Colley+Cibber

Colley Cibber __ Biographical Information __ Colley Cibber (1671-1757) was an accomplished actor, playwright, and poet who was active from the late 17th century to the mid 18th century in London, England (Ashley 1). Many of his specialties were closely related, and he became well-known individually in each capacity. As a playwright, he achieved significant success: over his lifetime, he wrote both comedy and tragedy, and was praised for both (Ashley 22). As a poet, he was not well-known for the quality of his verses, but used them to present personal opinions of politics and society (Ashley 87-88). He also used his writing, both as plays and otherwise, to engage in a well-documented rivalry with poet Alexander Pope, who negatively immortalized Cibber in his work //The Dunciad// (Ashley 108-12). However, this examination of Colley Cibber will be more focused on his role as an actor, which spanned 2,936 documented performances (Ashley 20). While he did appear in some of the plays that he wrote, Cibber’s acting career was both long-lasting and unique, and he was well-known for playing a specific character trope in comedy that he developed over time: The Fop (Ashley 8).

__ Colley Cibber as a Performer: Specialized Roles __ While Colley Cibber did perform numerous roles—especially once he started to become a successful playwright, where variety was more accessible—he was most well known as a comic actor. Due to his higher pitched voice and unimpressive physique, he was not often taken seriously or given serious roles (Ashley 9). Thus, he decided to delve into comedy to find success, and created a flamboyant and extravagant public persona in order to facilitate that (Ashley 9). After writing //Love’s Last Shift// and writing himself the role of Sir Novelty Fashion, he found his most successful character type: that of the extravagant, exaggerated fop (Ashley 9-10). He altered his costume, physicality, and even his accent to achieve huge success with these characters, and continued on to play many in numerous plays following his portrayal of Sir Novelty Fashion (Ashley 10). While he was described as a “coxcomb” in most of these roles, and was certainly cast as an archetype (even by himself), he did attempt some variety across his fop characters, which made him even more well-known for playing them (Ashley 11). His attempts at tragedies got mixed results: some were successful, and others were not at all (Ashley 12). It is evident that Cibber very much had a specialized type of role and, despite a few attempts outside of it, consistently played a fop character in comedies throughout his career.

This is further discussed in Cibber autobiography //An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber//, which contains many descriptions of his opinions and philosophies about acting. Something he expounds upon is the difference between acting in comedies and tragedies, and implies that comedic actors are not given the same respect as dramatic actors are (Cibber 132). He also discusses the differences in what costumes the actors of the two genres got to use: more elaborate costuming was seen as something that was reserved for dramatic actors (Cibber 132). However, Cibber insists that comedic actors were to be just as respected, and favorably compared his performance as Lord Foppington to the dramatic role of Cesar Borgia (Cibber 132). This demonstrates that Cibber viewed himself as a primarily comedic actor, and viewed his performances through a lens heavily influenced by genre. This also indicates that Cibber was very aware of and attached to his signature roles as the fop, and viewed these roles as well-regarded as any dramatic role.



__ Discussions of Cibber as a Performer: Cibber’s Public Persona __ As a performer, Cibber made a mark in his acting and the specialized roles that he played. The article "Book Review: An Appreciation of Colley Cibber, Actor and Dramatist, Together with a Reprint of His Play 'The Careless Husband” by Kathleen Goyne highlights Cibber’s importance as an actor in the plays that he wrote. This article specifically focuses on his play //The Careless Husband//, and Goyne demonstrates the importance of paying attention to both Cibber’s “work and his personality” (355). Thus, Goyne emphasizes Cibber’s public persona and personality as an important part of reading his plays, implying that it was an important part of his acting as well. This is consistent with much of what was written about Cibber’s most specialized fop characters: that they were also built on the public persona that he created for himself.

Similarly, an issue of //The Spectator// outlines Cibber’s personal philosophy of acting successfully. According to the author, Cibber told him that his strategy of “taking an audience” was to “insinuate [himself] into their affections and passions” (288). Cibber also adds that a successful performer has to provide an “artful management of the look, voice, and gesture”, from which the author concludes “the advantages of action, show, and dress on these occasions are allowable” (//The Spectator// 288). This highlights the earlier point made about Cibber’s persona being an important part of his acting: he paid significant attention to the manner of his voice, costuming, and gesture in order to inspire an emotional response from the audience. He led them to react to his actions, as well as recognize his public persona, in order to make his characters more exciting and likeable.

__ Reviews of Cibber’s Acting in Plays: Comedies and Tragedies __ The first review is called "Seeing Is Believing: Performing Reform in Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift" by Aparna Gollapudi. It is of Cibber’s performance as Sir Novelty Fashion in his own play called //Love’s Last Shift.// It was one of his most popular roles and is described by Gollapundi as performed with “disguises and masquerades” (3) and with an “excessively high and elaborate wig” (5). Thus, the nature of much of Cibber’s comic acting was based on costuming and their cultural connotation. In fact, the wig became such an integral part of the character that Cibber altered some of the lines of the play to mention the wig, indicating that part of his performance was based on extravagance and elaborate use of costume and props (Gollapundi 9). This extravagance in acting and character became a staple of many of Cibber’s comedic performances, and came hand-in-hand with his portrayal of Foppery as well (Ashley 9). Thus, while Cibber was a popular playwright of many comedies, his performances in many similar types of roles were also a significant facet of their success, and his, to the general public.



While Cibber was most well-known for his roles in comedies, he also wrote and acted in tragedies. One such portrayal was in a rewritten version of // Richard III, // which Cibber wrote himself as well (Fawcett 950). His performance in that play is reviewed the article titled “The Overexpressive Celebrity and the Deformed King: Recasting the Spectacle as Subject in Colley Cibber’s // Richard III // ”. This review highlights Cibber’s concern with performing Richard III’s so-called “deformed” body with clarity, indicating that he focused much of his attention on the physicality of his performances (Fawcett 951). He also stressed the character’s physicality and focused on it more intensely within the text of the play, indicating that he was playing to his strengths as a performer (Fawcett 952). Furthermore, it is stated that Cibber’s physical stature—he was “rotund” and “beady-eyed”—and had a “squeaky” voice that “screamed through” his role as the king, made him well-suited to a role of a man who is not considered good-looking, further emphasizing the nature of Cibber’s roles as not being those of a typical hero of 18 th century drama (Fawcett 954). Interestingly, some compared this role to Cibber’s performance of Sir Novelty from // Love’s Last Shift //, indicating that is was performed with a similar sense of grandeur and extravagance as his comedic characters (Fawcett 960). Thus, while Cibber did maintain somewhat separate techniques to play tragic and comedic characters, his performances maintained an air of exaggeration and volume across genres, demonstrating that this was Cibber’s preferred form of performance.

__ Scholarly Discussions of Cibber’s Performances: The Fop as a Social Commentary __ Cibber’s performances, as well as the writing of his preferred comedic roles, did experience an evolution over time. The article "Rethinking Reform Comedies: Colley Cibber's Desiring Women" mentioned this evolution in discussing Cibber’s various fop characters, commenting on their increasing “viciousness” across time (McGirr 386). The aforementioned Sir Novelty Fashion from //Love’s Last Shift—//written in 1688—was portrayed and performed as an extravagant, yet basically harmless, man. However, Lord George Brilliant from //The Lady’s Last Stakes—//written in 1707—is much more brutal and violent (McGirr 386-387). Similarly, Foppington from //The Careless Husband//, also performed famously by Cibber, is generally sexually aggressive with a female character in the play—which is behavior that is neither harmless nor comedic (McGirr 387). McGirr also points out that Cibber’s performance of the fop characters also highlights their moral ambiguity and dubious ethical characterization: their excessive and faulty fashion represented their faulty social skills and awareness, and Cibber performs them this way purposefully (387). In this way, McGirr argues that he is presenting these fops to be more similar than different to the rake characters in the plays, and is playing them satirically (388). The larger implications of this, and McGirr’s argument, is that Cibber’s presentation and performance of fops—among others—in his comedies make them closer to the reform style than sentimental, as they are so often characterized. (388). Furthermore, it is argued that women are presented as having to choose between two unsuitable matches between a rake and a fop, both of whom encompass misogynistic tendencies in Cibber’s take on comedies (McGirr 388). All of this indicates that Cibber’s performance of fops was deliberate as a social commentary: his characteristically extravagant portrayals were meant to be social critiques of acceptable behavior, which casts his acting choices in a different light. While the fop is meant to be a somewhat light-hearted character in comedy, Cibber’s portrayal of them may also represent a more serious facet of the character’s concept, and that may have been his intention in his performances.

This concept of Cibber utilizing his performance as the fop as a social commentary is expanded on in the article "Reading the Surfaces of Colley Cibber's the Careless Husband" by Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace. This article focuses mainly on Cibber’s play //The Careless Husband//, and its representation of performance as representation of societal roles. Its commentary on Cibber’s performance of Lord Foppington—his second time in the role, as the play is a response to //The Relapse//—is called a self-reference, which means that it plays to Cibber’s reputation as a fop in his private life as well as his public persona (Kowaleski-Wallace 475). Thus, he references the play’s subjects of performance and representation by reminding the audience of his own social performances, thereby using his celebrity status in the performance of his roles. This adds another layer to Cibber as an actor: his fame in acting, writing, and poetry impacted the way he performed his roles, and also impacted how he wrote roles for himself. This indicates that his signature role as fop was also one he created with his own performance in mind, demonstrating that he would cater to his own strengths and abilities in acting.



__ How Cibber May Have Played his Roles __ Cibber is well documented as being very effective in playing fops, and is known as having portrayed these characters in a form that is both extravagant and hyperbolic (Ashley 9-11). In both his own accounts and the accounts of others, Cibber is noted for his effective use of costume, hyperbolic gesture, and exaggerated word pronunciation to portray a comic, ridiculous gentleman. Even his critics acknowledged his effectiveness in these roles. One of these critics was the author of //The Laureat//, which was a direct response to Cibber’s autobiographical work //An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber//. While this book was written largely to criticize Cibber, it did agree that he was effective in his comedic roles—although this was said in the context of his inability to act in tragedies—due to the quality of his “voice and action” (//The Laureat// 34). Furthermore, a largely complimentary book about Cibber, titled //An Apology for the Life of Mr. T- C-// and functions as a response to //The Laureat//, continues to emphasize that Cibber’s strength as a performer was “hitting justly the humor” in his comic roles (74). This indicates the Cibber’s comedic timing and manner must have been effectively done, and that he played the fop convincingly.

Furthermore, //The Laureat// cites Cibber’s tendency to carry his stage presence into persona off-stage, which it heavily criticizes (//The Laureat// 15). However, this is very telling of how Cibber actually functioned as a performer: comic roles were his clear strong suit, and were so successful that even his harshest critics could agree on his effectiveness in these roles. The manner in which he exaggerated his movements and voice must have been particularly pronounced, if such a strong reaction was given to these personas in his personal life. This also demonstrates how he must have played his tragedies: if his voice and manner did not suit the dramatic moments, he must have been unable to play these roles convincingly. This is especially evident if the roles needed to have been approached with subtlety or delicacy: Cibber’s acting style did not seem to encompass these terms based on these reviews. Works Cited Ashley, Leonard R. N. //Colley Cibber.// New York: Twayne, 1965. Print. Twayne's English authors series, TEAS 17; Twayne's English authors series, 17.

Cibber, Colley. //An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber : Comedian, and Late// // Patentee of the Theatre-Royal. With an Historical View of the Stage during His Own Time. Written //// by Himself. // London: Printed by John Watts for the author, 1740. Web. ECCO database; ECCO database.

Cibber, Theophilus. //An Apology for the Life of Mr. T- C-, Comedian. : Being a Proper// // Sequel to the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian. With an Historical View of the Stage to the Present Year. Supposed to Be Written by Himself. In the Stile and Manner of the Poet Laureat. // London: Printed for J. Mechell at the King's-Arms in Fleet Street, 1740. Web. ECCO; Eighteenth century collections online.

Fawcett J.H. "The Overexpressive Celebrity and the Deformed King: Recasting the Spectacle As Subject in Colley Cibber's Richard III." //PMLA// 126.4 (2011): 950-965. Print.

Gollapudi, Aparna. "Seeing Is Believing: Performing Reform in Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift." //Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research// 19.1 (2004): 1-21. Print.

Goyne, Kathleen. "Book Review: An Appreciation of Colley Cibber, Actor and Dramatist, Together with a Reprint of His Play 'The Careless Husband'."//The Modern Language// // Review // 25.3 (1930): 355-356. Print.

Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. "Reading the Surfaces of Colley Cibber's the Careless Husband."//SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900// 40.3 (2000): 473-489. Print.

McGirr E.M. "Rethinking Reform Comedies: Colley Cibber's Desiring Women." //Eighteenth-// // Century Studies // 46.3 (2013): 385-397. Print.

// The Laureat: Or, the Right Side of Colley Cibber, Esq ; Containing, Explanations, Amendments //// and Observations, on a Book Intituled, an Apology for the Life, and Writings of Mr. // // Colley Cibber. Not Written by Himself. ... To Which Is Added, the History of the Life, Manners and Writings of Æsopus. // London: Printed for J. Roberts, and sold at the pamphlet-shops of London and Westminster, 1740. Web. Eighteenth century collections online.

// The Spectator In Eight Volumes. ... // Vol. Volume 7. London, 1793. //Eighteenth Century// // Collections Online. // Gale. University of Maryland College Park. 1 Nov. 2016 Image Citations "Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life Of, Third Edition, 1750." //Amazon.com//. Amazon, Inc, n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2016.

"Colley Cibber." //National Portrait Gallery//. National Portrait Gallery, London, n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2016.

Simon, John. "Colley Cibber." //National Portrait Gallery//. National Portrait Gallery, London, n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2016.