“A weak invention of the enemy.”
Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Richard III.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber 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 The 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.
Wikipedia
“A weak invention of the enemy.”
Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Richard III.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
Source: The Blind Boy (l. 17-20).
“This business will never hold water.”
She Wou'd and She Wou'd Not, Act IV (1703).
“Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.”
Xerxes, Act IV, sc. iii (1699).
“Oh, how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring!”
The Double Gallant, Act I, sc. ii (1707).
“The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome
Outlives in fame the pious fool that rais'd it.”
Act III, scene 1. Similar thought by Sir Thomas Browne.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“As good be out of the world as out of the fashion.”
Love's Last Shift, Act II (1696).
Act V, scene 3.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
Love's Last Shift, Act IV (1696). Compare: "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd", William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), Act III, scene viii (often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned").
Act II, scene 1.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“And the ripe harvest of the new-mown hay
Gives it a sweet and wholesome odour.”
Act V, scene 3.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“Prithee don’t screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners.”
Love's Last Shift, Act II, sc. i (1696).
“With clink of hammers closing rivets up.”
Act V, scene 3. Similar thought in William Shakespeare, King Henry V.
Richard III (altered) (1700)
“Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks,
And he has chambers in King's Bench walks.”
A parody on Pope's lines: "Graced as thou art with all the power of words, / So known, so honoured at the House of Lords"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Act I, sc. i.
“Old houses mended,
Cost little less than new before they're ended.”
The Double Gallant, prologue (1707).