46 Facts About Colley Cibber

Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate.

Colley Cibber 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 Moliere [and] hapless Shakespeare".

Colley Cibber 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.

Colley Cibber rose to ignominious fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad.

Colley Cibber was the eldest child of Caius Gabriel Cibber, a distinguished sculptor originally from Denmark.

Colley Cibber 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.

Colley Cibber was duly rewarded at his death with most of his estate.

Colley Cibber's only son to reach adulthood, Theophilus, became an actor at Drury Lane, and was an embarrassment to his father because of his scandalous private life.

Colley Cibber took over the management of Drury Lane in 1710 and took a highly commercial, if not artistically successful, line in the job.

Cibber's colourful autobiography An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian was chatty, meandering, anecdotal, vain, and occasionally inaccurate.

The text virtually ignores his wife and family, but Colley 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.

Colley Cibber began his career as an actor at Drury Lane in 1690, and had little success for several years.

However, the return of two-company rivalry created a sudden demand for new plays, and Colley Cibber seized this opportunity to launch his career by writing a comedy with a big, flamboyant part for himself to play.

Colley Cibber scored a double triumph: his comedy Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion was a great success, and his own uninhibited performance as the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion delighted the audiences.

Colley Cibber's name was made, both as playwright and as comedian.

Later in life, when Colley 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".

Pope mentions the audience jubilation that greeted the small-framed Colley Cibber donning Lord Foppington's enormous wig, which would be ceremoniously carried on stage in its own sedan chair.

Colley Cibber was on the stage in every year but two between his debut in 1690 and his retirement in 1732, playing more than 100 parts in all in nearly 3,000 documented performances.

Colley Cibber essayed tragic parts in plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Dryden and others, but with less success.

Colley Cibber returned to the stage for a final time in 1745 as Cardinal Pandulph in his play Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John.

Colley Cibber reused parts of Woman's Wit for The School Boy.

Colley Cibber's confidence was apparently restored by the success of the two plays, and he returned to more original writing.

Colley Cibber's periwig has fallen off, an obvious suggestion of intimacy and abandon, and an opening for Lady Easy's tact.

Many of Colley Cibber's plays, listed below, were hastily cobbled together from borrowings.

Colley Cibber rewrote Corneille's Le Cid with a happy ending as Ximena in 1712.

The Provoked Husband was an unfinished fragment by John Vanbrugh that Colley Cibber reworked and completed to great commercial success.

Colley Cibber's last play, Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John was "a miserable mutilation of Shakespeare's King John".

Colley Cibber set a pattern for the line of more charismatic and successful actors that were to succeed him in this combination of roles.

Colley Cibber was a clever, innovative, and unscrupulous businessman who retained all his life a love of appearing on the stage.

Colley Cibber's 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.

Colley Cibber rescued its comic subplot as Damon and Phillida.

Colley 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.

On behalf of his son, Colley Cibber applied for a letters patent to perform at the Haymarket, but it was refused by the Lord Chamberlain, who was "disgusted at Colley Cibber's conduct".

Colley Cibber's verses had few admirers even in his own time, and Colley Cibber acknowledged cheerfully that he did not think much of them.

However, Colley Cibber was at least as distinguished as his immediate four predecessors, three of whom were playwrights rather than poets.

The most famous conflict Colley Cibber had was with Alexander Pope.

Notwithstanding, Colley Cibber put the play on at Drury Lane with himself playing the part of Plotwell, but the play was not well received.

Pope published a pamphlet satirising Colley Cibber and continued his literary assault for the next 25 years.

Colley Cibber was selected for political reasons, as he was a supporter of the Whig government of Robert Walpole, while Pope was a Tory.

In merry old England it once was a rule, The King had his Poet, and his Fool:But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, That Colley Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet.

Apart from the personal quarrel, Pope had reasons of literary appropriateness for letting Colley Cibber take the place of his first choice of King, Lewis Theobald.

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.

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.

Once Pope struck, Colley Cibber became an easy target for other satirists.

Colley Cibber was attacked as the epitome of morally and aesthetically bad writing, largely for the sins of his autobiography.

Additionally, Colley Cibber consistently fails to see fault 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.