For many years there had not been a comedy written but at the expense of husbands. They were the dupes and dolts of the piece; were betrayed and dishonoured; cudgelled and contented in their abject debasement. Audiences had had something too much of this, and Cibber was the first to perceive it. He himself was not yet sufficiently enlightened to discover that the majority in all theatrical audiences were gasping for a general purer air of refinement, and were growing disgusted with the mire in which such writers as Ravenscroft, and others with more wit than he, plunged and dragged them. Cibber, at all events, made the first step out of this slough, by producing his "Love's Last Shift." It was not readily accepted, but it forced its way to that consummation, by the testimony borne to its merits by competent judges. It was played in January 1695.[78] Its grossness is scarcely inferior to that of comedies most offending in this way, and which were produced both earlier and later. Nevertheless, it marks an epoch. There was no comically outraged husband in it. The style is still that of the old, free, coarse-comedy, in all the other persons of the drama. The women lack heart and natural affection; the men are unrefined and uncivil, and both converse too much after the intolerable mode which was not yet to be driven from the sadly-abused stage. Sentiment there is, indeed, after a sort; but when it is not smart and epigrammatic, it is repulsively low and selfish. Amid the intrigues of the piece, there stands glitteringly prominent the first of the brilliant series of Cibber's fops, Sir Novelty Fashion. This character he wrote for his own acting, and his success in it established him as an actor of the first rank. The interest of the audience in Sir Novelty does not centre in him as an unprincipled rake (he is, however, sufficiently unscrupulous), as it is attracted towards him as a "beau," a man of fashion, who professes to see nothing tolerable in himself, solely in order to extort praise for his magnificence from others. He is "ugly, by Gad!" he is a "sloven!" If he wears hundreds of yards of trimming, it is to encourage the poor ribband-weavers. If all the eminent tailors in town besiege his house, it is to petition him for the pattern of his new coat. He is the first man who was ever called "beau," which title he professes to prefer to "right honourable," for the latter is inherited, while the former is owing to his surprising mien and unexampled gallantry. He does not make love to a lady; his court is paid by indicating to her why she should love him. He judges of a man of sense by the fashion of his peruke; and if he enters a lady's apartment in an unpowdered periwig, she may rest assured that he has no designs on her admiration. Sir Novelty is one of those fine gentlemen who go to both theatres on the same evening; he sits with his back to the stage, and is assured that he looks like a gentleman; for, is he not endowed with a "fertile genius for dress?"
Southerne, who had read this play and liked it, was fearful of Cibber's own part in it. "Young man," said he, "I pronounce thy play a good one. I will answer for its success, if thou dost not spoil it by thine own action!" When the play was over, Nell Gwyn's old friend, Sackville, now Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain, and the "best good man with the worst-natured muse," declared that "Love's Last Shift" was the best first play that any author, in his memory, had produced; and that for a young fellow to show himself such an actor, and such a writer, in one day, was something extraordinary. Colley, always modest, but not through vanity, nicely alludes to Dorset's known good-nature, and sets down the compliment not to his deserts, but to Dorset's wish to "encourage a young beginner." Cibber himself pronounced his comedy puerile and frothy.
It is due to Cibber to say that in this piece his own part of Sir Novelty is never so prominent as to interfere unfairly with the other personages. The piece itself, gross as it is, had a tendency towards reforming the stage. Cibber's self-imposed mission in this direction was consummated when he produced his "Careless Husband." This was one of two works of Colley which Walpole pronounced to be worthy of immortality. The other was the "Apology" for his life. The progress towards purity, made between Cibber's first comedy and the last I have named above, is nothing less than marvellous. In the "Careless Husband" he produced a piece at which the most fastidious ladies of those times might sit, and listen to, unmasked. I say "listen," for the comedy is a merely conversational piece, sparkling with wit, and with fewer lines to shock the purer sense than many an old play which still retains a place upon the stage. The descriptions here are as clever as the dialogue is spirited. If evil things come under notice, they are treated as people of decency would treat them, often gracefully, never alluringly. The incidents, told rather than acted, are painted, if I may so speak, with the consummate skill, ease, and distinctiveness of a most accomplished artist. The finest gentlemen are less vicious here than they are temporarily foolish; and one has not been long acquainted with Lady Easy before the discovery is made that she is the first pure and sensible woman that has been represented in a comedy since a world of time. There is good honest love, human weaknesses, and noble triumphs over them, in this piece. If Mr. Pope sneered at the author as a "dunce," which he was not, Mr. Pope's neighbour, Horace Walpole, has registered him rightly as a "gentleman," and traced his great success in describing gentlemen to the circumstance of his constant and familiar intercourse with that portion of "society."
In this piece, there is the most perfect of Cibber's beaux, written for his own acting; and it is to be observed, that as time progressed and fashion changed, so did he observe the progress, and in his costume illustrate the change. Lord Foppington is a different man from Sir Novelty Fashion; my lord does make love to a lady. With a respectful leer, he stares full in her face, draws up his breath, and cries, "Gad, you're handsome!" He is married, too, and has just sufficient regard for his wife to wish himself sun-burnt if he does not prefer her to his estate. He talks French enough to cite an à la what d'ye call it; has Horace enough at his memory's ends to show his breeding, by an apt quotation; and evidences his gentlemanly feeling, albeit a fine-gentlemanly feeling, on witnessing the happy union of the two wayward lovers,—Lord Morelove and Lady Betty Modish,—by the very characteristic exclamation:—"Stap my breath, if ever I was better pleased since my first entrance into human nature!"
The example of comparative purity, set in this piece, was not immediately followed; but for that, Cibber is not to blame. The "Careless Husband" was produced in 1704, and nearly seventy years elapsed before the period when Garrick positively refused to pollute the boards of Drury Lane, by reproducing thereon, on Lord Mayors' Days, one of the most filthy of the filthy plays of Ravenscroft.[79] The critics of Cibber's time were unreasonable. Because he was sometimes an adapter, they called him an adapter always; and the reviewers, sick, sorry, nay maddened at his success, declared of his most original comedy, that it was "not his own." But they never had the wit to discover whence he had stolen it.
He took the adverse criticism with philosophy and good-humour,—as he took most things. By the last, he once saved ten shillings a week of his salary. Rich announced the intended reduction to him, with the remark, that even then he would have as much as Goodman ever had,—whose highest salary was forty shillings a week. "Aye!" said Cibber, laughing, "and Goodman was forced to go on the highway, to help him to live!" To save Colley from the same desperate course, Rich made no reduction in his salary.
We obtain from Croker's Boswell, an instance of Cibber's care in perfecting a piece, and his readiness in adapting passing incidents to suit his purpose. Mrs. Brett, the divorced Countess of Macclesfield, and long thought to be the mother of Savage, the poet, was the second wife of that Colonel Brett, whose opinion as to what would best please the town was eagerly sought after by authors and actors. His first wife, a great leader of fashion, had taken the handsome fellow from the hands of bailiffs, married him, and ultimately left him a wealthy widower. For the taste and judgment of the second Mrs. Brett, Cibber had the highest respect; and he consulted her on every scene of the "Careless Husband," as he wrote it. At some one of these consultations, he probably heard of the too great civility of the Colonel to his wife's maid, both of whom Mrs. Brett once found fast asleep in two chairs. The lady was satisfied to leave token of her presence, by casting her lace handkerchief over her husband's neck. Of the otherwise painful incident she never took any notice; and let us hope that the Colonel profited by the silent rebuke, as Sir Charles Easy did. However this may be, Cibber incorporated the incident into his play, where it heightens the interest of one of the most interesting scenes.
Cibber was essentially a comic actor. His Richard partook very much of the manner of his Sir Novelty Fashion; and his "A horse! a horse!" used to excite the hilarity of his audience. He avows, gracefully enough, that his want of a strong and full voice soon cut short his hopes of making any figure in tragedy. He adds, with some conceit, and more affected modesty, "I have been many years since convinced, that whatever opinion I might have of my own judgment or capacity to amend the palpable errors that I saw our tragedians most in favour to commit, yet the auditors who would have been sensible of such amendments (could I have made them) were so very few, that my best endeavour would have been but an unavailing labour, or what is yet worse, might have appeared, both to our actors and to many auditors, the vain mistake of my own self-conceit; for so strong, so very near indispensable, is that one article of voice, in the forming of a good tragedian, that an actor may want any other qualification whatsoever, and yet will have a better chance for applause than he will ever have, with all the skill in the world, if his voice is not equal to it." Colley admirably explains this, by adding, ... "I say, for applause only; but applause does not always stay for, nor always follow, intrinsic merit. Applause will frequently open, like a young hound upon a wrong scent; and the majority of auditors, you know, are generally composed of babblers, that are profuse of their voices, before there is anything on foot that calls for them. Not but, I grant, to lead, or mislead, the many, will always stand in some rank of a necessary merit; yet, when I say a good tragedian, I mean one, in opinion of whose real merit the best judges would agree."
Cibber is so perfect as a critic, he so thoroughly understands the office and so intelligibly conveys his opinions, that it were well if all gentlemen who may hereafter aspire to exercise the critical art, were compelled to study his Apology as medical students are to become acquainted with their Celsus. No one should be admitted to practise theatrical criticism who has not got by heart Cibber's descriptions of Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield; or who fail on their being examined as to their proficiency in the Canons of Colley.
Then, if there be one circumstance more than another for which Cibber merits our affectionate regard, it is for the kindly nature with which he tempers justice, and the royal generosity which he displays in attributing certain alleged excellences in his own acting, to his careful study of the acting of others. If Cibber played Sparkish and Sir Courtly Nice with applause, it was entirely owing, so he nobly avows, to the ideas and impressions he had received from Mountfort's acting of those characters. Although his Richard was full of defects, yet he attracted the town by it. He assigns this attraction to the fact of his attempting to reproduce the style and method of one of the greatest of Richards,—Sandford.[80]