GARDEN_.
_LONDON_:
PRINTED BY J. BELL, BOOKSELLER TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES, AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY, STRAND.
MDCCXCIII.

[Illustration: CHARLES MACKLIN (COMEDIAN) _in his 93d. Year_.
Printed for the Author by John Bell British Library London July 1792]

_Dramatis Person?_.
COVENT-GARDEN.
Men.
_SIR PERTINAX MACSYCOPHANT_, MR. WILSON. _EGERTON_, MR. LEWIS. LORD LUMBERCOURT MR. THOMPSON. _SIDNEY_, MR. AICKIN. _MELVILLE_, MR. HULL. COUNSELLOR PLAUSIBLE MR. CUBITT. _SERJEANT EITHERSIDE_, MR. MACREADY. _SAM_, MR. LEDGER. _JOHN_, MR. ROCK _TOMLINS_, MR. EVATT.
Women
LADY MACSYCOPHANT MISS. PLATT. _LADY RODOLPHA LUMBERCOURT_, MRS. POPE. _CONSTANTIA_, MRS. MOUNTAIN. _BETTY HINT_, MRS. ROCK. _NANNY_, MRS. DEVERETT.

THE MAN OF THE WORLD.
_ACT I. SCENE I_.
A Library. Enter BETTY and SAM.
Betty. The Postman is at the gate, Sam; pray step and take in the letters.
Sam. John the gardener is gone for them, Mrs. Betty.
Bet. Bid John bring them to me, Sam: tell him I am here in the Library.
Sam. I'll send him to your ladyship in a crack, madam. [Exit.
Enter NANNY.
Nan. Miss Constantia desires to speak to you, Mrs. Betty.
Bet. How is she now? any better, Nanny?
Nan. Something; but very low spirited still. I verily believe it is as you say.
Bet. O! I would take my book oath of it. I can not be deceived in that point, Nanny.--Ay, ay, her business is done, she is certainly breeding, depend upon it.
Nan. Why so the housekeeper thinks too.
Bet. Nay, I know the father--the man that ruined her.
Nan. The deuce you do?
Bet. As sure as you are alive, Nanny;--or I am greatly deceived,--and yet--I can't be deceived neither.--Was not that the cook that came gallopping so hard over the common just now?
Nan. The same:--how very hard he