So little had been expected of the piece, and so great was its success, that Cibber was immediately charged with plagiarism,[43] a charge which he entirely denies in the dedication. He claims that “the fable is entirely his own, nor is there a line or thought throughout the whole, for which he is wittingly obliged either to the dead or the living.” There are, however, some striking similarities in the situations and the characters in the sub-action of Love’s Last Shift and Carlile’s Fortune Hunters (1689). Carlile’s Elder Wealthy and Young Wealthy are closely paralleled by Elder Worthy and Young Worthy, as are likewise the young women with whom they are in love, and Carlile’s Shamtown belongs to the same family as Sir Novelty Fashion, though he is much more crudely portrayed. So too, the jealousy of Elder Worthy in regard to Hillaria and Sir Novelty is very much like that of Elder Wealthy in regard to Sophia and Shamtown. So great is the similarity that, notwithstanding his denial, one must believe that Cibber deliberately used the situation and characters as a basis for his own, though he did not copy the language, and has made an entirely new and original thing out of his source.

So great was the failure of his second play that Cibber refuses to mention it in his Apology and omitted it from the collected edition of his plays in 1721. Woman’s Wit, or The Lady in Fashion was acted at Drury Lane in 1697, but met with a most unfavorable reception, though in management of the plot it is not inferior to a great many plays whose success was much greater.

Carlile’s Fortune Hunters (1689) and Mountford’s Greenwich Park (1691) have been suggested as the sources of that part of the plot in which Young Rakish and Major Rakish appear, but this is only partially true. In The Fortune Hunters the father and son are rivals for a young woman, in Woman’s Wit she is an elderly widow; in both, the son has obtained five hundred pounds from the father. But notwithstanding the fact that these situations are superficially similar the characters and the details of the action are so different that it does not seem possible that there can be any connection between the two plays. There does seem to be a more valid reason for affirming the influence of Greenwich Park in the play. The likeness of Sir Thomas Reveller and Young Reveller to Old Rakish and Young Rakish is so great that Cibber must have had them in mind, but the differences both of character and action are such that it seems probable that he was attempting to portray two characters of the same type rather than trying to copy them. In Greenwich Park there is not even a superficial similarity of situation to Woman’s Wit.[44] The sub-action of Woman’s Wit was separated and acted successfully at Drury Lane in 1707 as The School Boy.

Love Makes a Man was acted at Drury Lane in 1701, and was published the same year. It continued to be played until 1828. It is made from Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Elder Brother and The Custom of the Country, and is an attempt on the part of Cibber merely to provide amusement. Ost[45] points out that this play, though it has no original literary worth, helped continue the literary tradition, and notices it in connection with the healthful influence of Cibber’s work in the moralizing tendency of the drama. He adds that Cibber’s plays have more value in relation to “kulturgeschichte” than in aesthetic interest. That is entirely true so far as this play is concerned; various parts have a purely contemporary interest, or are an indication to us of the state of dramatic taste, and the aesthetic value is certainly often inconsiderable. When Cibber introduces such references as “hatchet face” of Clodio, a term which had been applied to Cibber himself, who played the part, and more particularly in the farcical discussion of the two playhouses in the fourth act, he is not even attempting to write anything but horseplay.

By the omission and transposition of scenes, and the introduction of some lines of his own, mainly for the purpose of gaining probability, as Ost has pointed out, Cibber has condensed The Elder Brother so that it forms practically the first two acts, and The Custom of the Country so that it forms the last three. In the main, the plays, so much of them as is used, are followed with very few changes, and the whole makes a sprightly and amusing, if not particularly literary comedy.

The change of place and the introduction of an entirely new set of characters with fresh plot developments are dramatically faulty; but for the purpose for which the play was written these faults are not particularly great. To join the plots of two separate plays end on end without breaking the continuity of the story, and to adjust the characters so that there is no glaring inconsistency, is surely no slight feat.

In the characterization Cibber has made some changes. These changes appear particularly in Eustace, who becomes Clodio, Miramont, who becomes Don Lewis, and Elvira, who is the sister instead of the mother of Don Duart. It is difficult to understand how this play could have been other than a theatrical success with Bullock to interpret the farcical obstinacy of Antonio, Penkethman to portray the humorously choleric Don Lewis, and Cibber as the “pert coxcomb,” Clodio. But it is farce rather than pure comedy.

Cibber has changed these plays from verse to prose, except in the first scene between Carlos and Angelina, in which the romantic seriousness of the situation leads him to write blank verse, which is however printed as prose.

She Would and She Would Not, considered by Genest as “perhaps his best play,” was acted at Drury Lane, November 26, 1702, and continued to be acted frequently as late as 1825.[46] The striking similarity of the two plays has caused the suggestion that Cibber’s play is based on Leanerd’s The Counterfeits (1678). The similarity indicates a common source, rather than that Cibber drew from The Counterfeits. The source of Cibber’s play was no doubt The Trepanner Trepanned, which is the third story of John Davies’s La Picara, or The Triumphs of Female Subtilty, published in London in 1665.[47]

This play is amusing, is well constructed, and while it is not of serious import, is such as might be presented today with success.