We owe the piece to fear and hatred of the Pope and the Pretender. It addressed itself to so wide a public that Lintot gave the liberal sum of a hundred guineas for the copyright, and it was so acceptable to the King that he gave a dedication fee of twice that number of guineas to the author, who addressed him as "dread Sir," and spoke of himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre." Cibber adds, "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution." Cibber goes on to remark, that perhaps the idly and seditiously inclined may cease to disturb their brains about embarrassing the government, if "proper amusements" be provided for them. For such his play is rather a chastisement than an amusement, and he thinks that would have been all the better taken had it not been administered by a comedian. The Nonjurors, whose allegiance was paid to the Pretender, were perhaps not worthy of a more exalted scourger; but he fears that truth and loyalty demanded a nobler champion. He flatteringly alludes to the small number of malcontents. His piece had either crushed them, or their forces were not so great as supposed, "there being no assembly where people are so free, and apt to speak their minds, as in a crowded theatre, of which," says the courtly fellow, "your Majesty may have lately seen an instance in the insuppressible acclamations that were given on your appearing to honour this play with your royal presence."
On the night of representation, Rowe, in a prologue—he was now Poet Laureate and Land Surveyor of the Customs in the Port of London, deprecated the piece being considered unjustifiably discourteous.
"Think not our colours may too strongly paint
The stiff non-juring separation saint.
Good breeding ne'er commands us to be civil
To those who give the nation to the devil!"
The play was admirably acted by Booth, Colonel Woodvil; Mills, Sir John; Wilks, Heartley; Cibber, Dr. Wolf (the Cantwell of the modern arrangement); and Walker (soon to be famous as Captain Macheath), Charles. Mrs. Porter played Lady Woodvil, and Mrs. Oldfield turned the heads and touched the hearts of all lively and susceptible folks by her exquisite coquetry, in Maria. The play was not a servile imitation of, but an excellent adaptation to modern circumstances of, the "Tartuffe." Thoroughly English, it abounds with the humour and manner of Cibber, and despite some offences against taste, it was at this time the purest comedy on the stage. There was farce enough for the gallery, maxim and repartee, suggestions and didactic phrases for the rest of the house. The success surpassed even expectation. It raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes—foes who howled at everything of which he was, afterwards, the author; but it gained for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of true religion, on an equality with the author of "The Whole Duty of Man!" Cibber foresaw the tempest, and, probably, also the prosperous gales which were to follow, to which there is some allusion in the Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, which, of course, had a fling against marriage:—
"Was't not enough that critics might pursue him?
But must he rouse a party to undo him?
These blows, I told him, on his plays would fall: