The precocious Miss Prue type, the young woman who is destined to have a lover or a husband, perhaps both, in a short time, is represented by Miss Jenny in The Provoked Husband and Miss Notable in The Lady’s Last Stake. This type of character soon disappeared from the drama, as did likewise the Millamant kind of coquette, who appears as Maria in The Non-Juror and as Lady Betty in The Careless Husband. Snap and Trappanti are typical menservants, witty and graceless, and we find the mercenary serving woman in The Provoked Husband and She Would and She Would Not. Characters of this type continue occasionally in the succeeding drama, where they furnish the comic relief.
9. General Characteristics of Cibber’s Comedies.
Cibber’s themes are taken from contemporary life and its more obvious problems. Of course so far as any serious purpose is concerned, a distinction must be made between those plays designed merely to afford the pleasure of an evening’s entertainment and those written with more serious intent. Cibber often distinguishes between these two classes, and frankly states his purpose in the prologue or dedication to the separate plays.
His attitude toward his audience is somewhat naïve. He frankly states that his “sole dependence being the judgment of an audience, ’twere madness to provoke them.”[88] He again says[89] that “every guest is a judge of his own palate; and a poet ought no more to impose good sense upon the galleries, than dull farce upon undisputed judges. I first considered who my guests were, before I prepared my entertainment.” This would seem to indicate that at times he had no high respect for his audiences; especially when he wrote The School Boy and Hob in the Well, if the latter is by him. In this connection one may note that he consciously distinguished stage and closet drama, and made no attempt to write the latter. In his “Remarks to the Reader” of Ximena he says, “though the reader must be charmed by the tenderness of the characters in the original, I have ventured to alter, to make them more agreeable to the spectator.” These statements would seem to indicate that Cibber wrote his sentimental plays because he thought the audiences desired something of the sort.
As a playwright Cibber was a strong upholder of religion and the established church. He points out that the only religious sect to close the theatre was also opposed to the established church.[90] But in treating religious subjects he does not use the Puritans for dramatic material, for they were no longer a political menace, but he turns to the Roman Catholics, whose activities were not merely religious, but political. In The Non-Juror we have a play almost entirely built on anti-Catholic feeling; in King John we have another attack on the Church of Rome; and in the fourth act of Woman’s Wit we again have satire, but in this case primarily of the Catholic clergy, rather than the church itself. We do not have any references to party politics, aside from this Catholic problem.
His original plays in comedy, other than farces and operas, deal with moral problems. In the case of Love’s Last Shift and The Careless Husband we have presented the reformation of husbands not yet entirely spoiled at heart; in The Provoked Husband the reformation of a wife who has not committed any serious breach of the moral code; and in this last, as well as in The Lady’s Last Stake, we have plays dealing with the evils resulting from women’s gambling. It is curious to find one who was so notorious a gambler as Cibber choosing such a theme.
The language shows great change from that of the Restoration in regard to moral refinement. Cibber’s plays become less and less coarse in speech. His earlier plays have a grossness almost equal to that of Restoration comedy, but gradually grow purer. This change in the language is found in English comedy generally, and as it progresses a new element enters, the expression of moral sentiments, extravagantly and artificially stated. This last shows a gradual increase, reaching its height in the later sentimental comedy of the middle of the century.
Merely as literature, three of Cibber’s plays, at least, are well worth while: The Careless Husband, She Would and She Would Not, and The Non-Juror. They lack the briskness and sureness of touch that characterized Congreve, but compare most favorably with the work of men in the next rank, and are not only delightful and profitable reading, but are thoroughly representative of the period in which they appear. Grouped with these as possessing permanent literary value are the Apology and not more than half a dozen songs. Outside of these three plays, one prose work, and a few songs, Cibber produced nothing that is worth preserving because of its merit as literature. His greatest importance to the student of literary history lies in his contribution to the development of sentimental comedy.
10. Place of Steele in the Development of Sentimental Comedy.
In view of the place that is always given to Steele as the originator of sentimental comedy, a discussion of any phase of the subject would be incomplete without at least a reference to his relation to the particular question under discussion. We may grant that Cibber does not represent the culmination of the sentimental type: that is to be found in Steele’s Conscious Lovers (1722). He is, rather, the most prominent figure in the first stage of the development of sentimental comedy, during which the Restoration type was transformed by the addition of a moral purpose, by the purification of the language, and by the addition of the pathetic element; so that the new form in his hands has much of the old as well as the new, while Steele’s Conscious Lovers has almost entirely broken away from the old and looks forward. But the movement in which Cibber was so prominent a figure did make the way possible and contributed the most important elements which later developed in the hands of Steele and his followers.