Colley Cibber(1671-1757)
- Writer
Colley Cibber (1671-1757) was an actor, theatrical impresario,
playwright and poet now remembered only for his bowdlerization of
William Shakespeare's
Richard III (1955)
(Laurence Olivier used Cibber's
interpolations in his 1955 film of the play) and for being the model
for the chief protagonist of his nemesis
Alexander Pope's poem "The Dunciad". He
was a very successful actor-manager in his time, famed for playing
fops.
Through political connections with the Whig government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, he became Poet Laureate of England in 1730, a scandal at the time (and still scandalous) as Pope, Edward Young and others were far greater artists than Cibber. Cibber was more poetaster than poet. Pope kept up an unrelenting attack in his writing against Cibber ("The King of the Dunces"), whose own plays and poetry were recognized for lacking aesthetic appeal. Cibber was immortalized in an epigram of the time: "In merry old England it once was a rule,/The King had his Poet, and also his Fool:/ But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,/That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet."
Through political connections with the Whig government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, he became Poet Laureate of England in 1730, a scandal at the time (and still scandalous) as Pope, Edward Young and others were far greater artists than Cibber. Cibber was more poetaster than poet. Pope kept up an unrelenting attack in his writing against Cibber ("The King of the Dunces"), whose own plays and poetry were recognized for lacking aesthetic appeal. Cibber was immortalized in an epigram of the time: "In merry old England it once was a rule,/The King had his Poet, and also his Fool:/ But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,/That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet."