English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate
1671 CE
to 1757 CE
Colley Cibber (November 6, 1671 – December 11, 1757) is an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate.
His colorful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style.
He writes 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which are adapted from various sources, which lead Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticize his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare".
He regards himself as first and foremost an actor and has great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he is persistent but much ridiculed.
Cibber's brash, extroverted personality does not sit well with his contemporaries, and he is frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that is thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets.
He rises to ignominious fame when he becomes the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem Dunciad.
Cibber's poetical work is derided in his time, and has been remembered only for being poor.
His importance in British theater 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.
