Cibber did not mind being portrayed as a fool. That, after all was the character he had created as Sir Novelty Fashion in Love’s Last Shift (1696), and which he continued to play in public throughout his life. But a charge of immorality did bother him, for he was anxious to be considered a moral man. Apparently he was—his enemies charged him with gambling, highhandedness and plagiarism, but his life seems to have been surprisingly free of the kind of scandal that plagued most theatrical personalities. His plays embody the materialistic middle-class values which he champions in his later prose writings, and of all Pope’s arrows, “And has not Colley still his lord and whore?”[10] seems to have struck deepest. It may be significant that the bawdy house story follows close upon Cibber’s plaintive remonstrance against this line.
As long as Cibber was in his own territory, he could answer Pope orally, but when he at last decided to reply in print, he was at a distinct disadvantage. The actor has a notorious disregard for the written word; his own experience on stage tells him that what is being said has less impact than the manner in which it is delivered. Cibber’s lack of concern for language had been well publicized. His comment that Anne Oldfield “Out-did her usual Out-doing”[11] was never allowed to rest, and Fielding rarely missed an opportunity to use Cibber’s “paraphonalia” against him; that the most merciless parody of his Odes could scarcely sink to the depths of the originals, did not deter the efforts of the parodists.[12]
He was not entirely insensible of his weaknesses. The second edition of The Provoked Husband was silently changed to “Out-did her usual Excellence,” and the spelling of paraphernalia corrected. Dr. Johnson’s testimony supports this view of Cibber’s seriousness:
His friends gave out that he intended his birth-day Odes should be bad: but that was not the case, Sir; for he kept them many months by him, and a few years before he died he shewed me one of them, with great solicitude to render it as perfect as might be, and I made some corrections, to which he was not very willing to submit.[13]
His unwillingness to take Johnson’s advice might be more than mere egotism, if the Ode was the same one mentioned elsewhere in the Life, “I remember when he brought me one of his Odes to have my opinion of it, I could not bear such nonsense, and would not let him read it to the end; so little respect had I for that great man! (laughing.).”[14]
The laureateship marked only one of several changes in Cibber’s life. In 1730, the triumvirate of actor-managers and their leading lady, a quartet which had supported Drury Lane through its most prosperous years, was broken by the death of Anne Oldfield; Wilks followed in 1732, and Booth, too ill to perform for two years, in 1733. Cibber’s royal appointment meant a sure annual income of £100 (plus a butt of sack worth £26), his children were grown, and he could afford some freedom from the demands of the theater at last. He continued to act, but with lessening frequency, until 1746, when as Cardinal Pandulph in his own Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John, he played the last role of a career spanning more than half a century.
By 1740, he was far enough removed from the theater to have a slightly different perspective on language. The Apology betrays a concern for his reputation beyond the immediate audience, and the need to leave a written record other than his plays. Cibber had written prefaces and dedications, but from this point on, he was to pursue his nondramatic writing with The egoist; or, Colley upon Cibber Being His Own Picture retouch’d, to so plain a Likeness, that no One, now, would have the Face to own it, but Himself (1743); The lady’s lecture, a theatrical dialogue, between Sir Charles Easy and his marriageable daughter. Being an attempt to engage obedience by filial liberty, and to given the maiden conduct of virtue, chearfulness (1748); and The Character and Conduct of Cicero (1749), which Davies defends:
A player daring to write upon a known subject without a college permission, was a shocking offense; and yet Dr. Middleton, to whom the conduct of Cicero was addressed, spoke of it with respect; and Mr. Hooke, the writer of the best Roman History in our language, has quoted Cibber’s arguments in this [his?] pamphlet against the murderers of Julius Caesar, and speaks of them, not only with honour, but insists upon them as cogent and unanswerable.[15]
Cibber seems to have become more and more aware of the written word as a powerful legacy, and Pope’s attacks began to hold a menace they had not had during the years of lighthearted stage warfare. On 20 March 1742, the New Dunciad struck him with enough force to cause him to reply with this open Letter of 7 July, which attracted a great deal of attention.[16] Four engravings and at least six pamphlets, all focusing on the bawdy house story, were shortly in circulation. Whether or not the story is true, or whether it was even believed, is immaterial. Its importance lies in that it allowed Pope’s enemies to have at him in the most devastating way. The Letter may well have been as painful as Jonathan Richardson, Jr. claimed when he told Dr. Johnson that
he attended his father, the painter, on a visit to Twickenham when one of Cibber’s pamphlets had just come into Pope’s hands. ‘These things are my diversion,’ said Pope. They sat by him while he read it, and saw his features writhing with anguish. After the visitors had taken their leave, young Richardson said to his father that he ‘hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope.’[17]