128-673: Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate . His colourful memoir An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane , half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope , among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare ". He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as
256-534: A Riddle (1729)—it was shouted down by the audience and Cibber cancelled its run. He rescued its comic subplot as Damon and Phillida . Cibber had learned from the bad example of Christopher Rich to be a careful and approachable employer for his actors, and was not unpopular with them; however, he made enemies in the literary world because of the power he wielded over authors. Plays he considered non-commercial were rejected or ruthlessly reworked. Many were outraged by his sharp business methods, which may be exemplified by
384-451: A Steinkirk off her Neck, and lays it gently on his Head" (V.i.21). (A "steinkirk" was a loosely tied lace collar or scarf, named after the way the officers wore their cravats at the Battle of Steenkirk in 1692.) She steals away, Sir Charles wakes, notices the steinkirk on his head, marvels that his wife did not wake him and make a scene, and realises how wonderful she is. The Easys go on to have
512-451: A child Pope survived once being trampled by a cow , but when he was 12 he began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine ( Pott disease ), which restricted his growth, so that he was only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres) tall as an adult. He also suffered from crippling headaches. In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with the publication of Pastorals , his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By
640-491: A concerted propaganda assault against Robert Walpole 's Whig ministry and the financial revolution it stabilised. Although Pope was a keen participant in the stock and money markets, he never missed a chance to satirise the personal, social and political effects of the new scheme of things. From The Rape of the Lock onwards, these satirical themes appear constantly in his work. In 1731, Pope published his "Epistle to Burlington ", on
768-402: A continuance of Pope's tradition – William Wordsworth found Pope's style too decadent to represent the human condition. George Gilfillan in an 1856 study called Pope's talent "a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than powerful". Pope's reputation revived in the 20th century. His work was full of references to the people and places of his time, which aided people's understanding of
896-746: A double triumph: his comedy Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion (1696) was a great success, and his own uninhibited performance as the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion ("a coxcomb that loves to be the first in all foppery") delighted the audiences. His name was made, both as playwright and as comedian. Later in life, when Cibber himself had the last word in casting at Drury Lane, he wrote, or patched together, several tragedies that were tailored to fit his continuing hankering after playing "a Hero". However, his performances of such parts never pleased audiences, which wanted to see him typecast as an affected fop,
1024-449: A flurry of anonymous parodies , some of which Cibber claimed in his Apology to have written himself. In the 20th century, D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Lee considered some of Cibber's laureate poems funny enough to be included in their classic "anthology of bad verse", The Stuffed Owl (1930). However, Cibber was at least as distinguished as his immediate four predecessors, three of whom were also playwrights rather than poets. From
1152-486: A happy ending as Ximena in 1712. The Provoked Husband (1728) was an unfinished fragment by John Vanbrugh that Cibber reworked and completed to great commercial success. The Non-Juror (1717) was adapted from Molière 's Tartuffe and features a Papist spy as a villain. Written just two years after the Jacobite rising of 1715 , it was an obvious propaganda piece directed against Roman Catholics. The Refusal (1721)
1280-654: A historical source. Cibber was born in Southampton Street , in Bloomsbury , London. He was the eldest child of Caius Gabriel Cibber , a distinguished sculptor originally from Denmark. His mother, Jane née Colley, came from a family of gentry from Glaston , Rutland . He was educated at the King's School, Grantham , from 1682 until the age of 16, but failed to win a place at Winchester College , which had been founded by his maternal ancestor William of Wykeham . In 1688, he joined
1408-453: A hypocrite, and in general the attacks on Cibber are conducted in the notes added to the Dunciad , and not in the body of the poem. As hero of the Dunciad , Cibber merely watches the events of Book II, dreams Book III, and sleeps through Book IV. Once Pope struck, Cibber became an easy target for other satirists. He was attacked as the epitome of morally and aesthetically bad writing, largely for
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#17328452104681536-464: A kind of character that fitted both his private reputation as a vain man, his exaggerated, mannered style of acting, and his habit of ad libbing. His most famous part for the rest of his career remained that of Lord Foppington in The Relapse , a sequel to Cibber's own Love's Last Shift but written by John Vanbrugh , first performed in 1696 with Cibber reprising his performance as Sir Novelty Fashion in
1664-567: A new company at the Queen's Theatre at the Haymarket . The three actors squeezed out the previous owners in a series of lengthy and complex manoeuvres, but after Rich's letters patent were revoked, Cibber, Doggett and Wilks were able to buy the company outright and return to the Theatre Royal by 1711. After a few stormy years of power-struggle between the prudent Doggett and the extravagant Wilks, Doggett
1792-769: A play called Flora, or Hob in the Well , but it is not by Cibber. Hob, or the Country Wake. A Farce. By Mr. Doggett was attributed to Cibber by William Chetwood in his General History of the Stage (1749), but John Genest in Some Account of the English Stage (1832) thought it was by Thomas Doggett. Other plays attributed to Cibber but probably not by him include Cinna's Conspiracy , performed at Drury Lane on 19 February 1713, and The Temple of Dullness of 1745. Poet Laureate of
1920-410: A popular comedian, wrote and adapted many plays, and rose to become one of the newly empowered businessmen-managers. He took over the management of Drury Lane in 1710 and took a highly commercial, if not artistically successful, line in the job. In 1730, he was made Poet Laureate , an appointment which attracted widespread scorn, particularly from Alexander Pope and other Tory satirists. Off-stage, he
2048-501: A reconciliation scene which is much more low-keyed and tasteful than that in Love's Last Shift , without kneelings and risings, and with Lady Easy shrinking with feminine delicacy from the coarse subjects that Amanda had broached without blinking. Paul Parnell has analysed the manipulative nature of Lady Easy's lines in this exchange, showing how they are directed towards the sentimentalist's goal of "ecstatic self-approval". The Careless Husband
2176-462: A reference in Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot (1735) to Cibber's "whore", which gave Cibber a pretext for retorting in kind with a scandalous anecdote about Pope in a brothel. "I must own", wrote Cibber, "that I believe I know more of your whoring than you do of mine; because I don't recollect that ever I made you the least Confidence of my Amours, though I have been very near an Eye-Witness of Yours." Since Pope
2304-598: A reward for his untiring support of the Whigs , the party of Prime Minister Robert Walpole . Most of the leading writers, such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, were excluded from contention for the laureateship because they were Tories. Cibber's verses had few admirers even in his own time, and Cibber acknowledged cheerfully that he did not think much of them. His 30 birthday odes for the royal family and other duty pieces incumbent on him as Poet Laureate came in for particular scorn, and these offerings would regularly be followed by
2432-542: A scathing pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored , which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested several revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, wherefore Theobald became the main target of Pope's Dunciad . The second edition of Pope's Shakespeare appeared in 1728. Apart from some minor revisions to the preface, it seems that Pope had little to do with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Shakespeare dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual criticism. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. It
2560-400: A sentimental tear-jerker, incongruously interspersed with sexually explicit Restoration comedy jokes and semi-nude bedroom scenes. Love's Last Shift is today read mainly to gain a perspective on Vanbrugh 's sequel The Relapse , which has by contrast remained a stage favourite. Modern scholars often endorse the criticism that was levelled at Love's Last Shift from the first, namely that it
2688-490: A small estate at Popeswood , in Binfield , Berkshire , close to the royal Windsor Forest . This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing " Papists " from living within 10 miles (16 km) of London or Westminster. Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest . Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on, he mostly educated himself by reading
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#17328452104682816-572: A statement of regret for having transgressed. The text virtually ignores his wife and family, but Cibber wrote in detail about his time in the theatre, especially his early years as a young actor at Drury Lane in the 1690s, giving a vivid account of the cut-throat theatre company rivalries and chicanery of the time, as well as providing pen portraits of the actors he knew. The Apology is vain and self-serving, as both his contemporaries and later commentators have pointed out, but it also serves as Cibber's rebuttal to his harshest critics, especially Pope. For
2944-401: A tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. Cibber's brash, extroverted personality did not sit well with his contemporaries, and he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets. He rose to ignominious fame when he became the chief target,
3072-489: A translation of the Iliad . The work would be available by subscription , with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 guineas (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time. His Iliad translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal". Conversely,
3200-456: A villa at Twickenham , where he created his now-famous grotto and gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring during the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled it to be filled with the relaxing sound of trickling water, which would quietly echo around the chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in everything." Although the house and gardens have long since been demolished, much of
3328-438: A wholly original poem that reviews his own literary career and includes famous portraits of Lord Hervey (" Sporus "), Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull ("Balbus") and Addison ("Atticus"). In 1738 came "The Universal Prayer". Among the younger poets whose work Pope admired was Joseph Thurston . After 1738, Pope himself wrote little. He toyed with the idea of composing a patriotic epic in blank verse called Brutus , but only
3456-528: Is a blatantly commercial combination of sex scenes and drawn-out sentimental reconciliations. Cibber's follow-up comedy Woman's Wit (1697) was produced under hasty and unpropitious circumstances and had no discernible theme; Cibber, not usually shy about any of his plays, even elided its name in the Apology . It was followed by the equally unsuccessful tragedy Xerxes (1699). Cibber reused parts of Woman's Wit for The School Boy (1702). Perhaps partly because of
3584-399: Is a celebration of the power of a good woman, Amanda, to reform a rakish husband, Loveless, by means of sweet patience and a daring bed-trick. She masquerades as a prostitute and seduces Loveless without being recognised, and then confronts him with logical argument. Since he enjoyed the night with her while taking her for a stranger, a wife can be as good in bed as an illicit mistress. Loveless
3712-605: Is chronically unfaithful to his wife, seducing both ladies of quality and his own female servants with insouciant charm. The turning point of the action, known as "the Steinkirk scene", comes when his wife finds him and a maidservant asleep together in a chair, "as close an approximation to actual adultery as could be presented on the 18th-century stage". His periwig has fallen off, an obvious suggestion of intimacy and abandon, and an opening for Lady Easy's tact. Soliloquizing to herself about how sad it would be if he caught cold, she "takes
3840-430: Is convinced and stricken, and a rich choreography of mutual kneelings, risings and prostrations follows, generated by Loveless' penitence and Amanda's "submissive eloquence". The première audience is said to have wept at this climactic scene. The play was a great box-office success and was for a time the talk of the town, in both a positive and a negative sense. Some contemporaries regarded it as moving and amusing, others as
3968-526: Is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B." In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published in the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson 's Poetical Miscellanies . This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism , published in May 1711, which was equally well received. Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift , Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot , who together formed
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4096-624: Is human; to forgive, divine "). Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution . His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand , London . His mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York . Both parents were Catholics . His mother's sister, Christiana, was the wife of famous miniature painter Samuel Cooper . Pope's education
4224-508: Is important in the history of the British stage because he was one of the first in a long and illustrious line of actor-managers that would include Garrick, Henry Irving , and Herbert Beerbohm Tree . Rising from actor at Drury Lane to advisor to the manager Christopher Rich, Cibber worked himself by degrees into a position to take over the company, first taking many of its players—including Thomas Doggett , Robert Wilks , and Anne Oldfield —to form
4352-515: Is tempered, however, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century society. The revised, extended version of the poem focuses more clearly on its true subject: the onset of acquisitive individualism and a society of conspicuous consumers. In the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency and "trivial things" come to dominate. Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Dublin , its authorship
4480-454: The Oath of Allegiance to the new monarchs and he was dismissed from the laureateship—the only holder to have been removed from office. Dryden's successor, Thomas Shadwell , was appointed in 1689 for life. He introduced the custom of producing poems for the new year and the monarch's birthday, which became one of the key duties of the position. After the appointment of William Wordsworth in 1843
4608-682: The "Great Chain of Being", at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of the world. Accomplish this and we potentially could lead happy and virtuous lives. The poem is an affirmative statement of faith: life seems chaotic and confusing to man in the centre of it, but according to Pope it is truly divinely ordered. In Pope's world, God exists and is what he centres the Universe around as an ordered structure. The limited intelligence of man can only take in tiny portions of this order and experience only partial truths, hence man must rely on hope, which then leads to faith. Man must be aware of his existence in
4736-470: The 1743 Dunciad that Cibber is the perfect hero for a mock-heroic parody, since his Apology exhibits every trait necessary for the inversion of an epic hero. An epic hero must have wisdom, courage, and chivalric love , says Pope, and the perfect hero for an anti-epic therefore should have vanity, impudence, and debauchery. As wisdom, courage, and love combine to create magnanimity in a hero, so vanity, impudence, and debauchery combine to make buffoonery for
4864-411: The 1870s that Richard III was: a hodge-podge concocted by Colley Cibber, who cut and transposed the original version, and added to it speeches from four or five other of Shakespeare's plays, and several really fine speeches of his own. The speech to Buckingham: "I tell thee, coz, I've lately had two spiders crawling o'er my startled hopes"—the well-known line "Off with his head! So much for Buckingham!"
4992-454: The Country . Cibber's confidence was apparently restored by the success of the two plays, and he returned to more original writing. The comedy The Careless Husband (1704), generally considered to be Cibber's best play, is another example of the retrieval of a straying husband by means of outstanding wifely tact, this time in a more domestic and genteel register. The easy-going Sir Charles Easy
5120-575: The Head of a young Actor", he wrote in his autobiography half a century later, "is that of being a Hero: In this Ambition I was soon snubb'd by the Insufficiency of my Voice; to which might be added an uninform'd meagre Person ... with a dismal pale Complexion. Under these Disadvantages, I had but a melancholy Prospect of ever playing a Lover with Mrs. Bracegirdle , which I had flatter'd my Hopes that my Youth might one Day have recommended me to." At this time
5248-518: The Lock ), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh , a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals . There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty) , in 1707. He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in 1722. From
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5376-513: The London stage was in something of a slump after the glories of the early Restoration period. The King's and Duke's companies had merged into a monopoly, leaving actors in a weak negotiating position and much at the mercy of the dictatorial manager Christopher Rich . When the senior actors rebelled and established a cooperative company of their own in 1695, Cibber—"wisely", as the Biographical Dictionary of Actors puts it—stayed with
5504-488: The Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard . Though Pope never married, about this time he became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in his popular Eloisa to Abelard , and to Martha Blount, with whom his friendship continued through his life. As a satirist , Pope made his share of enemies as critics, politicians and certain other prominent figures felt
5632-553: The United Kingdom The British Poet Laureate is an honorary position appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the prime minister . The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The laureateship dates to 1616 when a pension was provided to Ben Jonson , but the first official Laureate
5760-592: The Universe and what he brings to it in terms of riches, power and fame. Pope proclaims that man's duty is to strive to be good, regardless of other situations. FATHER of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah , Jove , or Lord! If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O, teach my heart To find that better way! Save me alike from foolish pride, Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied, Or aught thy goodness lent. Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide
5888-454: The Universe: no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe may be, it functions in a rational fashion according to natural laws, so that the Universe as a whole is a perfect work of God, though to humans it appears to be evil and imperfect in many ways. Pope ascribes this to our limited mindset and intellectual capacity. He argues that humans must accept their position in
6016-508: The abdication of James II . One of these banned them from living within ten miles of London, another from attending public school or university. So except for a few spurious Catholic schools , Pope was largely self-educated . He was taught to read by his aunt and became a book lover, reading in French, Italian, Latin and Greek and discovering Homer at the age of six. In 1700, when only twelve years of age, he wrote his poem Ode on Solitude . As
6144-425: The age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease , a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain. He grew to a height of only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres). Pope
6272-437: The age of 23, he had written An Essay on Criticism , released in 1711. A kind of poetic manifesto in the vein of Horace 's Ars Poetica , it met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope a wider circle of prominent friends, notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele , who had recently begun to collaborate on the influential The Spectator . The critic John Dennis , having found an ironic and veiled portrait of himself,
6400-619: The appointment of Duffy the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) undertook a consultation of academics and literary organisations to draw up a short list of recommendations which they presented to the prime minister. He, in conjunction with the Cabinet Office , then submitted the name to the Queen for approval. Dryden's salary for the laureateship was £200 per year. In 1630 Charles I added an annual " butt of Canary wine ", although this
6528-462: The art of playing , described Cibber as "the best Lord Foppington who ever appeared, was in real life (with all due respect be it spoken by one who loves him) something of the coxcomb". These were the kind of comic parts where Cibber's affectation and mannerism were desirable. In 1738–39, he played Shallow in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 to critical acclaim, but his Richard III (in his own version of
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#17328452104686656-617: The artistic decay of Britain, he was transformed into the demigod of stupidity, the true son of the goddess Dulness. Apart from the personal quarrel, Pope had reasons of literary appropriateness for letting Cibber take the place of his first choice of King, Lewis Theobald. Theobald, who had embarrassed Pope by contrasting Pope's impressionistic Shakespeare edition (1725) with Theobald's own scholarly edition (1726), also wrote Whig propaganda for hire, as well as dramatic productions which were to Pope abominations for their mixing of tragedy and comedy and for their "low" pantomime and opera. However, Cibber
6784-474: The beginning of the 18th century, when Cibber first rose to be Rich's right-hand man at Drury Lane, his perceived opportunism and brash, thick-skinned personality gave rise to many barbs in print, especially against his patchwork plays. The early attacks were mostly anonymous, but Daniel Defoe and Tom Brown are suggested as potential authors. Later, Jonathan Swift, John Dennis and Henry Fielding all lambasted Cibber in print. The most famous conflict Cibber had
6912-482: The characteristic way he abdicated as manager in the mid-1730s. In 1732, Booth sold his share to John Highmore, and Wilks' share fell into the hands of John Ellys after Wilks' death. Cibber leased his share in the company to his scapegrace son Theophilus for 442 pounds, but when Theophilus fell out with the other managers, they approached Cibber senior and offered to buy out his share. Without consulting Theophilus, Cibber sold his share for more than 3,000 pounds to
7040-472: The charge was untrue, it did much damage to Pope. There has been some speculation on a feud between Pope and Thomas Hearne , due in part to the character of Wormius in The Dunciad , who is seemingly based on Hearne. An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets published between 1732 and 1734. Pope meant it as the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It
7168-462: The classical scholar Richard Bentley wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Encouraged by the success of the Iliad , Bernard Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1725–1726. For this Pope collaborated with William Broome and Elijah Fenton : Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Pope
7296-406: The conservative certainties and gender-role backlash of exemplary or sentimental comedy. According to Paul Parnell, Love's Last Shift illustrates Cibber's opportunism at a moment in time before the change was assured: fearless of self-contradiction, he puts something for everybody into his first play, combining the old outspokenness with the new preachiness. The central action of Love's Last Shift
7424-464: The daughter of Matthias Shore, sergeant-trumpeter to the King, despite his poor prospects and insecure, socially inferior job. Cibber and Katherine had 12 children between 1694 and 1713. Six died in infancy, and most of the surviving children received short shrift in his will. Catherine, the eldest surviving daughter, married Colonel James Brown and seems to have been the dutiful one who looked after Cibber in old age following his wife's death in 1734. She
7552-557: The duties settled into an expectation, not requirement, for major court and national occasions. Alfred, Lord Tennyson held the post between November 1850 and October 1892. According to Andrew Motion and Hilary Laurie, Tennyson "gave the poet laureateship new status and significance" with works such as "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and " The Charge of the Light Brigade ". On his death
7680-447: The early days of Restoration theatre , such as Thomas Betterton and Elizabeth Barry at the end of their careers, and lived to see David Garrick perform, he is a bridge between the earlier mannered and later more naturalistic styles of performance. The Apology was a popular work and gave Cibber a good return. Its complacency infuriated some of his contemporaries, notably Pope, but even the usually critical Samuel Johnson admitted it
7808-400: The early part of Cibber's career, it is unreliable in respect of chronology and other hard facts, understandably, since it was written 50 years after the events, apparently without the help of a journal or notes. Nevertheless, it is an invaluable source for all aspects of the early 18th-century theatre in London, for which documentation is otherwise scanty. Because he worked with many actors from
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#17328452104687936-555: The elevation of Cibber to laureateship and incredulous at what he held to be the vainglory of his Apology (1740), attacked Cibber extensively in his poetry. Cibber replied mostly with good humour to Pope's aspersions ("some of which are in conspicuously bad taste", as Lowe points out), until 1742 when he responded in kind in "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". In this pamphlet, Cibber's most effective ammunition came from
8064-597: The expense of Three Hours After Marriage , while Pope was in the audience. Pope was infuriated, as was Gay who got into a physical fight with Cibber on a subsequent visit to the theatre. Pope published a pamphlet satirising Cibber and continued his literary assault for the next 25 years. In the first version of his landmark literary satire Dunciad (1728), Pope referred contemptuously to Cibber's "past, vamp'd, future, old, reviv'd, new" plays, produced with "less human genius than God gives an ape". Cibber's elevation to laureateship in 1730 further inflamed Pope against him. Cibber
8192-419: The failure of his previous two plays, Cibber's next effort was an adaptation of Shakespeare 's Richard III . Neither Cibber's adaptations nor his own original plays have stood the test of time, and hardly any of them have been staged or reprinted after the early 18th century, but his popular adaptation of Richard III remained the standard stage version for 150 years. The American actor George Berrell wrote in
8320-465: The fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me. Mean though I am, not wholly so, Since quickened by thy breath; O, lead me wheresoe’er I go, Through this day’s life or death! To thee, whose temple is all space, Whose altar, earth, sea, skies! One chorus let all Being raise! All Nature’s incense rise! Pope, "The Universal Prayer" The Imitations of Horace that followed (1733–1738) were written in
8448-657: The fortunes of the Tories , and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke , fled to France. This was added to by the Impeachment of the former Tory Chief Minister Lord Oxford . Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick , between 1716 and 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms , commemorating him with a blue plaque . The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in 1719 to
8576-403: The grotto survives beneath Radnor House Independent Co-educational School. The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust. An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it. At the time
8704-417: The head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad . Cibber's poetical work was derided in his time and has been remembered only for being poor. His importance in British theatre history rests on his being one of the first in a long line of actor-managers, on the interest of two of his comedies as documents of evolving early 18th-century taste and ideology, and on the value of his autobiography as
8832-458: The historical image of the man himself was almost obliterated, and it was as the King of Dunces that he came down to posterity. The plays below were produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, unless otherwise stated. The dates given are of first known performance. Bulls and Bears , a farce performed at Drury Lane on 2 December 1715, was attributed to Cibber but was never published. The Dramatic Works of Colley Cibber, Esq. (London, 1777) includes
8960-635: The hostility of its victims and their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from then on with a few damaging truths and a host of slanders and lies." According to his half-sister Magdalen Rackett, some of Pope's targets were so enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him physically. "My brother does not seem to know what fear is," she told Joseph Spence , explaining that Pope loved to walk alone, so went accompanied by his Great Dane Bounce, and for some time carried pistols in his pocket. This first Dunciad , along with John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels , joined in
9088-445: The laureateship. Historically appointed for an unfixed term and typically held for life, since 1999 the term has been ten years. The holder of the position as at 2024 is Simon Armitage who succeeded Carol Ann Duffy in May 2019 after 10 years in office. The origins of the British poet laureateship date back to 1616 when James I of England granted a pension to the writer Ben Jonson . Although there were subsequent court poets it
9216-592: The manager side. He was a clever, innovative, and unscrupulous businessman who retained all his life a love of appearing on the stage. His triumph was that he rose to a position where, in consequence of his sole power over production and casting at Drury Lane, London audiences had to put up with him as an actor. Cibber's one significant mistake as a theatre manager was to pass over John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera , which became an outstanding success for John Rich 's theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields . When Cibber attempted to mimic Gay's success with his own ballad-opera— Love in
9344-420: The moral qualities and virtues inherent in an ideal critic, whom Pope claims is also the ideal man. Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock , first published in 1712, with a revised version in 1714. A mock-epic , it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre , who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without permission. The satirical style
9472-466: The most famous revenges in literary history. In the revised Dunciad that appeared in 1743, he changed his hero, the King of Dunces, from Lewis Theobald to Colley Cibber. The derogatory allusions to Cibber in consecutive versions of Pope's mock-heroic Dunciad , from 1728 to 1743, became more elaborate as the conflict between the two men escalated, until, in the final version of the poem, Pope crowned Cibber King of Dunces. From being merely one symptom of
9600-445: The newly ennobled guise of Lord Foppington. Pope mentions the audience jubilation that greeted the small-framed Cibber donning Lord Foppington's enormous wig, which would be ceremoniously carried on stage in its own sedan chair . Vanbrugh reputedly wrote the part of Lord Foppington deliberately "to suit the eccentricities of Cibber's acting style". His tragic efforts, however, were consistently ridiculed by contemporaries: when Cibber in
9728-480: The opening lines survive. His major work in those years was to revise and expand his masterpiece, The Dunciad . Book Four appeared in 1742 and a full revision of the whole poem the following year. Here Pope replaced the "hero" Lewis Theobald with the Poet Laureate , Colley Cibber as "king of dunces". However, the real focus of the revised poem is Walpole and his works. By now Pope's health, which had never been good,
9856-567: The other managers, who promptly gave Theophilus his notice. According to one story, Cibber encouraged his son to lead the actors in a walkout and set up for themselves in the Haymarket , rendering worthless the commodity he had sold. On behalf of his son, Cibber applied for a letters patent to perform at the Haymarket, but it was refused by the Lord Chamberlain , who was "disgusted at Cibber's conduct". The Drury Lane managers attempted to shut down
9984-595: The play's psychology as "mature", "plausible", "subtle", "natural", and "affecting". The Lady's Last Stake (1707) is a rather bad-tempered reply to critics of Lady Easy's wifely patience in The Careless Husband . It was coldly received, and its main interest lies in the glimpse the prologue gives of angry reactions to The Careless Husband , of which we would otherwise have known nothing (since all contemporary published reviews of The Careless Husband approve and endorse its message). Some, says Cibber sarcastically in
10112-482: The play) was not well received. In the middle of the play, he whispered to fellow actor Benjamin Victor that he wanted to go home, perhaps realising he was too old for the part and its physical demands. Cibber also essayed tragic parts in plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson , John Dryden and others, but with less success. By the end of his acting career, audiences were being entranced by the innovatively naturalistic acting of
10240-414: The poem was published, its heroic couplet style was quite a new poetic form and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past. The "essay" begins with a discussion of
10368-412: The popular Augustan form of an "imitation" of a classical poet, not so much a translation of his works as an updating with contemporary references. Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II , especially what he saw as the widespread corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste. Pope added as an introduction to Imitations
10496-452: The post was left vacant as a mark of respect; a new laureate was not appointed until four years later, with the appointment of Alfred Austin in January 1896. As at 2015 the position is an honorary one, and the office holder is left to decide on which occasions they will produce poetry. Following Dryden's dismissal from the post, the laureateship was held for life by all successors until Motion
10624-649: The prologue, seem to think Lady Easy ought rather to have strangled her husband with her steinkirk: Yet some there are, who still arraign the Play, At her tame Temper shock'd, as who should say— The Price, for a dull Husband, was too much to pay, Had he been strangled sleeping, Who shou'd hurt ye? When so provok'd—Revenge had been a Virtue. Many of Cibber's plays, listed below, were hastily cobbled together from borrowings. Alexander Pope said Cibber's drastic adaptations and patchwork plays were stolen from "crucified Molière" and "hapless Shakespeare". The Double Gallant (1707)
10752-457: The remaining twelve. Broome provided the annotations. Pope tried to conceal the extent of the collaboration, but the secret leaked out. It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits. Leslie Stephen considered Pope's portion of the Odyssey inferior to his version of the Iliad , given that Pope had put more effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style
10880-429: The remnants of the old company, "where the competition was less keen". After five years, he had still not seen significant success in his chosen profession, and there had been no heroic parts and no love scenes. However, the return of two-company rivalry created a sudden demand for new plays, and Cibber seized this opportunity to launch his career by writing a comedy with a big, flamboyant part for himself to play. He scored
11008-490: The residue of his estate to his eldest daughter Catherine. He was buried on 18 December, probably at the Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street. Cibber's colourful autobiography An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740) was chatty, meandering, anecdotal, vain, and occasionally inaccurate. At the time of writing the word "apology" meant an apologia , a statement in defence of one's actions rather than
11136-502: The rising star David Garrick, who made his London debut in the title part in a production of Cibber's adaptation of Richard III in 1741. He returned to the stage for a final time in 1745 as Cardinal Pandulph in his play Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John . Cibber's comedy Love's Last Shift (1696) is an early herald of a massive shift in audience taste, away from the intellectualism and sexual frankness of Restoration comedy and towards
11264-486: The rival Haymarket players by conspiring in the arrest of the lead actor, John Harper , on a charge of vagrancy, but the charge did not hold, and the attempt pushed public opinion to Theophilus' side. The Drury Lane managers were defeated, and Theophilus regained control of the company on his own terms. Cibber's appointment as Poet Laureate in December 1730 was widely assumed to be a political rather than artistic honour, and
11392-558: The role of Richard III made love to Lady Anne, the Grub Street Journal wrote, "he looks like a pickpocket, with his shrugs and grimaces, that has more a design on her purse than her heart". Cibber was on the stage in every year but two (1727 and 1731) between his debut in 1690 and his retirement in 1732, playing more than 100 parts in all in nearly 3,000 documented performances. After he had sold his interest in Drury Lane in 1733 and
11520-886: The satiric hero. His revisions, however, were considered too hasty by later critics who pointed out inconsistent passages that damaged his own poem for the sake of personal vindictiveness. Writing about the degradation of taste brought on by theatrical effects, Pope quotes Cibber's own confessio in the Apology : Of that Succession of monstrous Medlies that have so long infested the Stage, and which arose upon one another alternately, at both Houses [London's two playhouses, Cibber's Drury Lane and John Rich's domain Lincoln's Inn's Fields ] ... If I am ask'd (after my condemning these Fooleries myself) how I came to assent or continue my Share of Expence to them? I have no better Excuse for my Error than confessing it. I did it against my Conscience! and had not Virtue enough to starve. Pope's notes call Cibber
11648-457: The satirical Scriblerus Club . Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele . In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim. During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addison's play Cato , as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator . Around this time, he began
11776-613: The service of his father's patron, Lord Devonshire , who was one of the prime supporters of the Glorious Revolution . After the revolution, and at a loose end in London, he was attracted to the stage and in 1690 began work as an actor in Thomas Betterton 's United Company at the Drury Lane Theatre . "Poor, at odds with his parents, and entering the theatrical world at a time when players were losing their power to businessmen-managers", on 6 May 1693 Cibber married Katherine Shore ,
11904-441: The sins of his autobiography. In the Apology , Cibber speaks daringly in the first person and in his own praise. Although the major figures of the day were jealous of their fame, self-promotion of such an overt sort was shocking, and Cibber offended Christian humility as well as gentlemanly modesty. Additionally, Cibber consistently fails to see fault in his own character, praises his vices, and makes no apology for his misdeeds; so it
12032-425: The speech ending with "Conscience, avaunt! Richard's himself again!"—and other lines of power and effect were written by Cibber, who, with all due respect to the 'divine bard,' improved upon the original, for acting purposes. Richard III was followed by another adaptation, the comedy Love Makes a Man , which was constructed by splicing together two plays by John Fletcher : The Elder Brother and The Custom of
12160-613: The stage as Pandulph in his own "deservedly unsuccessful" Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John . In 1750, he fell seriously ill and recommended his friend and protégé Henry Jones as the next Poet Laureate. Cibber recovered and Jones passed into obscurity. Cibber died suddenly at his house in Berkeley Square , London, in December 1757, leaving small pecuniary legacies to four of his five surviving children, £1,000 each (the equivalent of approximately £180,000 in 2011) to his granddaughters Jane and Elizabeth (the daughters of Theophilus), and
12288-460: The standard rules that govern poetry, by which a critic passes judgement. Pope comments on the classical authors who dealt with such standards and the authority he believed should be accredited to them. He discusses the laws to which a critic should adhere while analysing poetry, pointing out the important function critics perform in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to simply attacking them. The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses
12416-418: The sting of his sharp-witted satires. Some were so virulent that Pope even carried pistols while walking his dog. In 1738 and thenceforth, Pope composed relatively little. He began having ideas for a patriotic epic in blank verse titled Brutus , but mainly revised and expanded his Dunciad . Book Four appeared in 1742; and a complete revision of the whole in the year that followed. At this time Lewis Theobald
12544-576: The subject of architecture, the first of four poems later grouped as the Moral Essays (1731–1735). The epistle ridicules the bad taste of the aristocrat "Timon". For example, the following are verses 99 and 100 of the Epistle: At Timon's Villa let us paſs a day, Where all cry out, "What ſums are thrown away!" Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons . Though
12672-769: The work of translating the Iliad , which was a painstaking process – publication began in 1715 and did not end until 1720. In 1714 the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites , leading to the Jacobite rising of 1715 . Though Pope, as a Catholic, might have been expected to have supported the Jacobites because of his religious and political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack , "where Pope himself stood on these matters can probably never be confidently known". These events led to an immediate downturn in
12800-572: The works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal , the epic poets Homer and Virgil , as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer , William Shakespeare and John Dryden . He studied many languages, reading works by French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William Congreve , Samuel Garth and William Trumbull . At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of
12928-514: Was John Dryden , appointed in 1668 by Charles II . On the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson , who held the post between November 1850 and October 1892, there was a break of four years as a mark of respect; Tennyson's laureate poems "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and " The Charge of the Light Brigade " were particularly cherished by the Victorian public. Four poets, Thomas Gray , Samuel Rogers , Walter Scott and Philip Larkin turned down
13056-507: Was "very entertaining and very well done". It went through four editions in his lifetime, and more after his death, and generations of readers have found it an amusing and engaging read, projecting an author always "happy in his own good opinion, the best of all others; teeming with animal spirits, and uniting the self-sufficiency of youth with the garrulity of age." Cibber began his career as an actor at Drury Lane in 1690, and had little success for several years. "The first Thing that enters into
13184-413: Was a great success on the stage and remained in repertory throughout the 18th century. Although it has now joined Love's Last Shift as a forgotten curiosity, it kept a respectable critical reputation into the 20th century, coming in for serious discussion both as an interesting example of doublethink, and as somewhat morally or emotionally insightful. In 1929, the well-known critic F. W. Bateson described
13312-522: Was a keen gambler, and was one of the investors in the South Sea Company . In the last two decades of his life, Cibber remained prominent in society, and summered in Georgian spas such as Tunbridge , Scarborough and Bath . He was friendly with the writer Samuel Richardson , the actress Margaret Woffington and the memoirist–poet Laetitia Pilkington . Aged 73 in 1745, he made his last appearance on
13440-557: Was a piece that he sought to make into a larger work, but he did not live to complete it. It attempts to "vindicate the ways of God to Man", a variation on Milton's attempt in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to Man" (1.26). It challenges as prideful an anthropocentric worldview. The poem is not solely Christian, however. It assumes that man has fallen and must seek his own salvation. Consisting of four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke , it presents an idea of Pope's view of
13568-571: Was a wealthy man in his sixties, he returned to the stage occasionally to play the classic fop parts of Restoration comedy for which audiences appreciated him. His Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's The Relapse , Sir Courtly Nice in John Crowne 's Sir Courtly Nice , and Sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege 's Man of Mode were legendary. Critic John Hill in his 1775 work The actor, or, A treatise on
13696-507: Was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts , a series of English penal laws that upheld the status of the established Church of England , banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, and holding public office on penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698. He also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London. Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated in some areas. In 1700, his family moved to
13824-477: Was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu . It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover. His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence , "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber 's slander (of carnosity)
13952-659: Was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature , Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock , The Dunciad , and An Essay on Criticism , and for his translations of Homer . Pope is often quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations , some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. " damning with faint praise " or " to err
14080-406: Was an embarrassment to his father because of his scandalous private life. His other son to survive infancy, James, died in or after 1717, before reaching adulthood. Colley's youngest daughter Charlotte followed in her father's theatrical footsteps, but she fell out with him and her sister Catherine, and she was cut off by the family. After an inauspicious start as an actor, Cibber eventually became
14208-410: Was an even better King in these respects, more high-profile both as a political opportunist and as the powerful manager of Drury Lane, and with the crowning circumstance that his political allegiances and theatrical successes had gained him the laureateship. To Pope this made him an epitome of all that was wrong with British letters. Pope explains in the "Hyper-critics of Ricardus Aristarchus" prefatory to
14336-438: Was appointed in 1999 for a fixed term of ten years; his successor, Carol Ann Duffy , was also appointed on the same fixed term. Duffy was the first female poet to hold the role, and the first Scot. After Shadwell's selection the laureate was appointed by the Lord Chamberlain , on the monarch's instructions. Since the appointment of Henry James Pye in 1790, the prime minister has recommended which candidate to appoint. For
14464-419: Was around four and a half feet tall and hunchbacked due to a tubercular infection of the spine he contracted when young, Cibber regarded the prospect of Pope with a woman as something humorous, and he speaks mockingly of the "little-tiny manhood" of Pope. For once the laughers were on Cibber's side, and the story "raised a universal shout of merriment at Pope's expense". Pope made no direct reply, but took one of
14592-551: Was based on Molière's Les Femmes Savantes . Cibber's last play, Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John was "a miserable mutilation of Shakespeare's King John ". Heavily politicised, it caused such a storm of ridicule during its 1736 rehearsal that Cibber withdrew it. During the Jacobite Rising of 1745 , when the nation was again in fear of a Popish pretender, it was finally acted, and this time accepted for patriotic reasons. Cibber's career as both actor and theatre manager
14720-440: Was better suited. In this period, Pope was employed by the publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare. When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote his verse in several places. Pope also removed about 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that some appealed to him more than others. In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser Lewis Theobald published
14848-470: Was constructed from Burnaby's The Reformed Wife and The Lady's Visiting Day , and Centlivre's Love at a Venture . In the words of Leonard R. N. Ashley, Cibber took "what he could use from these old failures" to cook up "a palatable hash out of unpromising leftovers". The Comical Lovers (1707) was based on Dryden's Marriage à la Mode . The Rival Fools (1709) was based on Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons . He rewrote Corneille's Le Cid with
14976-404: Was duly rewarded at his death with most of his estate. His middle daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, went into business. Anne had a shop that sold fine wares and foods, and married John Boultby. Elizabeth had a restaurant near Gray's Inn , and married firstly Dawson Brett, and secondly (after Brett's death) Joseph Marples. His only son to reach adulthood, Theophilus , became an actor at Drury Lane, and
15104-622: Was failing. When told by his physician, on the morning of his death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms." He died at his villa surrounded by friends on 30 May 1744, about eleven o'clock at night. On the previous day, 29 May 1744, Pope had called for a priest and received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was buried in the nave of St Mary's Church, Twickenham . Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish
15232-518: Was later discontinued in place of the monetary equivalent. When Ted Hughes was appointed, he rekindled the tradition, and received 720 bottles of sherry. Since Motion's appointment the DCMS provided an annual honorarium of £5,750; Motion also received an additional £19,000 for his work in education. With Duffy's appointment, the salary returned to £5,750 and the barrel of sherry. Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744)
15360-421: Was not in doubt. Pope pilloried a host of other "hacks", "scribblers" and "dunces" in addition to Theobald, and Maynard Mack has accordingly called its publication "in many ways the greatest act of folly in Pope's life". Though a masterpiece due to having become "one of the most challenging and distinctive works in the history of English poetry", writes Mack, "it bore bitter fruit. It brought the poet in his own time
15488-499: Was not merely the fact of the autobiography, but the manner of it that shocked contemporaries. His diffuse and chatty writing style, conventional in poetry and sometimes incoherent in prose, was bound to look even worse in contrast to stylists like Pope. Henry Fielding satirically tried Cibber for murder of the English language in the 17 May 1740 issue of The Champion . The Tory wits were altogether so successful in their satire of Cibber that
15616-475: Was not until 1668, and the appointment of John Dryden by Charles II , that the post was made an established royal office within the royal household . Dryden, who had been appointed following the success of his 1667 poem Annus Mirabilis , was dismissed from office in 1689 following the accession of the Protestant William III and Mary II to the throne. Dryden, a Catholic convert, refused to take
15744-399: Was outraged by what he saw as the impudence of a younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his life, and save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated his efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making Dennis the butt of much satire. A folio containing a collection of his poems appeared in 1717, along with two new ones about the passion of love: Verses to
15872-491: Was replaced by the upcoming actor Barton Booth and Cibber became in practice sole manager of Drury Lane. He set a pattern for the line of more charismatic and successful actors that were to succeed him in this combination of roles. His near-contemporary Garrick, as well as the 19th-century actor-managers Irving and Tree, would later structure their careers, writing, and manager identity around their own striking stage personalities. Cibber's forte as actor-manager was, by contrast,
16000-723: Was replaced with the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber as "king of dunces", but his real target remained the Whig politician Robert Walpole . By the mid-18th century, new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope's style was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent about his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences – believing his own scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be
16128-599: Was selected for political reasons, as he was a supporter of the Whig government of Robert Walpole, while Pope was a Tory. The selection of Cibber for this honour was widely seen as especially cynical coming at a time when Pope, Gay, Thomson, Ambrose Philips , and Edward Young were all in their prime. As one epigram of the time put it: In merry old England it once was a rule, The King had his Poet, and also his Fool: But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet." Pope, mortified by
16256-400: Was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly contaminated by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century. Pope's poetic career testifies to an indomitable spirit despite disadvantages of health and circumstance. The poet and his family were Catholics and so fell subject to the prohibitive Test Acts , which hampered their co-religionists after
16384-416: Was with Alexander Pope. Pope's animosity began in 1717 when he helped John Arbuthnot and John Gay write a farce, Three Hours After Marriage , in which one of the characters, "Plotwell" was modelled on Cibber. Notwithstanding, Cibber put the play on at Drury Lane with himself playing the part of Plotwell, but the play was not well received. During the staging of a different play, Cibber introduced jokes at
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