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Colley Cibber Plays Richard III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Albert E. Kalson
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Extract

In the closing months of 1699, the winter of his discontent, an established London actor and occasional dramatist hit upon a plan to change his public image from comedian to tragedian; he would fashion for himself a leading tragic role in which his uncontrollable voice and ungainly figure might prove to be assets rather than liabilities; in this way he would demonstrate to himself and to the world that he was unquestionably a complete master of his art. The alteration of Shakespeare's Richard III, the effort by which Colley Cibber, dramatist, attempted to aid the career of Colley Cibber, actor, was for the adapter a decided failure; Cibber's portrayal of England's most notorious monarch was too comic to be convincing. Yet in reshaping Shakespeare's play to suit the taste of the contemporary playgoer, he unknowingly manufactured one of the greatest box-office attractions in the history of the theatre. His alteration was to be the most lasting of all the many revisions of the plays of Shakespeare and was to hold the stage in preference to the original for nearly two hundred years. Although Cibber never explicitly admitted the reasons behind his choosing the role of Richard III for his tragic bow, his motivations become clear to the reader who patiently follows his career through the intricacies of An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 1975, pp. 42 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1975

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References

1 Cibber, Colley, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber written by Himself [1740], ed. Lowe, Robert W. (London, 1889), I, 73Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 84.

3 Ibid., p. 85.

4 Ibid., pp. 182–183.

5 Ibid., pp. 195–196.

6 Ibid., p. 209.

7 Ibid., pp. 222–223.

8 Ibid., p. 222.

9 Cibber, , Ximena; Or, the Heroick Daughter (London, 1719), pp. xviii–xixGoogle Scholar.

10 Apology, I, 275–276Google Scholar.

11 Wood, Alice I. Perry, The Stage History of Shakespeare's ‘King Richard the Third’ (New York, 1909), n., p. 97Google Scholar.

12 Apology, I, 276Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., pp. 130–131. Anthony Aston and Sir Richard Steele concur in Cibber's estimate of Sandford as stage villain; see Aston, A Brief Supplement to Colley Cibber, Esq.; his Lives of the late Famous Actors and Actresses [n.d.], reprinted in Lowe's, edition of the Apology, II, 306Google Scholar; and The Tatler, 14–16 02 1710, ed. Aitken, George A. (New York, 1898), III, 113Google Scholar.

14 Apology, I, 138–140Google Scholar.

15 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 (London, 1740), pp. 35–36Google Scholar.

16 Apology, I, 99–100Google Scholar.

17 The Laureat, p. 103. Barker, Richard Hindry in Mr Cibber of Drury Lane (New York, 1939), p. 203Google Scholar, comments on this pamphlet: “The sketch is too obviously malicious to be quite convincing, but it undoubtedly contains information which cannot entirely be ignored.”

18 Cibber, , The Lady's last Stake, or, the Wife's Resentment (London [1708]), “EPILOGUE Spoken by Mr. Cibber.”Google Scholar

19 The Laureat, pp. 109–110.

20 The Prompter, 19 11 1734. For an account of Hill's disappointment concerning his Athelwold, see Davies, Thomas, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq., 2nd ed. (London, 1808), I, 168–169Google Scholar.

21 The Laureat, pp. 34–35. According to Senior, F. Dorothy in The Life and Times of Colley Cibber (London, 1928), p. 146Google Scholar, O's were always pronounced as A's in court dialect. She adds: “This affectation was all very well in a Lord Foppington; but why he allowed it to issue from the lips of Richard III was best known to himself. Probably it had become a habit.”

22 The Laureat, p. 47.

23 Edgar, Sir John [Steele], The Theatre, 19–23 January 1720Google Scholar. Some years earlier Steele had praised Cibber as an interpreter of comic roles in The Tatler, 6–8 June 1710Google Scholar.

24 The Prompter, 19 November 1734Google Scholar.

25 Johnson, T. [Fielding], The Tryal of Colley Cibber, Comedian, &c. For writing a Book intitled An Apology for his Life, &c. (London, 1740), p. 21Google Scholar.

26 The Weekly Register or Universal Journal, 6 January 1733Google Scholar.

27 Apology, I, 102Google Scholar.

28 Victor, [Benjamin], The History of the Theatres of London and Dublin, From the Year 1730 to the present Time (London, 1761), II, 48Google Scholar.

29 Apology, I, 123–124Google Scholar.

30 Davies, Thomas, Dramatic Miscellanies: Consisting of Critical Observations on several Plays of Shakespeare (London, 1784), III, 441–442Google Scholar. In the same work, I, 397, Davies records one discouraging bit of Cibber's stage “business” in his interpretation of Wolsey's lines in Henry VIII, “This candle burns not clear: ‘tis I must snuff it;/ Then out it goes. …” (III, ii, 96–97): “The action of Colley Cibber, in speaking this, I have heard much commended: he imitated, with his forefinger and thumb, the extinguishing of a candle with a pair of snuffers. But surely the reader will laugh at such mimicry, which, if practised, would make a player's action as ridiculous as a monkey's.”