Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He 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 Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare".
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, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets. He rose to ignominious fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad.
Cibber's poetical work was derided in his time and has been remembered only for being poor. His importance in British theatre history rests on his being one of the first in a long line of actor-managers, on the interest of two of his comedies as documents of evolving early 18th-century taste and ideology, and on the value of his autobiography as a historical source.
Life Cibber was born in Southampton Street, in Bloomsbury, London.Barker, p. 5; Koon, p. 5 He was the eldest child of Caius Gabriel Cibber, a distinguished sculptor originally from Denmark. His mother, Jane née Colley, came from a family of gentry from Glaston, Rutland.Ashley, p. 17; Barker, p. 4 He 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.Barker, pp. 6–7 In 1688, he joined the service of his father's patron, Lord Devonshire, who was one of the prime supporters of the Glorious Revolution.Barker, pp. 7–8 After the revolution, and at a loose end in London, he was attracted to the stage and in 1690 began work as an actor in Thomas Betterton's United Company at the Drury Lane Theatre. "Poor, at odds with his parents, and entering the theatrical world at a time when players were losing their power to businessmen-managers", on 6 May 1693 Cibber married Katherine Shore, the daughter of Matthias Shore, sergeant-trumpeter to the King, despite his poor prospects and insecure, socially inferior job.Highfill et al., p. 215
Cibber and Katherine had 12 children between 1694 and 1713. Six died in infancy, and most of the surviving children received short shrift in his will. Catherine, the eldest surviving daughter, married Colonel James Brown and seems to have been the dutiful one who looked after Cibber in old age following his wife's death in 1734. She was duly rewarded at his death with most of his estate. His middle daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, went into business. Anne had a shop that sold fine wares and foods, and married John Boultby. Elizabeth had a restaurant near Gray's Inn, and married firstly Dawson Brett, and secondly (after Brett's death) Joseph Marples.Ashley, p. 159; Barker, p. 177 His 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.Ashley, p. 153; Highfill et al., p. 218 His other son to survive infancy, James, died in or after 1717, before reaching adulthood. Colley's youngest daughter Charlotte followed in her father's theatrical footsteps, but she fell out with him and her sister Catherine, and she was cut off by the family.Ashley, pp. 157–159; Barker, p. 179
After an inauspicious start as an actor, Cibber eventually became a popular comedian, wrote and adapted many plays, and rose to become one of the newly empowered businessmen-managers. He took over the management of Drury Lane in 1710 and took a highly commercial, if not artistically successful, line in the job. In 1730, he was made Poet Laureate, an appointment which attracted widespread scorn, particularly from Alexander Pope and other Tory satirists. Off-stage, he was a keen gambler, and was one of the investors in the South Sea Company.Ashley, p. 63
In the last two decades of his life, Cibber remained prominent in society, and summered in Georgian spas such as Tunbridge Wells, Scarborough and Bath.Ashley, p. 161; Barker, p. 238 He was friendly with the writer Samuel Richardson, the actress Margaret Woffington and the memoirist–poet Laetitia Pilkington.Ashley, pp. 162–164; Barker, p. 240 Aged 73 in 1745, he made his last appearance on the stage as Pandulph in his own "deservedly unsuccessful" Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John.Fone, B. R. S. (1968) "Introduction", In: An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p. xiv In 1750, he fell seriously ill and recommended his friend and protégé Henry Jones as the next Poet Laureate.Ashley, p. 166; Barker, pp. 255–256 Cibber recovered and Jones passed into obscurity.Ashley, p. 166; Barker, pp. 256–257 Cibber died suddenly at his house in Berkeley Square, London, in December 1757, leaving small pecuniary legacies to four of his five surviving children, £1,000 each (the equivalent of approximately £180,000 in 2011) to his granddaughters Jane and Elizabeth (the daughters of Theophilus), and the residue of his estate to his eldest daughter Catherine.Barker, pp. 257–258; Koon, p. 180 He was buried on 18 December, probably at the Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street.Salmon, Eric (September 2004; online edition January 2008) "Cibber, Colley (1671–1757)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, retrieved 11 February 2010 (Subscription required for online version)British Chronicle, 19–21 December 1757; and Notes and Queries, (1893) vol. III, p. 131 and (1894) vol. VI, p. 12 quoted in Barker, p. 259; Parish records quoted by Koon, p. 178
Autobiography
Cibber's colourful autobiography An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740) was chatty, meandering, anecdotal, vain, and occasionally inaccurate.Described by Salmon in the ODNB as "smug, self-regarding, and cocksure, but also lively, vigorous, and enormously well-informed". At the time of writing the word "apology" meant an apologia, a statement in defence of one's actions rather than an expression of regret at having transgressed.
The text virtually ignores his wife and family, but 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. The Apology is vain and self-serving, as both his contemporaries and later commentators have pointed out, but it also serves as Cibber's rebuttal to his harshest critics, especially Pope.Ashley, pp. 130–131 For the early part of Cibber's career, it is unreliable in respect of chronology and other hard facts, understandably, since it was written 50 years after the events, apparently without the help of a journal or notes. Nevertheless, it is an invaluable source for all aspects of the early 18th-century theatre in London, for which documentation is otherwise scanty.Highfill et al., p. 228 Because he worked with many actors from the early days of Restoration theatre, such as Thomas Betterton and Elizabeth Barry at the end of their careers, and lived to see David Garrick perform, he is a bridge between the earlier mannered and later more naturalistic styles of performance.
The Apology was a popular work and gave Cibber a good return.Ashley, p. 130; Barker, p. 194 Its complacency infuriated some of his contemporaries, notably Pope, but even the usually critical Samuel Johnson admitted it was "very entertaining and very well done".Ashley, p. 5 It went through four editions in his lifetime, and more after his death, and generations of readers have found it an amusing and engaging read, projecting an author always "happy in his own good opinion, the best of all others; teeming with animal spirits, and uniting the self-sufficiency of youth with the garrulity of age."Hazlitt, p. 201
Actor
Cibber began his career as an actor at Drury Lane in 1690, and had little success for several years.Barker, p. 10 "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 Hero: 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."Cibber (1966a), p. 182 At this time the London stage was in something of a slump after the glories of the early Restoration period. The King's and Duke's companies had merged into a monopoly, leaving actors in a weak negotiating position and much at the mercy of the dictatorial manager Christopher Rich.Ashley, p. 82; Milhous, pp. 51–79 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".Highfill et al., p. 216 After five years, he had still not seen significant success 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.Ashley, pp. 26–27; Sullivan, pp. xiii–xiv He scored a double triumph: his comedy Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion (1696) was a great success, and his own uninhibited performance as the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion ("a coxcomb that loves to be the first in all foppery"Cibber's comment in the dramatis personae, quoted by Salmon in the ODNB.) delighted the audiences. His name was made, both as playwright and as comedian.Ashley, p. 27; Sullivan, p. xiii
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 Hero". However, his performances of such parts never pleased audiences, which wanted to see him typecast as an affected fop, a kind of character that fitted both his private reputation as a vain man, his exaggerated, mannered style of acting, and his habit of ad libbing. 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, first performed in 1696 with Cibber reprising his performance as Sir Novelty Fashion in the newly ennobled guise of Lord Foppington. Pope mentions the audience jubilation that greeted the small-framed Cibber donning Lord Foppington's enormous wig, which would be ceremoniously carried on stage in its own sedan chair. Vanbrugh reputedly wrote the part of Lord Foppington deliberately "to suit the eccentricities of Cibber's acting style".