Notes & Queries Archive
REPLY1849

CHARACTERS OF ACTORS IN CIBBER'S APOLOGY

By T.J.L.

Reverting to a Query in your Second Number, p. 29, your correspondent DRAMATICUS may rest assured that Colley Cibber's characters of actors and actresses (his contemporaries and immediate predecessors) first appeareded in his *Apology*, 4to. 1740, and were transferred *verbatim*, as far as I have been able to consult them, to the subsequent editions of that very entertaining and excellent work. If Colley Cibber were not a first-rate dramatist, he was a first-rate critic upon performers; and I am disposed to place his abilities as a play-wright much higher than the usual estimate. Probably the…

Topics: Theatrical Criticism, Plagiarism, Actors' Biographies

Locations: Fleet Street