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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2015
Charles Macklin, the celebrated eighteenth-century actor and playwright, is nowremembered as a comedian and a comedic writer; however, his first produced workas an author was the historical drama Henry VII, or the PopishImposter. This was immediately condemned as a flop and, although it waspublished, it was never again produced. In this article Michael M. Wagonerexamines the nature of the play’s failure by questioning the acceptednarratives of theatrical success. Specifically, he engages issues of audiencereception as well as the playwright’s persona to understand thecombined relationship between the two dynamics that can result in aplay’s failure. Ultimately, both Macklin’s persona and hislater work secured the flop narrative in order to temper the subsequentexpectations of his audiences. Michael M. Wagoner is a doctoral candidate atFlorida State University, and he holds an MFA in Shakespeare and Performance fromMary Baldwin College. His research examines the performance and dramaturgy ofearly modern drama, and his essay ‘Imaginative Bodies and BodiesImagined: Extreme Casting in Shakespeare’s TheTempest and Fletcher and Massinger’s The SeaVoyage’ will appear in The Bear Stage: ShapingShakespeare for Performance (Farleigh Dickinson University Press,2015).
