{\b Colley Cibber}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 6 November 1671

{\b Date of Death}.: 11 December 1757

{\b Works}.

English poet, playwright, actor, theatre-manager, poet laureate and general 
agent provocateur, Colley Cibber was best known for his sentimental comedies. 
His Love's Last Shift; or, The Fool in Fashion (1696) is generally considered 
to be the first example of this genre that grew up chiefly in response to the 
more cynical comedy of the Restoration dramatists. Cibber also produced a 
famous adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III in 1700 and wrote other 
comedies of manners such as his She Wou'd, and She Wou'd Not (1702) and The 
Careless Husband (1704), before becoming involved in a number of political 
intrigues and literary scandals as his numerous careers progressed. In 1717 he 
wrote  The Non-Juror, a play based on Moliere's Tartuffe, and completed The 
Provoked Husband, a play left unfinished at the death of its author, Vanburgh, 
in 1726. Cibber also write a provocatively entitled autobiography, An Apology 
for the Life of Mr Colly Cibber (1740), generally considered to be the best 
account of the theatre of his time and a fine study of the craft of acting.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Blind Boy'.

{\b General Comment}.

Born in London as the son of a Danish sculptor, Cibber was educated at the 
free school in Grantham, Lincolnshire, before becoming a professional actor. 
Having married in 1693 and short both of parts and finances, he then wrote his 
own play,  Love's Last Shift, which was to prove the vehicle for the 
commencement proper of his acting career. 

The playwright Sir John Vanburgh provided a dramatic reply to Cibber's work 
with his The Relapse (1696) just as Pope was also to do, both with his 
inclusion of Cibber as a hero in his Dunciad in 1743 and with the earlier 
pamphlet that ridiculed Cibber's The Non-Juror.

In 1704 Cibber had become theatre-manager of the Drury Lane theatre, a trade 
he would continue in until 1734, though his final appearance on the stage was 
not till February 15 1745, in his own adaptation of Shakespeare's King John. 
During all this time personal and political intrigues were mounting up and 
many of these were far from taking place 'backstage'. Fielding, Swift and 
Jonson, as well as Pope, were among his attackers; Smollett, Walpole and 
Samuel Derrick his allies. His The Non-Juror, written in support of the Whigs, 
lead in part to his appointment as poet laureate in 1740.