There are many reasons why Macklin's plays are less well known than is warranted by his personality and acting ability during his long association with the British stage. His first play, _King Henry VII_, a tragedy hastily put together to capitalize on the anti-Jacobite sentiment following the invasion attempt of 1745, was an ambitious failure. After this discouragement, he also had trouble with the Licenser so that his comedy _Man of the World_ was not presented until 1781, twenty years after a portion of it first appeared at Covent Garden.[3] Nor were censorship and a bad start his only problems as a playwright. He also, and apparently with good reason,[4] was fearful of piracy and was thus reluctant to have his plays printed. His eighteenth-century biographer Kirkman mentions Macklin's threats to "put the law against every offender of it, respecting my property, in full force."[5] His biographers also mention his practice of giving each actor only his own role at rehearsals while keeping the manuscript copy of the whole play under lock, but this did not prevent whole acts from being printed in such magazines as _The Court Miscellany_, where Act I of _Love-a-la-Mode_ was printed as it was taken down in shorthand by the famous shorthand expert Joseph Gurney. If Macklin had not been required to submit copies of his plays to the Licenser, it is doubtful that as much would have survived. The contentious Macklin had reason for zealously guarding his manuscripts, with such provincial theatre managers as Tate Wilkinson at York always anxious for new plays. Finally, Macklin's best work as a playwright was satiric enough and topical enough to be short-lived in popularity even in his own day. Sir Pertinax McSychophant in the _Man of the World_ is a good character, especially in his famous speech on the necessity of bowing to get ahead in the world, as is Sir Archy MacSarcasm in _Love-a-la-Mode_, but the latter produced _A Scotsman's Remarks on the Farce Love-a-la Mode_ in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June, 1760, and Macklin's additional troubles with the Licenser would indicate that his satiric barbs were not always well received.