He increases the probability by the alteration of certain passages. For instance, whereas both the Pharsalia, as completed by Rowe,[33] and The False One, from one of which he took the incident, have Caesar swimming from the island of Pharos with drawn sword in one hand and documents in the other, Cibber has him swim with only the documents.
While this play is essentially an adaptation of Corneille, the general atmosphere and effect are not those of French tragedy, but are rather those of the minor Elizabethan tragicomedy. Its beginning and end have a historical rather than a dramatic interest, so that the play produces the effect of a love story with an impersonal enveloping action, which is again more English than French.
Papal Tyranny was acted at Covent Garden, February 15, 1745, when it had a run of ten nights, and was published in the same year. Shakspere’s King John, which had been played in 1737 and 1738, after Cibber’s alteration had been talked of and withdrawn, was again revived on February 20, 1745,[34] with Garrick as King John and Mrs. Theophilus Cibber, then at the height of her popularity, as Constance. This was no doubt done both to profit by the publicity Cibber’s work had brought about, and to take as much credit as possible from Cibber, by showing the lack of originality in his work.[35] According to Victor,[36] Cibber’s profits from Papal Tyranny amounted to four hundred pounds, which probably includes what he received from acting Pandulph as well as his author’s profits.
The play had been written some years before it was finally acted, the parts had been distributed, and everything was practically ready for the presentation in public during the season 1736–7. But so much criticism was leveled at Cibber for daring again to alter Shakspere that one day he quietly walked into the theatre, removed the copy of the play from the prompter’s desk, and went away with it without a word to any one.[37] It was finally presented, as already stated, in 1745, when there was a threatened invasion by the Young Pretender, which made the political and anti-Catholic elements of the play timely.
Cibber says in the dedication that he had two reasons for altering the play: antagonism to Catholicism, and a desire to adjust the play to contemporary stage requirements—“to make it more like a play than he found it in Shakspere.” His additions to the anti-Catholic elements of the play are inconsistent with the rest of the action, and the changes in structure have increased rather than diminished the epic quality. He has, without being conscious that he was doing so, gone back of Shakspere’s time in introducing the anti-popish element; a quality of Shakspere’s source which Shakspere had omitted, but which Cibber reintroduced to the detriment of his play as drama.
The entire first act of Shakspere’s play is omitted, besides which there are other shorter omissions. The point of view, too, is very different; for in Cibber’s play Pandulph is the central figure, instead of King John, as is indicated by the change of title from The Life and Death of King John to Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John. Various short scenes entirely by Cibber are introduced, the most noticeable being one in the last act in which Constance attends the funeral of Arthur at Swinestead, where King John has been brought to die.
The characters are more changed than the plot; all those which appear only in the first act are omitted, besides such characters as Peter of Pomfret, Elinor, Austria, and Chatillon. The part of the bastard Faulconbridge is very much cut down and softened, for as Shakspere conceived him he was too “low” and comic for a dignified tragedy according to the views of the eighteenth century. The rôle of Constance is much enlarged as well as that of Pandulph.
Cibber’s tragedies are imitative; he showed no creative ability in this field. That his Richard III has held the stage until the present is an indication that it is at least a good stage play. The other tragedies, except Xerxes and Papal Tyranny, do not possess any very positive virtues or defects; they are of average merit as compared with the work done by Cibber’s contemporaries.
They are alterations of Shakspere or Corneille, except Xerxes and Perolla and Izadora. In his alterations of the French he has anglicized some of the ideas, has had a tendency to present rather than relate incidents, and generally has tried to make the productions conform to English ideas. Turning them into English has not made them romantic or altered in any essential degree their neo-classical quality.
His alterations of Shakspere have not changed the essential qualities; they are still characteristically English, and display the characteristics of the originals. He has not altered Shakspere because Shakspere is too “Gothic,” or too romantic and extravagant, for Cibber complains that King John is too restrained.