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 manager

Cibber's creation of the combined actor-manager role is important in the history of the British stage because he was the first in a long and illustrious line which would include such luminaries as David Garrick, Henry Irving, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Rising from actor at Drury Lane to advisor and spy (see Dictionary of Actors) on behalf of the manager Christopher Rich, Cibber worked himself by degrees into a position to take over the company. With two other actors, Thomas Doggett and Robert Wilks, he was able to buy the company outright around 1710 (the events are well documented, but the three actors' manoeuvering to squeeze out previous owners was so lengthy and complex that an approximate date must suffice here), and, after a few stormy years of power-struggle with the other two, to become in practice sole manager of Drury Lane. He wrote no more original plays, though he continued producing adaptations and patchwork plays from "hapless Shakespeare, and crucify'd Molière" (Pope) for the company, and to act on the stage. He thus 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 David Garrick, as well as the 19th-century actor-managers Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, would later structure their careers, writing, and managership around their own striking stage personalities. Cibber's forte as actor-manager was, by contrast, the manager side: he was a clever, innovative, and unscrupulous businessman who retained all his life a love of appearing on the stage, and his triumph was that he rose to a position where London audiences had, in consequence of his sole power over production and casting at Drury Lane, to put up with him as an actor.

Related Topics:
David Garrick - Henry Irving - Herbert Beerbohm Tree - Thomas Doggett - Robert Wilks

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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, but made enemies in the literary world by his obvious enjoyment of the power he wielded over authors. Many were outraged by his sharp business methods, which may be exemplified by the characteristic way he abdicated as manager in the mid-1730s: first selling his share for over 3,000 pounds, he immediately encouraged his scapegrace son Theophilus to lead the actors in a walkout to set up for themselves in the Haymarket, rendering worthless the commodity he had sold. Cibber's application on behalf of his son for a patent to perform at the Haymarket was, however, refused by the Lord Chamberlain, who was "disgusted at Cibber's conduct" (Lowe).

Related Topics:
Haymarket - Patent - Lord Chamberlain

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