Cibber’s additions to Steele’s Conscious Lovers are mentioned on a later page of these Studies.
Several of Cibber’s comedies were translated into foreign tongues: in German The Double Gallant appeared as Der doppellte Liebhaber, translated by Johann Friedrich Jünger and published in Leipzig in 1786, The Careless Husband as Der sorglose Ehemann, published in Göttingen in 1750, and The Provoked Husband as Der erzürnte Ehemann und der Landjunker, published in Frankfurt in 1753; in French The Provoked Husband appeared as Le Mari poussé à bout, ou le voyage à Londres, published in London, 1761.
The adaptations, except The Non-Juror and The Refusal, seem to have been produced merely to furnish amusement which should be in accordance with changed stage conditions and changed taste. They show little originality, being merely the stringing together of scenes without alteration, though Cibber in the prologue to The Double Gallant says:
“Nay, even alter’d Plays, like old houses mended,
Cost little less than new, before they’re ended;
At least, our author finds the experience true.”
His method seems to have been to take two plays of an older author, often plays which contained both a serious and a comic action, to select such scenes as suited his purpose, and to join them into a play, either alternating the scenes of the separate plays with link characters, or putting the two plays end on end, as in the case of Love Makes a Man. This latter method entailed much greater labor, as many of the characters were made by consolidating two characters from different plays.
Cibber’s comedies, which constitute his best and most important work, may be divided into two general classes: comedies of manners and intrigue, and sentimental comedies. The first class includes two adaptations from Beaumont and Fletcher which are not strictly comedies of manners but are more closely allied to the “comedy of humours,” namely, Love Makes a Man and The Rival Fools; one adaptation made out of two plays by Dryden, The Comical Lovers; two from Molière, The Non-Juror and The Refusal, into both of which he introduced contemporary social and political interest; and three other plays, Woman’s Wit, She Would and She Would Not, and The Double Gallant, the last of which takes its title, if not its plot, from Corneille’s Le Galant Double. The sentimental comedies, in which form Cibber was one of the very first to write, are Love’s Last Shift, The Careless Husband, The Lady’s Last Stake, and The Provoked Husband, the last being a completion of Vanbrugh’s Journey to London. The first class consists almost altogether of adaptations; the second class is essentially original.