[37] Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies, I, 5. For a characteristic example of the criticism to which Cibber was subjected, see Fielding’s Historical Register for the Year 1736, Act III.
[38] For full discussion of the relationship between Cibber’s Richard III and Shakspere’s Richard III, see A. I. P. Wood, and Dohse. The whole subject of Shaksperian alterations is taken up in Lounsbury’s Shakspere as a Dramatic Artist, and in Kilbourne’s Alterations and Adaptations of Shakspere. It is curious that Lounsbury does not discuss Cibber’s Richard III, which is not only the most famous Shaksperian alteration but the only one of any real value.
[39] The addition of parts from 3 Henry VI at the beginning of the play.
[40] Tragedy, VIII and IX.
[41] See especially throughout Ximena.
[42] According to The Life of Aesopus, this “was said to be a silly tale collected from some dreaming romance,” but as the writer does not give the title of this romance and apparently had no knowledge of the play, his testimony is of no value.
[43] “The furious John Dennis, who hated Cibber for obstructing, as he imagined, the progress of his tragedy, called The Invader of His Country, in very passionate terms denies his claim to this comedy: ‘When The Fool in Fashion was first acted,’ says the critic, ‘Cibber was hardly twenty-two years of age; how could he, at the age of twenty, write a comedy with a just design, distinguished characters, and a proper dialogue who now, at forty, treats us with Hibernian sense and Hibernian English?’” Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies, III, 410.
[44] Jacob, Poetical Register, p. 38, suggests Otway’s Dare Devil (that is, The Atheist) as the source of the play, but it would take a vivid imagination to see the connection.
[45] Das Verhaeltniss von Cibber’s Lustspiel Love Makes a Man zu Fletcher’s Dramen The Elder Brother und The Custom of The Country, p. 82.
[46] It was acted in New York, January 15, 1883, by Miss Ada Rehan, under the management of Augustin Daly. See Lowe, Apology, II, 289. Genest records, VI, 23, that when it was performed at Covent Garden in 1778, “the applause was so strong in the second act, that the performers were obliged to stop for some time.”