Colley Cibber, three sentimental comedies: Love's last shift: or, The fool in fashion. The careless husband. The lady's last stake; or, The wife's resentment

by Colley Cibber

Love's last shift, or, The fool in fashion -- The careless husband -- The lady's last stake, or, The wife's resentment

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1974

About the author

Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare". He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. Cibber's brash, extroverted personality did not sit well with his contemporaries, and he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship over far better poets. He rose to ignominious fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem Dunciad.

Cibber's poetical work was derided in his time, and has been remembered only for being poor. His importance in British theatre history rests on his being one of the first in a long line of actor-managers, on the interest of two of his comedies as documents of evolving early 18th-century taste and ideology, and on the value of his autobiography as a historical source.

Reviews

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always difficult to rate plays as read instead of performed, but one can imagine some real pleasures to be found here if these were inventively staged today. In particular the first two--Love's Last Shift and The Careless Husband--might do well in sufficiently bold modern productions. They read reasonably well on the page, though plenty of the humor seems better suited to performance (the extended Ha Ha Ha exchanges in The Careless Husband, for example). The real defect of these plays has to do with how well they embody the shift from the racier Restoration comedies of the late seventeenth century to the tamer and profoundly sentimental comedies of the early eighteenth. While these plays toy with somewhat racy situations, they are all profoundly domestic and reinforce marital harmony everywhere. There is sometimes (particularly in the final play, The Lady's Last Stake) far too much business of getting people on and off and into rooms into private assignations. And one's pleasure here certainly will have much to do with one's tolerance for endless and dizzying games of intrigue and betrayal between the genders. One nearly needs a flow chart in Last Stake to keep up with who is outfacing whom from scene to scene. The notes to the edition are solid, covering most of the obscure topical references. Some familiarity with period slang (bite, hook, the various meanings of impudence and face from moment to moment) helps. The volume as a whole suggests that the plays' author, Cibber, was altogether a better playwright than poet (execrable) or personality (brazenly irritating).