OF

CHARLES MACKLIN,

COMEDIAN,

WITH THE

DRAMATIC CHARACTERS, MANNERS,
ANECDOTES, &c.

OF THE

AGE IN WHICH HE LIVED:

FORMING

An History of the Stage during almost the Whole of the
last Century.

AND

A Chronological List of all the Parts played by Him.

BY

WILLIAM COOKE, Esq.

THE SECOND EDITION.

The Players will shew all;

For they are the abstract, and brief chronicles of the time.

SHAKESPEARE.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR JAMES ASPERNE,

At the Bible, Crown, and Constitution,

Cornhill;

By Thomas Maiden, Sherbourn-Lane.

PR

3543 МЗСБ

1806

49060

THE OPINION OF THIS WORK

BY

Some of the most respectable Periodical Critics.

"IT is with very singular pleasure that we have perused this curious production; for such it certainly is; not only on account of the vast variety of characters, anecdotes, and dramatic notices, which it contains, and to which we shall in the sequel slightly allude, but as including the life of a man whose mental and corporeal powers were such, as to enable him to furnish the stage with a very entertaining and excellent comedy when he was considerably above fourscore; and also to perform, in many instances, with applause, when he had numbered more than ninety years; and who, according to the conjecture of the Compiler, which we think is pretty firmly established, "had touched the extremities of two centuries, and was very near the entrance into a third."

“This, as we have already hinted, is a curious book: it comprises the memoirs of a man who, for an astonishing series of years, was a constant and acute observer of the great stage of the world, as well as the theatric stages in his time. It is also curious in another respect; for, although the title promises, and the contents actually exhibit, the full idea of a varied and long-extended existence, it is not, correctly speaking, biographical. It seems to us, from its detached parts, consisting of characters, anecdotes, notices of manners, &c. a new species of composition, in which a Life is rather indicated, or involved, than given.