In London, in the year 1735, within the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a theatrical wig became the subject of a dispute that lasted scarcely a few minutes. Charles Macklin had worn it the previous evening in the part of Sancho; Thomas Hallam claimed it for the night’s afterpiece. Each actor had his own reason to believe the property at his disposal. Thomas Arne had just delivered his tallies to the property office; towards eight o’clock, he sat by the fire, facing a settle capable of holding five or six persons. The main entertainment was drawing to a close, and the company was already preparing for the ensuing farce. When Hallam fell, a wooden stick had pierced his left eye. He expired the following day.
Thomas Arne, whose duty it was to number the house, was warming himself by the hearth in the scene-room when he heard Macklin demand why Hallam had taken “his” wig. Hallam replied that he had as much right to it as any other stock property of the house. Other players advised him to surrender it; he did so, whereupon Macklin sat down and began to comb it out. The business of the stage continued about them: the quarrel arose in the tiring-room, where properties and players passed from one role to another, far from the eyes of the public. For seven or eight minutes, according to Arne, all appeared quiet. Yet Macklin presently resumed his abuse. Hallam retorted that he was no more a scoundrel than his adversary. Thereupon, Macklin started up abruptly and made a long lunging thrust with the stick he held in his hand.
Arne saw Macklin withdraw the weapon, turn pale, wheel about, and cast the stick into the fire. Hallam clapped his hand to his face, crying out that the point had run through his head. They seated him. Macklin leaned over him and laid a hand upon his eye; Hallam repeated that the ball was out. Macklin declared he could feel the globe rolling beneath his fingers. Young Cibber sent for Mr. Coldham, the surgeon. Arne believed Macklin to be utterly confounded, first by the horror of his own act, and then by touching the wound.
Thomas Whitaker, a dresser at the playhouse, placed the origins of the feud earlier in the evening. He had lent a comic wig to Macklin to play Sancho in The Fop’s Fortune. The following day, Hallam asked him for the very same wig, but Whitaker had it not. Macklin claimed it, called Hallam an insolent fellow, and declared he deserved a thrashing. The actor playing Juba interposed, complaining that their clamour disturbed the performance. Hallam at length took his stand between a door and a bench; Macklin, but a few paces distant, lunged forward. Whitaker explained that he had gone above-stairs to unrobe after wearing a stage dress; Woodford had then bid him fetch a scimitar. Coming down again, he could not find Woodford and stepped into the scene-room; this return enabled him to witness the blow and Hallam’s reaction. Whitaker saw Hallam raise his hand to his eye, but could not swear whether Macklin had walked or run before delivering the thrust.
Macklin offered an account which began with the selfsame theatrical necessity, yet dwelt upon what he deemed an unprovoked affront. The wig worn the night before for Sancho, he insisted, was indispensable to his new part, whose very humour turned upon the lean, starved countenance of the character. He maintained that he had asked for it as a favour and met with a curt refusal. Later, the author of the piece had persuaded Hallam to yield the first wig, whilst the property-man fetched another. Hallam, he alleged, at last flung the property at him, crying out that Macklin had used him like a pickpocket. Macklin confessed that his temper had flared, that he cried “Get out, you fool,” and brandished his stick. According to his version, Hallam turned about just as he made the push, and the tip entered the eye “by sheer misfortune.”
Robert Turbut, another actor present, described a debate that began almost in jest: the company had humorously put to the vote who should wear the wig, and the decision had gone in Macklin’s favour. Hallam threw it to him, yet persisted in grumbling that he was being used like a thief. The two men bandied the word “liar,” and then “scoundrel.” Turbut further recalled that Hallam claimed to have received the wig from Mrs. Greenwood, the wardrobe mistress, deeming it quite as proper for his own part. Macklin, for his part, considered it his own by right of having borrowed it the evening before. Turbut believed that Macklin merely thrust at him, without taking any deliberate aim. This testimony supported the notion of an uncalculated lunge, yet it left unresolved the violence of the blow and what Macklin might have foreseen when rising, cane in hand.
Following the blow, Macklin urged that Hallam be carried to the bagnio, fearing his eye was in jeopardy. Mrs. Moore offered instead to lodge and attend to him. On the morrow, Robert Turbut advised Macklin to conceal himself to avoid the gaol. Macklin gave him his last guinea, begging him to summon a physician. He protested that he never conceived the wound could prove mortal. Between the first angry word and the blow, he swore, not ten minutes had elapsed, without any break in the contention.
The trial, therefore, did not turn upon the identity of the striker, which Macklin freely admitted, but upon the intention that guided his hand. The narratives diverged somewhat regarding the sequence of the altercation, the manner in which Hallam parted with the wig, and the motion of the stick; yet they were at one concerning the quarrel, the cane in Macklin’s grasp, and the fatal hurt. Nine gentlemen of the theatre—among them Fleetwood the patentee, Quin, Ryan, Thompson, and Mills—came forward to testify to his mild and peaceable disposition. Their appearance demonstrated that Macklin stood at the bar supported by a fraternity of peers ready to speak on his behalf. Their depositions bore upon his general character, not upon those few fleeting minutes in the scene-room; Thomas Arne and Whitaker alone described what their eyes had witnessed. The jury found him not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter; the chronicle thus draws a firm line between this finding and the capital felony charged in the indictment. It records no further judgment as to his punishment. On the day after the dispute, Hallam lay dead. The wig that had at last been yielded was of no moment now; there remained only the blow struck after its surrender.