That ’twou’d as scanty on our Stage be thought,
As for a modern Belle my Grannum’s Petticoat.
So that from th’ old we may with Justice say,
We scarce could cull the Trimming of a play.”
In spite of this statement by Cibber himself, he adds practically nothing to the plot, and in the dialogue adds merely a touch here and there.
As was customary in altering these old comedies written in verse, the verse of the original is changed into prose, and as is also customary in all of Cibber’s alterations, the long speeches are broken into dialogue.
The character of Pompey Doodle is somewhat enlarged in its transformation into Samuel Simple, and is one of the most amusing elements in the play. The treatment is distinctly Jacobean in its exaggeration of character, and the reception by the audience must be attributed either to the alteration of taste on the part of the public, or to the personal unpopularity of Cibber, for the rôle is well written and Cibber was particularly well fitted to act the part, both by temperament and by physical qualities.
The Non-Juror was acted at Drury Lane on December 6, 1717, with a prologue by Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate, and was published in 1718. At the time of its first presentation it had the comparatively long run of twenty-three performances, and was revived at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in 1745, when its political meaning was again pertinent.
The play came at a time of great political stress, so that it was but natural that its strong Whig and anti-Catholic sentiments should arouse the greatest antagonism.[54] This antagonism was not only voiced in the many pamphlets issued at the time, but no doubt affected the general attitude toward Cibber in his later life. Cibber, in his first letter to Pope, states that one of his enemies went so far as to write a pamphlet whose purport was that The Non-Juror constituted a subtle Jacobite libel against the government. He dedicated the play to the king when it was published, and for this he received a gift of two hundred pounds. Cibber was not burdened in mind because he had offended the losing party, and any inconvenience he may have felt was amply repaid by the pension and laureateship which later came as his reward.
The Non-Juror is based directly on Molière’s Tartuffe, though two plays on the same theme had previously appeared in English: Crowne’s English Friar (1689), and Medbourne’s Tartuffe (1670), the latter a direct adaptation of Molière’s play. This Tartuffe was revived during the summer season of 1718 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was published while Cibber’s play was still running, with an advertisement that in it “may be seen the plot, characters, and most part of the language of The Non-Juror.” This statement is true only in that the two plays by Medbourne and Cibber are based on Molière, and was made to discredit Cibber’s claim to originality in the adaptation.