CIBBER, Colley (1671-1757), actor, dramatist, and laureate, was the eldest son of Caius Cibber, and was born in London. Sent in 1682 to the free school at Grantham, he distinguished himself by passing through all its grades, from lowest to highest, and by producing an “Oration” on the death of Charles II.—whom he had seen feeding his ducks in the park—and an “Ode” on the accession of James IL, with whom he had sat at worship in Whitehall ChapeL He was removed in 1687 on the chance of election into Winchester College. Caius Cibber, however, had not then presented that institution with his statue of William of Wykeham, and his son’s claim was ignored. The boy went to London, and amused himself with the theatre, for which he had a passion. It was presently decided, on his own recommendation, that he should not return to school, but that he should go straight to Cambridge, for certain colleges in which university the sculptor was then executing commissions; meantime he was invited to Chatsworth, the seat of his father’s patron. On his way thither, the Revolution broke out, and father and son met at Nottingham, where Colley Cibber was received, at the instance and in the place of Cains Cibber, into Devonshire’s company of volunteers. He served in the bloodless campaign that resulted in the coronation of the Prince of Orange, and on its conclusion, at his father’s request, presented a Latin petition to the earl—afterwards duke—imploring his interest and protection. By that nobleman’s desire the young man returned to London, and ere long his craze for things histrionic enrolled him in Betterton’s grand company of actors. After playing “full three quarters of a year” without salary, as was then the custom of all apprentice actors, he began to be paid ten shillings a week. His rendering of the little part of the chaplain in Otway’s Orphan, procured him a rise of five shillings; and a subsequent impersonation, on an emergency, and at the author’s request, of Lord Touchwood in the Double Dealer, advanced him, on Congreve’s recommendation, to a pound a week. On this he contrived to live with his wife and family, and to produce a play— Lords Last Shift. Of this comedy, highly praised by Southern and Dorset, Congreve said that it “had only a great many things that were like wit in it;” Vanbrugh honoured it by writing his excellent Relapse as a sequel. In 1697 Cibber was included by Collier among the reprehensible in the famous Short View. In 1704 he brought out, for himself and Mrs Oldfield, his best play, the Careless Husband, the most striking scene in which is said to have been suggested by an episode in the life of the notorious Mrs Brett (better known as the Countess Macclesfield) to whom the MS. had keen submitted. In 1711, with Collier, Wilks, and Dogget, he became a patentee of Drury Lane theatre, where, in 1712, Addison’s Cato was produced under his management. In 1715, on the occasion of the Rebellion, Cibber adapted the Nonjuror from Molière’s Tartuffe; the play, a mere pièce de circonstance, ran eighteen nights, and the author received from George I,, to whom it was dedicated, a present of two hundred guineas. In 1726 he pleaded the cause of the patentees against Sir Richard Steele (who had succeeded Collier as manager of Drury Lane) be fore Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, and won his case. In 1730 Mrs Oldfield died, and her loss was followed in 1731 by that of Wilks; Cibber, who had been named laureate on the death of Eusden, sold his share in the theatre, and retired from the stage, and only appeared thereafter on rare occasions. In 1742 occurred the quarrel with Pope, which resulted in the exclusion of Theobald and the elevation of Cibber as the hero of the D>ιntiad. At seventy-four he appeared on the stage for thedast time as Panulph in his own poor tragedy of Papal Tyranny. His conversation (of which Johnson said that “taking from it all that he ought not to have said, he was a poor creature ”) was agreeable to the last, and he died as full of worldly honours as of years.

Cibber’s reputation has suffered greatly from the acrid censure of Pope and the rough scorn of Johnson. There can be no doubt that he was by no means an unamiable character, and that he was deficient neither in wit, sense, tact, nor feeling. The little passages of dramatic criticism and reflection scattered through his Apology, while they prove his extreme perspicuity and excellence of experience, are perhaps the most delicate and subtle of their kind in the literature of his time; while the fact that his version of Ridιard III. should have kept the stage for a century is of itself no mean proof that his scenic sagacity and instinct were remarkable. As a dramatist, he has neither the broad humour and strong comic vein of Vanbrugh, nor the fine English and the masterfulness of Congreve, nor the frolicsome gaiety and airy fancy of Farquhar. His characters are flat; his plots are neither natural nor well conducted; his dialogue is often flippant. He attempted, moreover, to extract a highly moral end from his sympathetic studies of social weakness and impurity, and the result (particularly in his continuation of Vanbrugh’s unfinished Journey to London) is not happy. His Odes, the subject of several of Johnson’s keenest pleasantries, are wretched. His best work is the Apology for his Life, a book which the same critic declared to be a standing proof that any man might do well who was able and willing to keep to his own ground.

See An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian (London, 1822); Cibber, Dramatic Works (London, 1777, 5 vols.); Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. ; and Isaac D’Israeli, Quarrels of Authors.