Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

Little recked Colley Cibber what men thought of him, provided only the thought helped him towards fortune. At a pinch, he supplied a new prologue, for the opening of a season at Drury Lane, the prosperity of which was menaced by an opposition from the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The poet begged hard that he might have the speaking of his own piece, but he was not accounted actor good enough for that, and thus he lost, not by error of his own, a particular opportunity. But the master slipped a couple of guineas into his hand, and declared that he, Colley, "was a very ingenious young man." Cibber was consoled; he had, at all events, profited by the opportunity, of making way with his "Master." To be sure, said Colley, "he knows no difference between Dryden and Durfey;" but that also made no difference to Colley.

Some weeks subsequently the "Old Batchelor" was suddenly substituted for the previously announced tragedy of "Hamlet." When all the parts had been distributed to the principal actors, Cibber, ever vigilant and ever ready, quietly remarked that they had forgotten one of the most telling parts in the whole play, Fondlewife. It was Dogget's great part. In it he was unapproachable. He was not a member of the company. Who could or would dare to face a public whose sides were still shaking with laughter at Dogget's irresistible performance of this character? No one knew the part; midday was at hand; the curtain must go up by four; the play could not be changed. What was to be done? Colley, of course, offered himself to do it, and his offer was treated with contempt;77 but the managers were compelled to accept it. Here was a golden chance which had golden results for Cibber. He played the part at night, in dress, feature, voice, and action, so like to the incomparable Dogget himself, that the house was in an uproar of delight and perplexity, – delight at beholding their favourite, and perplexity as to how it could possibly be he. For there sat Dogget himself, in the very centre of a forward row in the pit; a stimulant rather than a stumbling-block to Cibber; and the astonished witness of the newly-acquired glory of this young actor, who always seemed ready to undertake anything, and who was always sure of accomplishing whatever he undertook. "It would be too rank an affectation," he writes, "if I should not confess that to see him there, a witness of my reception, was to me as consummate a triumph as the heart of vanity could be indulged with."

Surely, this persevering fellow merited success; but still were his playfellows like his schoolfellows. They envied and decried him. If he solicited a part, he was put by, with the remark that it was not in his way. He wisely replied that any part, naturally written, should be in the way of every man who pretended to be an actor. The managers thought otherwise, and left Colley – but not to despair. He had just discerned another opportunity, and, more suo, he clutched it, worked it to a noble end, and with it achieved a double and a permanent triumph – triumph as author as well as actor.

For many years there had not been a comedy written but at the expense of husbands. They were the dupes and dolts of the piece; were betrayed and dishonoured; cudgelled and contented in their abject debasement. Audiences had had something too much of this, and Cibber was the first to perceive it. He himself was not yet sufficiently enlightened to discover that the majority in all theatrical audiences were gasping for a general purer air of refinement, and were growing disgusted with the mire in which such writers as Ravenscroft, and others with more wit than he, plunged and dragged them. Cibber, at all events, made the first step out of this slough, by producing his "Love's Last Shift." It was not readily accepted, but it forced its way to that consummation, by the testimony borne to its merits by competent judges. It was played in January 1695.78 Its grossness is scarcely inferior to that of comedies most offending in this way, and which were produced both earlier and later. Nevertheless, it marks an epoch. There was no comically outraged husband in it. The style is still that of the old, free, coarse-comedy, in all the other persons of the drama. The women lack heart and natural affection; the men are unrefined and uncivil, and both converse too much after the intolerable mode which was not yet to be driven from the sadly-abused stage. Sentiment there is, indeed, after a sort; but when it is not smart and epigrammatic, it is repulsively low and selfish. Amid the intrigues of the piece, there stands glitteringly prominent the first of the brilliant series of Cibber's fops, Sir Novelty Fashion. This character he wrote for his own acting, and his success in it established him as an actor of the first rank. The interest of the audience in Sir Novelty does not centre in him as an unprincipled rake (he is, however, sufficiently unscrupulous), as it is attracted towards him as a "beau," a man of fashion, who professes to see nothing tolerable in himself, solely in order to extort praise for his magnificence from others. He is "ugly, by Gad!" he is a "sloven!" If he wears hundreds of yards of trimming, it is to encourage the poor ribband-weavers. If all the eminent tailors in town besiege his house, it is to petition him for the pattern of his new coat. He is the first man who was ever called "beau," which title he professes to prefer to "right honourable," for the latter is inherited, while the former is owing to his surprising mien and unexampled gallantry. He does not make love to a lady; his court is paid by indicating to her why she should love him. He judges of a man of sense by the fashion of his peruke; and if he enters a lady's apartment in an unpowdered periwig, she may rest assured that he has no designs on her admiration. Sir Novelty is one of those fine gentlemen who go to both theatres on the same evening; he sits with his back to the stage, and is assured that he looks like a gentleman; for, is he not endowed with a "fertile genius for dress?"

Southerne, who had read this play and liked it, was fearful of Cibber's own part in it. "Young man," said he, "I pronounce thy play a good one. I will answer for its success, if thou dost not spoil it by thine own action!" When the play was over, Nell Gwyn's old friend, Sackville, now Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain, and the "best good man with the worst-natured muse," declared that "Love's Last Shift" was the best first play that any author, in his memory, had produced; and that for a young fellow to show himself such an actor, and such a writer, in one day, was something extraordinary. Colley, always modest, but not through vanity, nicely alludes to Dorset's known good-nature, and sets down the compliment not to his deserts, but to Dorset's wish to "encourage a young beginner." Cibber himself pronounced his comedy puerile and frothy.

It is due to Cibber to say that in this piece his own part of Sir Novelty is never so prominent as to interfere unfairly with the other personages. The piece itself, gross as it is, had a tendency towards reforming the stage. Cibber's self-imposed mission in this direction was consummated when he produced his "Careless Husband." This was one of two works of Colley which Walpole pronounced to be worthy of immortality. The other was the "Apology" for his life. The progress towards purity, made between Cibber's first comedy and the last I have named above, is nothing less than marvellous. In the "Careless Husband" he produced a piece at which the most fastidious ladies of those times might sit, and listen to, unmasked. I say "listen," for the comedy is a merely conversational piece, sparkling with wit, and with fewer lines to shock the purer sense than many an old play which still retains a place upon the stage. The descriptions here are as clever as the dialogue is spirited. If evil things come under notice, they are treated as people of decency would treat them, often gracefully, never alluringly. The incidents, told rather than acted, are painted, if I may so speak, with the consummate skill, ease, and distinctiveness of a most accomplished artist. The finest gentlemen are less vicious here than they are temporarily foolish; and one has not been long acquainted with Lady Easy before the discovery is made that she is the first pure and sensible woman that has been represented in a comedy since a world of time. There is good honest love, human weaknesses, and noble triumphs over them, in this piece. If Mr. Pope sneered at the author as a "dunce," which he was not, Mr. Pope's neighbour, Horace Walpole, has registered him rightly as a "gentleman," and traced his great success in describing gentlemen to the circumstance of his constant and familiar intercourse with that portion of "society."

In this piece, there is the most perfect of Cibber's beaux, written for his own acting; and it is to be observed, that as time progressed and fashion changed, so did he observe the progress, and in his costume illustrate the change. Lord Foppington is a different man from Sir Novelty Fashion; my lord does make love to a lady. With a respectful leer, he stares full in her face, draws up his breath, and cries, "Gad, you're handsome!" He is married, too, and has just sufficient regard for his wife to wish himself sun-burnt if he does not prefer her to his estate. He talks French enough to cite an à la what d'ye call it; has Horace enough at his memory's ends to show his breeding, by an apt quotation; and evidences his gentlemanly feeling, albeit a fine-gentlemanly feeling, on witnessing the happy union of the two wayward lovers, – Lord Morelove and Lady Betty Modish, – by the very characteristic exclamation: – "Stap my breath, if ever I was better pleased since my first entrance into human nature!"

The example of comparative purity, set in this piece, was not immediately followed; but for that, Cibber is not to blame. The "Careless Husband" was produced in 1704, and nearly seventy years elapsed before the period when Garrick positively refused to pollute the boards of Drury Lane, by reproducing thereon, on Lord Mayors' Days, one of the most filthy of the filthy plays of Ravenscroft.79 The critics of Cibber's time were unreasonable. Because he was sometimes an adapter, they called him an adapter always; and the reviewers, sick, sorry, nay maddened at his success, declared of his most original comedy, that it was "not his own." But they never had the wit to discover whence he had stolen it.

He took the adverse criticism with philosophy and good-humour, – as he took most things. By the last, he once saved ten shillings a week of his salary. Rich announced the intended reduction to him, with the remark, that even then he would have as much as Goodman ever had, – whose highest salary was forty shillings a week. "Aye!" said Cibber, laughing, "and Goodman was forced to go on the highway, to help him to live!" To save Colley from the same desperate course, Rich made no reduction in his salary.

We obtain from Croker's Boswell, an instance of Cibber's care in perfecting a piece, and his readiness in adapting passing incidents to suit his purpose. Mrs. Brett, the divorced Countess of Macclesfield, and long thought to be the mother of Savage, the poet, was the second wife of that Colonel Brett, whose opinion as to what would best please the town was eagerly sought after by authors and actors. His first wife, a great leader of fashion, had taken the handsome fellow from the hands of bailiffs, married him, and ultimately left him a wealthy widower. For the taste and judgment of the second Mrs. Brett, Cibber had the highest respect; and he consulted her on every scene of the "Careless Husband," as he wrote it. At some one of these consultations, he probably heard of the too great civility of the Colonel to his wife's maid, both of whom Mrs. Brett once found fast asleep in two chairs. The lady was satisfied to leave token of her presence, by casting her lace handkerchief over her husband's neck. Of the otherwise painful incident she never took any notice; and let us hope that the Colonel profited by the silent rebuke, as Sir Charles Easy did. However this may be, Cibber incorporated the incident into his play, where it heightens the interest of one of the most interesting scenes.

Cibber was essentially a comic actor. His Richard partook very much of the manner of his Sir Novelty Fashion; and his "A horse! a horse!" used to excite the hilarity of his audience. He avows, gracefully enough, that his want of a strong and full voice soon cut short his hopes of making any figure in tragedy. He adds, with some conceit, and more affected modesty, "I have been many years since convinced, that whatever opinion I might have of my own judgment or capacity to amend the palpable errors that I saw our tragedians most in favour to commit, yet the auditors who would have been sensible of such amendments (could I have made them) were so very few, that my best endeavour would have been but an unavailing labour, or what is yet worse, might have appeared, both to our actors and to many auditors, the vain mistake of my own self-conceit; for so strong, so very near indispensable, is that one article of voice, in the forming of a good tragedian, that an actor may want any other qualification whatsoever, and yet will have a better chance for applause than he will ever have, with all the skill in the world, if his voice is not equal to it." Colley admirably explains this, by adding, … "I say, for applause only; but applause does not always stay for, nor always follow, intrinsic merit. Applause will frequently open, like a young hound upon a wrong scent; and the majority of auditors, you know, are generally composed of babblers, that are profuse of their voices, before there is anything on foot that calls for them. Not but, I grant, to lead, or mislead, the many, will always stand in some rank of a necessary merit; yet, when I say a good tragedian, I mean one, in opinion of whose real merit the best judges would agree."

Cibber is so perfect as a critic, he so thoroughly understands the office and so intelligibly conveys his opinions, that it were well if all gentlemen who may hereafter aspire to exercise the critical art, were compelled to study his Apology as medical students are to become acquainted with their Celsus. No one should be admitted to practise theatrical criticism who has not got by heart Cibber's descriptions of Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield; or who fail on their being examined as to their proficiency in the Canons of Colley.

Then, if there be one circumstance more than another for which Cibber merits our affectionate regard, it is for the kindly nature with which he tempers justice, and the royal generosity which he displays in attributing certain alleged excellences in his own acting, to his careful study of the acting of others. If Cibber played Sparkish and Sir Courtly Nice with applause, it was entirely owing, so he nobly avows, to the ideas and impressions he had received from Mountfort's acting of those characters. Although his Richard was full of defects, yet he attracted the town by it. He assigns this attraction to the fact of his attempting to reproduce the style and method of one of the greatest of Richards, – Sandford.80

While praising others he is ever ready to disparage himself; and he as heartily ridicules his insufficient voice, his meagre person, and his pallid complexion, as any enemy might have done for him. He exalts the spirit, ease, and readiness of Vanbrugh, and denounces the puerility and frothy stage-language of his own earlier dramas, accepting heartily Congreve's judgment on "Love's Last Shift," which "had in it a great many things that were like wit, that in reality were not wit." He courageously pronounces the condemnation of his "Love in a Riddle," to be the just judgment of an enlightened audience. In the casting of a play, Colley was contented to take any part left to him, after the other great men had picked, chosen, rejected, and settled for themselves; and a couple of subordinate characters in the "Pilgrim" were as readily undertaken by him and as carefully acted as his Richard, Sir Francis, or Master Slender.

To his own alteration of Shakspeare's "Richard III.," he alludes with some diffidence. There is no trace of self-complacency in his remarks. Colley's adversaries, however, have denounced him for this act as virulently as if he had committed a great social crime. But whatever may be said as to our old friend's "mangling of Shakspeare," the piece which he so mangled has ever since kept the stage, and it is Cibber's and not Shakspeare's "Richard" which is acted by many of our chief players, who have the coolness, at the same time, to protest that their reverence for Shakspeare's text is a pure homage rendered to a divine inspiration.

There were actors of Cibber's days who disliked to play villains like Richard, lest the audience should mistake the counterfeit for the real character. But if people thought Cibber vicious because he played a vicious fellow to the life, he took it as a compliment. His voice was certainly too weak and piping for tragedy, but as he philosophically remarks, "If the multitude were not in a roar, to see me in Cardinal Wolsey, I could be sure of them in Alderman Fondlewife. If they hated me in Iago, in Sir Fopling they took me for a fine gentleman. If they were silent at Syphax, no Italian Eunuch was more applauded than I when I sung in Sir Courtly. If the morals of Æsop were too grave for them, Justice Shallow was as simple and as merry an old rake as the wisest of our young ones could wish me."

Cibber had a fine perception of the good and the true. That the "Beggar's Opera" should beat "Cato" by a run of forty nights does not induce him to believe that any man would be less willing to be accounted the author of the tragedy than of the opera, the writer of which, he says with some humour, "I knew to be an honest, good-natured man, and who, when he had descended to write more like one in the cause of virtue, had been as unfortunate as others of that class."

Colley had quite as just a perception of the different value of fair and unfair criticism. Of theatrical criticism, in the proper sense of the word, there was, in those days, none. But this lack of effective criticism was not caused by incapacity for the task on the part of writers; as may be seen in the admirable critical sketches in Cibber's "Life." Indeed, the capability existed from a remote period, – a fact acknowledged by those who have read Sir Thomas Overbury's finished summary of the character of an "Actor."

In place of criticism, however, there was a system of assault by the means of unfounded reports. Mist's Journal was foremost in attacking Cibber and his colleagues, but "they hardly ever hit upon what was really wrong in us," says Colley, who took these would-be damaging paragraphs, founded upon hearsay, with perfect indifference. Wilks and Booth were much more sensitive, and preferred that public answer should be made; but Cibber, secure, perhaps too secure, he says, in his contempt for such writers, would not consent to this. "I know of but one way to silence authors of that stamp," he says, "which was, to grow insignificant and good for nothing, and then we should hear no more of them. But while we continued in the prosperity of pleasing others, and were not conscious of having deserved what they said of us, why should we gratify the little spleen of our enemies, by wincing to it, or give them fresh opportunities to dine upon any reply they might make to our publicly taking notice of them?"

Cibber cared not for Mist's Journal while such a man as Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, made a friend of him. To this Duke, a dull Earl once expressed his opinion that Mr. Cibber was not sufficiently "good company" for his grace. "He is good enough for me," said the Duke; "but I can believe that he would not suit you." A peer who, at least, had wit enough to enjoy Quin's society, had the ill-manners to say, "What a pity it is, Mr. Quin, you are an actor!" "Why," said ever-ready James, "what would you have me be? – A lord?" Cibber, like Quin, was proud of his vocation. Colley originated nearly eighty characters during his career, from 1691 to his retirement in 1733. Among them are the grand old fops, the crafty or the inane old men, the dashing soldier, and the impudent lacquey. In tragedy, he was nearly always wrong. Of middle size, fair complexion, and with a shrill voice, apt to crack, and therefore to make him ridiculous in serious parts, he was, of "shape, a little clumsy," says one sketcher of his character, – while "his shape was finely proportioned," is the account of a second. Mr. Urban says that when Cibber had to represent ridiculous humour, there was a mouth in every nerve, and he was eloquent, though mute. "His attitudes were pointed and exquisite; his expression was stronger than painting; he was beautifully absorbed by the character, and demanded and monopolised attention; his very extravagances were coloured with propriety." That the public highly appreciated him is clear from the enthusiasm with which they hailed his occasional returns to the stage, between 1733 and 1745, when he finally withdrew, after acting Pandulph in his "Papal Tyranny." His Shallow, in those occasional days, was especially popular. "His transition from asking the price of ewes, to trite but grave reflections on mortality, was so natural, and attended by such an unmeaning roll of his small pigs'-eyes, that perhaps no actor was ever superior in the conception and execution of such solemn insignificancy."

The general idea of Cibber has been fixed by the abuse and slander of Pope. In the dissensions of these two men, Cibber had the advantage of an adversary who keeps his temper while he sharpens his wit, and maintains self-respect while courteously crushing his opponent;81 but even Pope, who so hated Cibber, could praise the "Careless Husband;" and a man, lauded by Pope, who detested him; by Walpole, who despised players; and by Johnson, who approved of his "Apology," must have been superior to many of his contemporaries. He wrote the best comedy of his time, was the only adapter of Shakspeare's plays whose adaptation survives – to show his superiority, if not over the original poet, at least over all other adapters; and of all borrowers from the French, not one reaped such honour and profit as he did by his "Nonjuror," which also still lives in "The Hypocrite." Of all English managers, he was the most successful and prosperous – only to be approached in later days by Garrick. Of all English actors, he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship, or elected a member of White's Club. None laughed louder than he did at the promotion, or at those friends of his to whom it gave unmixed dissatisfaction. If a sarcasm was launched at him from the stage, on this account, he was the first to recognise it, by his hilarity, in the boxes. Further, when necessity compelled him to plead in person in a suit at the bar, his promptitude, eloquence, and modest bearing, crowned by success, demonstrated what he might have accomplished, had he been destined to wear the wig and gown. To sum up all – after more than forty years of labour, not unmixed by domestic troubles, he retired, with an ample fortune, to enjoy which he had nearly a quarter of a century before him. Such a man was sure to be both hated and envied – though only by a few.

Of Cibber's being elected to White's Club House, Davies sneeringly remarks: – "And so, I suppose, might any man be who wore good clothes, and paid his money when he lost it. He fared most sumptuously with Mr. Arthur (the proprietor) and his wife, and gave a trifle for his dinner. After he had dined, when the club-room door was opened, and the laureate was introduced, he was saluted with the loud and joyous acclamation of, 'Oh, King Coll! come in, King Coll! Welcome, King Colley!' And this kind of gratulation," adds Davies, "Mr. Victor thought was very gracious and very honourable!" Considering the time, about 1733, such a greeting had nothing offensive in it. If there had been, Cibber was just the man to resent it, at the sore cost of the offender, whether the latter were Chesterfield or Devonshire, Cholmondeley or Rockingham, Sir John Cope, Mrs. Oldfield's General Churchill, or, the last man likely to be so audacious – Bubb Doddington himself.

Among them all, Colley kept his own to the last. A short time before that last hour arrived, Horace Walpole hailed him, on his birthday, with a good morrow, and "I am glad, sir, to see you looking so well." "Egad, sir," replied the old gentleman – all diamonded, and powdered, and dandified, "at eighty-four, it's well for a man that he can look at all." Therein lay one point of Cibber's character, – the making the best of circumstances.