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 dunce

Pamphlet wars

From the very beginning of the 18th century, when Cibber first rose to being Christopher Rich's right-hand man and spy at Drury Lane, his opportunism and his brash, thick-skinned personality gave rise to many barbs in print, especially against his patchwork plays. The early attacks were mostly anonymous, but some have been ascribed to Daniel Defoe and Tom Brown (see Lowe). Later, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, James Thomson, Richard Blackmore, John Dennis, and Henry Fielding all lambasted Cibber in print. The most famous conflict Cibber had was with Alexander Pope, the greatest poet of the age. In the first version of his landmark literary satire The 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", and Cibber's elevation to laureateship in 1730 further inflamed Pope against him. The selection of Cibber for this honor was widely seen as outlandish, at a time with Alexander Pope, John Gay, James Thomson, Ambrose Philips, and Edward Young all in their prime. As one epigram at the time put it:

Related Topics:
Daniel Defoe - Tom Brown - Jonathan Swift - John Gay - James Thomson - Richard Blackmore - Henry Fielding - Alexander Pope - The Dunciad - 1728 - Edward Young

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:"In merry old England it once was a rule,

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:The King had his Poet, and also his Fool:

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:But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,

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:That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet." (Recorded by Pope in the 1743 Dunciad).

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That he was selected immediately after a change in the government from Tory to Whig was also noticeable. Further, Cibber associated himself with Robert Walpole, the highly divisive "first Prime Minister."

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Pope, mortified by the elevation of Cibber to laureatehood and incredulous at the vainglory of his Apology (1740), took every opportunity to attack him in his poetry, and easily got the laughers on his side. Mostly Cibber replied quite good-humoredly to Pope's aspersions ("some of which are in conspicuously bad taste", as Lowe points out), but in 1742 he snapped and hit below the belt in an angry and damaging pamphlet, "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 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 Alexander Pope was around four 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" (Lowe). Pope made no direct reply, but took one of 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.

Related Topics:
1735 - Brothel - Tubercular - 1743 - Lewis Theobald

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The King of Dunces

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 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, Colley Cibber 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 the 1743 Dunciad that Colley 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 the satiric hero.

Related Topics:
Mock-heroic - 1728 - 1725 - 1726 - Tragedy - Comedy - Pantomime - Opera - Parody - Epic - Chivalric love

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Writing about the degradation of taste brought on by theatrical effects, Pope quotes Cibber's own confessio in the Apology":

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:"Of that Succession of monstrous Medlies that have so long infested the Stage, and which arose upon one another alternately, at both Houses ... 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".

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Pope's notes call Cibber 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.

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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 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 any faults in his own character, praises his vices, and makes no apology for his misdeeds, so it was not merely the fact of the autobiography, but the manner of it that shocked contemporaries. His rather diffuse and chatty writing style, conventional in poetry and sometimes incoherent in prose, was bound to look even worse than it was when he squared up to a master of style like Pope, causing Henry Fielding, who was an actual Justice of the Peace, to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of Colley Cibber on a charge of "murder" of "the English language". The Tory wits were altogether so successful in their satire of Colley Cibber that the historical image of the man himself was almost obliterated, and it is as the King of Dunces that he has come down to posterity.

Related Topics:
Christian humility - Gentlemanly - Henry Fielding - Justice of the Peace

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