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.

Plays

The plays below were produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane unless otherwise stated. The dates given are of first known performance.

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• Love's Last Shift (Comedy, 1696)
• Woman's Wit (Comedy, 1697)
• Xerxes (Tragedy, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1699)
• Love Makes a Man (Comedy, 1701)
• The School Boy (Comedy, 26 October 1702)
• She Would and She Would Not (Comedy, 26 November 1702)
• The Careless Husband (Comedy, 7 December, 1704)
• Perolla and Izadora (Tragedy, 3 December, 1705)
• The Comical Lovers (Comedy, Haymarket, 4 February, 1707)
• The Double Gallant (Comedy, Haymarket, 1 November, 1707)
• The Lady's Last Stake (Comedy, Haymarket, 13 December 1707)
• The Rival Fools (Comedy, 11 January, 1709)
• The Rival Queans (Comical-Tragedy, Haymarket, 29 June 1710)
• Ximena (Tragedy, 28 November, 1712)
• Venus and Adonis (Masque, 1715)
• Bulls and Bears (Farce, 1 December, 1715)
• The Refusal (Comedy, 14 February, 1721)
• Cæsar in Egypt (Tragedy, 9 December, 1724)
• The Provoked Husband (with Vanbrugh, comedy, 10 January 1728)
• Love in a Riddle (Pastoral, 7 January, 1729)
• Damon and Phillida (Pastoral Farce, Haymarket, 1729)

Cibber also adapted Shakespeare's Richard III (1700), King John as Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John (1745) and Molière's Tartuffe as The Nonjuror in 1717.

Related Topics:
Shakespeare - Richard III - 1700 - King John - 1745 - Molière - Tartuffe - 1717

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