Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber was an important Restoration actor, playwright, theatre manager and poet laureate under King George II. He was famous for creating the roles of fops. His conflict with Alexander Pope, who portrayed him as asycophantic dunce, is well known.
Life
Cibber was born in 1671 in London. At the age of 19 he became an actor at Drury Lane, under Christopher Rich, who only three years later, in 1693, merged the two companies (the Duke's company and King's company) to form the United Company. In 1693 Cibber married Katherine Shore. Disappointed by a lack of roles that were to his taste, in 1696 he wrote Love's Last Shift, a comedy in which he played a fop with the telling name "Sir Novelty Fashion". The play became a big hit and made his name both as a playwright and as an actor. In 1699 he adapted Shakespeare's Richard III, which again was performed to much acclaim. But perhaps his greatest success was The Careless Husband of 1704, which tells the story of an unfaithful husband and his tolerant wife.
In 1710, Cibber, together with fellow actors Thomas Dogget and Robert Wilks, bought the United Company, and from thereon served as manager. This position enabled him to cast himself into just the roles he liked. In 1730 Cibber was appointed Poet Laureate, even though even he himself didn't think his verse was good enough. This also was one of the reasons for Pope's derision of him.
Conflict with Pope
Alexander Pope thought very lowly of Colley Cibber and was outraged when he was appointed Poet Laureate. In 1728 he wrote the Dunciad, a mock-epic about the plans of Dullness, the goddess of stupidity, to expand her powers by way of the Dunces. One of the Dunces was Colley Cibber, even so mentioned by name. Pope continued to mock him, and in 1742 Cibber wrote A Letter from Mr. Cibber, to Mr. Pope, inquiring into the motives that might induce him in his Satyrical Works, to be so frequently fond of Mr. Cibber's name. Pope answered by writing a new version of the Dunciad, which painted Cibber in an even worse light.
Plays
- Love's Last Shift
- Woman's Wit
- Xerxes
- Richard III
- Love Makes a Man
- The School Boy
- She Would and She Would Not
- The Careless Husband
- Perolla and Izadora
- The Comical Lovers
- The Double Gallant
- The Lady's Last Stake
- The Rival Fools
- The Rival Queans
- Ximena
- Venus and Adonis
- Bulls and Bears
- The Nonjuror
- The Refusal
- Cæsar in Egypt
- The Provoked Husband
- Love in a Riddle
- Damon and Phillida
- Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John
Autobiography
In 1740, Cibber wrote An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, his autobiography. It pioneered a new type of autobiography, moving away from a distant description to a more involved author. His work is particularly interesting for its descriptions of theatre life in the late Restoration and early Georgian periods.
References and Further Reading
- Barker, R. H. Mr Cibber of Drury Lane. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939.
- Lowe, Robert (ed). An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber.. New York: AMS Press, 1966.
- Owen, Susan. Perspectives on Restoration drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
- MacLean, Gerald (ed). Culture and society in the Stuart Restoration - literature, drama, history. Cambridge: CUP, 1995.
- Coward, Barry, ed. A Companion to Stuart Britain. Malden: Blackwell, 2003.