Colley Cibber

Colley Cibber (June 11, 1671 – November 12, 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright, and Poet Laureate. His colorful Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) started a British tradition of personal, anecdotal, and even rambling autobiography. He wrote some plays for performance by his own company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and adapted many more from various sources, receiving frequent criticism for his "miserable mutilation" (Robert Lowe) of "hapless Shakespeare, and crucify'd Molière" (Alexander Pope). He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as 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, social and political opportunism (which was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets), and shady business methods. He rose to herostratic fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad.

Cibber as actor

Cibber began his career as an actor at Drury Lane in 1690, with little success for several years. "The first Thing that enters into the Head of a young Actor", he wrote in his autobiography half a century later, "is that of being a Heroe: 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 the London stage was in something of a slump after the glories of the early Restoration period, and the two theatre companies had been merged into a monopoly, leaving actors in a weak negotiating position and basically 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 the remnants of the old company, "where the competition was less keen". He had still after five years not been very successful 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 a double triumph: his comedy Love's Last Shift, or Virtue Rewarded (1696) was a great success, and his own uninhibited performance as the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion delighted the audiences. His name was made, both as playwright and as comedian.

Related Topics:
1690 - Mrs. Bracegirdle - Restoration - Monopoly - Christopher Rich - Comedy - Love's Last Shift, or Virtue Rewarded - 1696 - Fop - Comedian

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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 Heroe". But his performances of such parts never pleased audiences, which wanted to see him typecast as affected fop, a kind of character that fitted both his private reputation as a vain man, his exaggerated, mannered acting style, and his habit of ad libbing.

Related Topics:
Tragedies - Ad lib

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His tragic efforts were consistently ridiculed by contemporaries: when Cibber in the role of Richard III makes love to Lady Anne, wrote the Grub Street Journal, "he looks like a pickpocket, with his shrugs and grimaces, that has more a design on her purse than her heart". 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. Alexander Pope mentions the audience jubilation which always used to greet the small-framed Cibber's donning of Lord Foppington's enormous wig, which would be ceremoniously carried on stage in its own sedan chair.

Related Topics:
Richard III - Grub Street Journal - The Relapse - Sequel - John Vanbrugh - Wig - Sedan chair

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Cibber loved to act. After he had sold his interest in Drury Lane in the mid-1730s (see below) and was a wealthy man of 65, he still returned to the stage a number of times to play the classic fop parts of Restoration comedy that audiences appreciated him in: Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Sir Courtly Nice in John Dryden's Sir Courtly Nice, and Sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege's Man of Mode. These were the kind of parts where affectation and mannerism were positively desirable; but in tragedy, audiences were at this time being entranced by the innovatively naturalistic acting of the rising star David Garrick, and wanted less than ever to see Cibber play a hero.

Related Topics:
Restoration comedy - John Dryden - George Etherege - David Garrick

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