Cibber, COLLEY, actor, manager, and dramatist, was born in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, London, on 6th November 1671. He was the son of Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630–1700), a sculptor of some note, born in Holstein, whose best-known work is the basso-rilievo on the pedestal of the London Monument. He was educated at the free school of Grantham, in Lincolnshire; and in 1690 embraced the profession of an actor, joining the famous company of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. At this theatre, on the fortunes of which he exercised so important an influence, he remained, with one or two short intervals, during the whole of his theatrical career of forty-three years. At first he made very slow progress, and it was not till the secession from Drury Lane in 1695 of all the chief actors, that Cibber had an opportunity of showing how good a comedian he was. In January 1696 Cibber's first comedy, Love's Last Shift, was acted at Drury Lane, the author playing Sir Novelty Fashion. By this production his fame both as dramatist and actor was securely fixed; and he went on increasing in reputation till, after the secession in 1709, he was chosen one of the managing actors of the Haymarket Theatre. In 1710 Cibber and his partners were transferred to Drury Lane, in the direction of which Steele was in 1714 associated with Cibber, Wilks, Booth, and Doggett. Various changes occurred in the personnel of the management, which was finally broken up at the retirement of Cibber in 1733. During their management the associated actors wrought a vast improvement in the condition of the stage. Plays became more decent; the dissipated loungers that were accustomed to haunt the side scenes were denied admittance, at the risk, as Cibber relates, of the managers' lives; the pecuniary affairs of the theatre were managed with regularity; and the whole atmosphere of the theatre gained in respectability. As an author Cibber contributed largely to the improvement in decency which followed Jeremy Collier's famous philippic in 1698; and it must always be remembered to his credit, that in his comedies he does not rely for his ludicrous effects on the outraged husband who had almost invariably been the butt of previous dramatists. His greatest work, however, is his Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian (published in 1740; new ed. by R. W. Lowe, 1888), one of the most interesting autobiographies in our language. On the death of Eusden in 1730, Cibber, who was a devoted partisan of the Protestant succession, was appointed poet-laureate, in which office he wrote odes which were justly the object of universal ridicule. On this account, among others, he was ferociously attacked by Pope, who, in revenge for a damaging retaliatory pamphlet, elevated Cibber to the throne of Dullness in the 1743 edition of The Dunciad. The crime of dullness was, however, the last that could be charged to Cibber, who was vain, pert, a loose liver and a loose talker, but not a dullard. Cibber died suddenly on 11th December
1757. His wife was a Miss Shore, sister of the 'Sergeant-trumpet' of England. After their marriage, about 1693, she went on the stage, but did not attain to any great eminence.