[In this essay, Haley examines Cibber's defense of the stage from the attacks of Jeremy Collier, whose Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage (1698) began a fierce debate over the place of the theater in society. In his play The Non-Juror, Haley argues, Cibber attacks Collier both personally and politically, using him as a model for the character of Dr. Wolf.]

The Identification of the most important character in Colley Cibber's enormously successful comedy The Non-Juror (premiere 1717; first edition 1718) has provided commentators with considerable difficulty.¹ Breval suggested that Dr. Wolf was “either Paul, who was hang'd, Welton, who lost his living, or Howell, in Newgate.”² Miles decided that Cibber had all three in mind.³ Doran believed that Cibber had modelled Dr. Wolf on the turncoat cleric Robert Patten.⁴ In an amusing pamphlet, Pope ironically claimed that Wolf represented the Whig Bishop Hoadly.⁵ Others have interpreted Cibber's villain as a slur on George Hickes.⁶

It should be stated at the outset that Cibber did not pattern Dr. Wolf after a single character. All the clergymen named above do bear a certain resemblance (in varying degree) to Wolf—with the exception of Pope's humorous identification, which was intended merely to embarrass Cibber and the Whigs. From the pamphlets, newspapers, and coffee-house gossip of the day Cibber drew the “facts” about these notorious men that best suited his purpose: to create the most unflattering and sinister picture possible of the nonjuring priest—yet one that still retained vraisemblance. It is my belief, however, that the satiric allusions to these men which went into the composite portrait were only side-hits, and that the most important model for Dr. Wolf and the main target for Cibber's satire throughout the play was his old adversary, the famous theatrical critic and nonjuring priest Jeremy Collier.

Cibber begins his attack on Collier and the Nonjurors in the Dedication to the King. He argues that the playhouse is capable of performing valuable service to the community, and declares that in this play his intention is “to shew, what Honest and Laudable Uses may be made of the Theatre, when its Performances keep close to the true Purposes of its Institution.”⁷ At the same time, he states, he hopes to remove the prejudice against the players, “whom some Severe Heads think wholly Useless, and others Dangerous to the Young and Innocent.” Then, in what seems at first merely a hit at the Puritans, Cibber notes that “since Plays were first Exhibited in England, they were never totally suppress'd, but by those very People, that turn'd our Church, and Constitution, into Irreligion and Anarchy.” A few lines further on Cibber announces his determination “to attack those lurking Enemies of our Constitution from the Stage.” The connection in Cibber's mind between the Puritans and the Nonjurors seems clear: both threatened the constitution, both threatened the stage.

The idea had earlier been expressed by Cibber in the Dedication to Love Makes a Man (1701); here he mounts a strong attack on the Nonjurors for their attitude toward the theater, church, and government:

So that if our zealous Reformers do but stick fairly to their method we may in time hope to see our Nation flourish without either Wit, Health, Mony, Law, Conscience, or Religion. But this sort of Reformation I hope will never be thoroughly wrought, while the King, and the Establisht Church have any Friends: The Stage I'm sure was never heartily oppress'd but by the Enemies of both, and it has been always observable, that they who can't endure a Prince on the Theatre, have not been very apt to like him on the Throne.

A few years before this outburst John Dennis had voiced a similar complaint:

since the Drama first began to flourish among us, we have been longer at quiet, than ever we were before, since the Conquest; and the only Civil War which has been amongst us since that Time, is notoriously known to have been begun, and carried on by those, who had an utter Aversion to the Stage; as on the other side, he who now discovers so great an Aversion to the Stage, has notoriously done all that lay in his little Power, to plunge us in another Civil War.⁸

The modern William Prynne was, of course, Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), whose strictures against the stage and the players had, beginning with the publication of A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage in 1698, sparked off a fierce debate which was still continuing at the time The Non-Juror was produced.⁹ Cibber was merely a fledgling playwright when the Short View was written; it is therefore not surprising that in this work Collier ignored him, concentrating on far more important figures, notably Vanbrugh and Congreve. However, as Collier's attack posed a very real threat to Cibber's livelihood (A Short View suggested that the playhouse should be shut down, and the players fined as vagabonds), it is certain that Cibber both read the work and despised the author.

Furthermore, in Collier's sequel to the Short View, which appeared in the following year, Cibber was attacked personally. Admitting that he had overlooked certain plays in his original work, Collier observed that Cibber's Love's Last Shift (1696) was “for the first four Acts … scandalously smutty and profane.”¹⁰ In another passage, Collier responded to Vanbrugh's defense of The Relapse in terms which must surely have offended Cibber:

he [Vanbrugh] complains that he is mightily overcharg'd; and that all the stretch of the Prophaneness lies in Ld. Foppington's Gad, and Miss Hoyden's I-Cod. Now Hoyden's Expression I take to be rank Swearing, neither does he deny it. And as for Ld. Foppington, he adds By, to Gad; which in his particular way of Pronouncing o, like a, is broad and downright. This Gentleman would excuse himself by the Liberties of Conversation, and gives several Instances of disguised Oaths. What means he by insisting so much upon Precedent? Does Custom justifie a Fault? Is Sin improv'd into Privilege? and can a Man Swear by Common-Law?¹¹

Cibber had not only created the original Foppington—Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift—but he also acted the role in The Relapse; of both parts Cibber was justifiably proud.¹² Some eight years later he was to write and act another part for this epitome of foppery, in The Careless Husband, the play which brought Cibber the greatest critical acclaim. Furthermore, Cibber both spoke and dressed like this fop in real life; a reference to Foppington was tantamount to naming Cibber.¹³

Thus Cibber had both personal and professional reasons for resenting Collier's attack on the stage. And although he did not immediately plunge into the debate—a wise decision, in view of the embarrassingly unsuccessful efforts of, among others, Congreve and Vanbrugh¹⁴—in the years to come Cibber was never to let pass an opportunity of showing his antipathy to Collier.

After the publication of the Short View the courts began to fine actors for swearing on the stage.¹⁵ In the Dedication to Love Makes a Man Cibber leveled a bitter attack on the Middlesex jury for imposing such fines and, as we have seen, on Collier and his supporters for countenancing the destruction of stage and government. He ironically suggests that if an honest, impartial observed could not be found to decide on the worth of the stage, “Mr. C———r wou'd be as able to resolve 'em in a moment, and be ready with a second Indictment against us, before they cou'd tell him out fifty pound for his Labour: This now, in my thoughts wou'd be abundance more Just, and Methodical.”¹⁶ Cibber's anger is so pronounced in this Dedication that the grammar occasionally breaks down under the weight of the abusive epithets; he fairly spits out his condemnation of the reformers, who are inspired by profaneness, cruelty, avarice, hypocrisy, and ignorance.

Cibber's first attack on Collier had appeared two years earlier. In the Prologue to his tragedy Xerxes (1699) Cibber maintained that audiences tend to miss the point of satire on the stage; truth is represented to be copied, but vice to be abhorred. His argument then turns ad hominem:

Thus ev'n sage Collier too might be accus'd
If what h'as writ, thro' ignorance abus'd:
Girls may read him, not for the truth he says,
But to be pointed to the bawdy plays.

(1777 ed.)

In Act V of The Careless Husband (1705) Cibber again managed to get in a dig at Collier while explaining the method of stage-satire, and its recent demise:

Lord Morelove. Plays now, indeed, one need not be so much afraid of; for since the late short-sighted view of 'em, vice may go on and prosper; the stage dares hardly show a vicious person speaking like himself, for fear of being call'd profane for exposing him.

Lady Easy. 'Tis hard, indeed, when people won't distinguish between what's meant for contempt, and what for example.

(1777 ed.)

The fact that the satire was put in the mouths of two chaste and sentimental characters in a remarkably inoffensive play gave it all that much greater potency.

Cibber was willing to admit that the Restoration theater had needed reform; however, he believed (rightly) that Collier wished not merely to correct, but to destroy the stage. In the Dedication to The Lady's Last Stake (1707), Cibber observed that “A Play, without a just Moral, is a poor and trivial Undertaking; and 'tis from the Success of such Pieces, that Mr. Collier was furnish'd with an advantageous Pretence of laying his unmerciful Axe to the Root of the Stage.” This was an image Cibber had used in the Dedication to Love Makes a Man to describe both the Puritans and Nonjurors: “For there are among us a sort of Gentleman, that have been us'd to Lopping, that know how to handle an Axe, and I think the last time they pull'd down the Stage in the City, they set up a Scaffold at Court; perhaps they are not now the less our Enemies, because the King's Authority supports us.” It was the one which he again employed in the Apology: “However just his Charge against the Authors that then wrote for it might be; I cannot but think his Sentence against the Stage itself is unequal; Reformation he thinks too mild a Treatment for it, and is therefore for laying his Ax to the Root of it.”¹⁷ This passage continues with a hit at Collier which recalls The Non-Juror: “If this were to be a Rule of Judgment for Offences of the same Nature, what might become of the Pulpit, where many a seditious and corrupted Teacher has been known to cover the most pernicious Doctrine with the Masque of Religion.” He concludes this attack with Hains's lighthearted observation that Collier's animus toward the stage stemmed from the fact that he recognized its moral purpose, “and two of a trade, you know, can never agree.”

Having established that Cibber for years had been nursing a very real grievance against Collier, one would surely expect a play entitled The Non-Juror, and written in defense of stage and constitution, to contain some reference to Jeremy Collier. Cibber knew full well that Collier recognized the efficacy of theatrical satire, and greatly feared its strength.¹⁸ Furthermore, Cibber was aware of Collier's powers of rhetoric and sarcasm, skills essential to successful pamphleteering. Collier simply could not be beaten within this genre. But as Cibber was later to write, an even more effective way of damaging an opponent was by means of the stage; for “a printed Falshood may possibly be confounded by printed Proofs against it. But against Contempt and Scandal, heighten'd and colour'd by the Skill of an Actor ludicrously infusing it into a Multitude, there is no immediate Defence to be made or equal Reparation to be had for it.”¹⁹ Because of the Protestant nonjuring community's increasing involvement with Jacobitism, the time was ripe in 1717, when memories were still fresh of the '15 Rising of the Pretender's supporters, for Cibber to mount the full-scale dramatic attack on Collier he had long planned, an attack which laid open to public scorn Collier's views concerning religion, politics, and the theater.

Even if Cibber had not been inspired by personal hatred, Collier would have been a natural target for his satire. After the death of Bishop Hickes in 1715, Collier was “beyond all question” the most prominent man in the nonjuring church.²⁰ As one of his colleagues later wrote, “Mr. Collier was the only one who at the time acted as a Bishop amongst the Non-Jurors, it being thought expedient that the others should conceal their character even from their own people.”²¹ On July 23, 1716, it was proposed that Collier should be declared “Primus,” which became the one publicly known position in the nonjuring church.

In Act II of the play we are told that Wolf had just been created bishop of Thetford, a position formerly held by George Hickes. It should be emphasized, however, that Hickes's consecration as suffragan bishop of Thetford (which took place in 1694) was not generally known until the posthumous publication of his Constitution of the Catholic Church in 1716.²² The leadership of this illegal organization had been perforce a secret matter. During this period Henry Gandy and Thomas Brett were also created bishops in the nonjuring church; however, they neither allowed their consecration to be made public, nor did they become involved in controversy. The little that is known of them is entirely to their credit. I therefore agree with Overton that there is not “the faintest shadow of a suspicion” that either of them served as a model for Dr. Wolf.²³ Collier, on the other hand, had never been one to shun the limelight: he pompously signed his works “Primus Anglo-Britanniae Episcopus.” He was not in fact, like Wolf, promoted to the vacant see of Thetford; but then neither was any other nonjuring cleric. Collier was known, however, both to Cibber and the general public as the Nonjuror claiming to be a bishop and the successor of Hickes.

Even certain of Collier's colleagues accused him of being driven by personal ambition;²⁴ yet, like Dr. Wolf, he accepted honors with what can be interpreted as a false hesitancy. To Sir John, Wolf explains that it was duty, not self-interest, which persuaded him to accept the bishopric (p. 24):

Not that I am vain of any worldly Title; but since it has pleas'd our Court to dignify me, our Churches Right obliges me to take it. … It is indeed a Spiritual Comfort to find my Labours in the Cause are not forgotten; though I must own some less conspicuous Instance of their Favour had better suited me: Such high Distinctions are invidious; and it would really grieve me, Sir, among my Friends, to meet with Envy where I only hope for Love; not but I submit in any way to serve them.

Similarly, Collier, when offered the position of Primus by his council, “for some time … declined and would have put it on some other person and did not accept of it without much intreaty.”²⁵

In the second place, Collier, like Wolf, was an outlaw.²⁶ In 1698 a warrant went out for the arrest of Collier for having given absolution on the scaffold to the would-be assassins of King William; when Collier refused to give himself up, he was outlawed, and a fugitive from justice he remained for the rest of his life.²⁷ And while there is no evidence to suggest that Collier was actively involved in the Rebellion, his Jacobite leanings were well known (in 1692 he had been investigated by the government for attempting to communicate with the Pretender).

Certain other details of Collier's life correspond with Cibber's portrait of the Nonjuror. If Collier were not, like Wolf, a “lurking Emissary of Rome,” he did have a well-known inclination toward Roman Catholicism.²⁸ His desire to return to certain older liturgical practices was seen by many, including several of his colleagues, as a clear indication of his Catholicism.²⁹ This so-called Usages Controversy created among members of the nonjuring church a conflict which was developing into a fierce pamphlet war about the time The Non-Juror was written. It is quite probable that “those Manual Devotions” of Dr. Wolf (p. 12) refer to Collier's efforts to change the Anglican prayerbook.³⁰ Again, there is certainly no evidence to indicate that Collier had ever been seen “to Officiate Publick Mass in the Church of Nostre Dame at Antwerp” (p. 75); however, it does seem that he took an unusual interest in Catholic affairs in Flanders.³¹

Cibber managed to incorporate into The Non-Juror virtually every “abuse” against which Collier had fulminated in his writings on the stage. In Chapter i of the Short View, entitled “The Immodesty of the Stage,” Collier declared that “The Modern Poets seem to use Smut as the Old Ones did Machines, to relieve a fainting Invention.”³² To Collier it was particularly disgusting that modern playwrights “make Women speak Smuttily”—“For Modesty as Mr. Rapin observes, is the Character of Women.”³³ Not only, he exclaimed bitterly, are the stage women made to hear and speak obscenities, but they are often depicted as being under “Disorders of Liberty”—in other words, sexually inclined.³⁴

In The Non-Juror Cibber quite purposely included all these literary and moral “evils.” The heroine Maria is a very outspoken and full-blooded young lady—a “sensual Ideot” according to her father (p. 19). She is a self-confessed coquette who delights in shocking others with her open sexuality: to her brother she describes herself as “an empty House to let” (p. 6); to her father she explains, to his horror, the delight of being “frolicksome” in marriage (p. 19); to her lover she complains that men “invite us to a Feast, where 'tis criminal to taste, or have an Appetite” (p. 61); to her stepmother she boasts that she would “lead that dancing Blood” of Dr. Wolf “such a profane Courant” (p. 40); and at another time she confides to Lady Woodvil her belief that the lecherous Doctor “might have his hands full of one of us” (p. 22).

As a rule Maria is well aware of the boldness of her speech. However, in the scene in which her sentimental lover offers to teach her Greek (p. 29), her behavior is more ambiguous. Here she asks Charles how difficult it is to read that language; he replies, “It has been half the Business of my Life.” Maria proudly informs him that she has already learned a Greek expression of love, “Zoe, kai Psyche.” The dialogue then continues as follows:

Charles. I hope you know the English of 'em Madam.

Maria. O lud! I hope there's no Harm in it; I am sure I heard the Doctor say it to my Lady—Pray what is it?

Charles. You must first imagine, Madam, a tender Lover gazing on his Mistress, and then indeed they have a softness in 'em, as thus—Zoe, kai psyche! my Life, my Soul!

The Greek phrase bandied about by Marcia and Charles seems innocent enough (it literally translates “life and soul”), but the fact that the “liquorish” Doctor Wolf uses it in his lovemaking indicates otherwise. To the wits familiar with the classics, sexual innuendo and antifeminine satire would be immediately apparent. The transliterated phrase is taken from Juvenal's Sixth Satire, which is, as Dryden points out by way of introduction to his translation, “a bitter invective against the fair Sex … from whence all the Moderns have notoriously stollen their sharpest Railleries.”³⁵ In the Satire Juvenal savagely attacks women who, like Maria, wish to learn a foreign language:

For what so Nauseous and Affected too,
As those that think they due Perfection want,
Who have not learnt to lisp the Grecian cant.

He links their affectation of learning to their lust:

Ev'n in the Feat of Love, they use that Tongue.
          …
[Zoe, kai psyche]! All those tender words
The Momentary trembling Bliss affords
The kind soft Murmurs of the private Sheets,
Are Bawdy, while thou speak'st in publick Streets.(36)

Cibber's allusion to female affectation and lubricity is of course quite esoteric, and there is just the slightest suggestion that the charming Maria is being associated with Juvenal's lustful hypocrites. In any case, Cibber did not expect many of his largely bourgeois audience to make the connection with Juvenal; to those who miss the hint of satire, Maria remains an entirely positive character, coquettish but chaste, affected but delightfully so, and far from speaking “Bawdy” to his mistress like an “Impudent young Rogue,” Charles behaves himself here and throughout the play in a manner appropriately sentimental, and consistently dull.

It is my view that Cibber chose this allusion with Collier in mind. Not only did Collier attack what he regarded as the antifeminine stance of the modern playwright,³⁷ but he also described with abhorrence the obscenity of Juvenal—specifically mentioning the Sixth Satire:

Indeed Juvenal has a very untoward way with him in some of his Satyrs. His Pen has such a Libertine stroak that 'tis a Question whether the Practise, or the Reproof, the Age, or the Author, were the more Licentious. He teaches those Vices he would correct, and writes more like a Pimp, than a Poet. And truly I think there is but little of Lewdness lost in the Translation. The Sixth and Eleventh Satyrs are Particularly remarkable. Such nauseous stuff is almost enough to debauch the Alphabet, and make the Language scandalous.³⁸

Although those less learned in Cibber's audience must surely have missed the import of the classical allusion, Collier did not fail to recognize the indecency and satiric significance of the Greek words. In his slashing pamphlet attack on The Non-Juror he singled out this scene for condemnation:

The Poet might have also, for the sake of modesty, if he found himself under a Necessity of making Maria speak two Greek Words, furnish'd her with two of a better and more inoffensive sound than [zoe, kai psyche], since any one that reads them in Juvenal must be appris'd of their Meaning, and that their Signification, as us'd there, explains something not fit to be named, nay not so to be as much as thought of by a Lady of good fame.³⁹

“Smut,” Collier stated in the Short View, “is still more insufferable with respect to Religion.”⁴⁰ In Cibber's play a nonjuring cleric is made to delight in all the fleshly sins, from autoeroticism to adultery. We see him “most lusciously” sipping up Lady Woodvil's leavings at tea (p. 12), using her glove and slipper “for a private Play Thing” (p. 12), surprising Maria in her petticoats (p. 15), stroking Lady Woodvil's knee (p. 41), and enticing her to share “Transports Mutual” and “the Burning Joy” (p. 69). In the behavior of Dr. Wolf, Cibber mirrored what to him was Collier's sexual hypocrisy.⁴¹

Religion, according to Collier, was “the highest discouragement to Licentiousness, It forbids the remotest Tendencies to Evil, Banishes the Follies of Conversation, and Obliges up [sic] to Sobriety of Thought.”⁴² Such a puritanical attitude is nicely undercut by the Colonel's amusing anecdote about Dr. Wolf (p. 22): “And yet his Zeal pretends to be so shock'd at all indecent Amours, that in the Country he us'd to make the Maids lock up the Turky-cocks every Saturday Night, for fear they should gallant the Hens on a Sunday.” When Lady Woodvil expresses shock at the Colonel's rudeness, he laughingly declares that he heard the story from his sister. Such conversational openness between the sexes Collier found particularly disgusting: “With us [the modern playwrights, as opposed to the Ancients] Smuttiness is absolute and unconfin'd. 'Tis under no restraint of Company, nor has any regard to Quality of Sex. Gentlemen talk it to Ladies, and Ladies to Gentlemen with all the Freedom and Frequency imaginable.”⁴³

In Chapter ii of A Short View, entitled “The Profaneness of the Stage,” Collier railed against the cursing and swearing then common on the stage:

For what is more provoking than contempt, and what Sin more contemptuous than common Swearing? What can be more Insolent and Irreligious than to bring in God to attest our Trifles, to give Security for our Follies, and to make part of our Diversion. To Play with Majesty and Omnipotence in this manner, is to render it cheap and despicable.⁴⁴

As I have mentioned above, Collier's demand that the actors who swore on the stage should be prosecuted was soon carried out by the authorities. According to a player depicted in Visits from the Shades, the desired reform was effected only with a concomitant weakening of expression; after a “Tour of the Theatre,” “Jo Hains” expresses his dismay over the insipidity of the current productions:

I have staid out the length of a whole Play, and have not found out a Double Entendre, or one Blasphemous Rant, nor so much as a Heathen Deity, or a Plague or a Pox, a Damne or a Zouns, was once mention'd. Ah! Mr. C———r, you have strangely pinion'd up the Poets, lost 'em many a fine Simily, and have tyed up the Genius of Diction; the Devil that us'd to sound so roundly in the Mouth of a Player, is so sheepishly metamorphoz'd into a languishing Duce take me, that I was altogether estrang'd at it.⁴⁵

In The Non-Juror Cibber displays his utter contempt for these reforms (and the reformers). The play contains literally dozens of oaths and imprecations—most of which are voiced by the youthful heroine. It is true that Cibber off the stage was notorious for swearing,⁴⁶ but in spite of this predilection the dialogue in all his other plays is relatively pure of expression. Yet in The Non-Juror almost every time Maria speaks she prefaces her remarks with an “O Lord,” “lud,” “lard,” “laud,” “what the duce,” “ged,” “gad,” “by Heaven,” or “bless us.” Such modish swearing Collier particularly despised:

At some time, and with some Poets Swearing is no ordinary Relief. It stands up in the room of Sense, gives Spirit to a flat Expression, and makes a Period Musical and Round. In short, 'tis almost all the Rhetorick, and Reason some People are Masters of: The manner of performance is different. Some times they mince the matter; change the Letter, and keep the Sense, as if they had a mind to steal a Swearing, and break the Commandement without Sin. [in the margin, “Gad for God”] At another time the Oaths are clipt, but not so much within the Ring, but that the Image and Superscription are visible. These expedients, I conceive are more for variety, than Conscience: For when the fit comes on them, they make no difficulty of Swearing at Length.⁴⁷

In Chapter iii of the Short View, entitled “The Clergy abused by the Stage,” Collier solemnly declared that “To expose a Priest much more to burlesque his Function, is an Affront to the Deity.”⁴⁸ The priest should neither “be ill used by others,” nor “made to Play the Fool Himself.”⁴⁹ In The Non-Juror Cibber broke these dicta with relish. Not only does Dr. Wolf reveal himself to be both traitor and lecher, but he is constantly subjected to the verbal and physical abuse of the other characters. If Collier were upset by the fact that the Chaplain in Otway's Orphan is treated by the soldiers “with the Language of Thee, and Thou,”⁵⁰ how horrified he must have been to see Dr. Wolf manhandled by an irate colonel, and roughly dragged off the stage by a file of musketeers. And as for verbal abuse, not even D'Urfey's or Shadwell's stage clerics were insulted quite so frequently, or roundly. Not only is Cibber's Nonjuror addressed (after his treachery has been discovered) in the second person familiar, but throughout the course of the play he is variously described as

this vile nonjuring Zealot (p. 2); this nonjuring Hypocrite (p. 4); this sanctify'd Rogue (p. 12); the liquorish Rascal (p. 12); the impudent Goat (p. 12); Traytor (pp. 13, 16, 23, 69); Wretch (p. 13); so insolent a Rascal (p. 14); The Dog (p. 14 twice); A sawcy Puppy (p. 15); this impudent Cur (p. 15); Impudent (p. 15); this vile Hypocrite (p. 16); this lurking Thief (p. 16); th'Impostor (p. 16); Termagant (p. 22); Monster (pp. 55, 72); this insinuating Hypocrite (p. 32); vile Detractor of all Virtue (p. 43); Audacious Monster (p. 44); hardned Impudence (p. 45); great Devil (p. 45); this Hypocrite (p. 51); Villain (pp. 51, 55 twice, 62, 70, 71); mercenary (p. 53); Barefac'd Traytor (p. 66); Ungrateful Wretch (p. 69); Felonious Traytor (pp. 69-70); Serpent (p. 71); Subtle Villain (p. 71); Wicked Fellow (p. 72); Insatiate Villain (p. 73); vile Traytor (p. 76).⁵¹

Certainly such an approach to characterization cannot be described as “fine raillery,” the type of satire Dryden most highly recommended: “How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious names.”⁵² But in this play Cibber's satire was “angrily particular”:⁵³ he was not interested in severing the head from the body, only to leave it in its place; rather, as Nicholas Rowe's Dedication to The Non-Juror makes abundantly clear, Cibber wished brutally to “souse” Collier and his traitorous party of malcontents.

Throughout his writings Collier emphasized the high social status of the clergy: “The Priest-hood is the profession of a Gentleman. A Parson notwithstanding the ignorant Pride of some People, is a Name of Credit, and Authority, both in Religion, and Law.”⁵⁴ His concern for titles was obvious: “the stile of a higher Secular Honour,” he wrote, “is continued as well with Priest-hood as without. A Churchman who is either Baronet, or Baron, writes himself so, notwithstanding His Clerkship.”⁵⁵ Although Collier strenuously denied being vain,⁵⁶ Cibber was not impressed: Wolf's desire to be called “My Lord” certainly accords with what we know of Collier's character from his writings and biographers.

It is important to note that Dr. Wolf is a chaplain; Collier was particularly sensitive about stage representations of this branch of the clergy. Since the Nonjurors could not hold livings they were forced to become dependent on benevolent aristocrats (Collier had himself for years been a chaplain). Such dependence did not make them servants, Collier argued at length. The same arrogance Dr. Wolf displays toward his patron and the rest of the family is manifested throughout Collier's writings on the duties and status of the chaplain; consider, for example, the overweening tone of these passages:

He may be assured he hath no Master in the House; and for any to suppose he hath, is an unreasonable and absurd Mistake; (to say no worse of it) 'tis an inverting that Order which God made between the Priest and the People, and denies the Authority which God hath granted for the Edification of his Church.⁵⁷

Now to be ready upon all Occasions to resent any dishonour done to Religion with a prudent Gravity and Assurance, carries such a noble Air of Greatness and undesigning Honesty in it, that it Forces a secret Veneration from Enemies themselves; and though a Man may happen to be unjustly hated for speaking unacceptable Truths, yet he is sure never to be despised.⁵⁸

To Cibber, the logical conclusion of such “overbearing Insolence” (p. 70) was a reversal of the master-servant relationship, a reversal graphically expressed in Wolf's bold words to Sir John: “I am Master here, Turn you out Sir” (p. 70).

There are several other instances in The Non-Juror of Cibber's scorn for Collier's critical views. Collier complained that the young ladies on the stage failed to show sufficient respect for parental authority;⁵⁹ Maria laughs in her father's face when he names Dr. Wolf as her future husband. In A Short View Collier staunchly defended the unities;⁶⁰ in The Non-Juror's Epilogue Cibber dismissed them as irrelevant (“Rules by which Old Wits / Made Plays, as—Dames do Puddings, by Receipts”). In all his writings on the stage Collier emphasized the lowly status of the player; Cibber's ultimate irony was to turn his Nonjuror into an actor: in Act I we learn that Dr. Wolf attended the masquerades, dressed as a cardinal.⁶¹

Finally, Dr. Wolf's inflated language of courtship constitutes a direct slap at [Collier] and A Short View. Two passages in this work summarize Collier's attitude toward the “Argument of Love:”

And then as for the General Strains of Courtship, there can be nothing more Profane and Extravagant. The Hero's Mistress is no less than his Deity. She disposes of his Reason, prescribes his Motions, and Commands his Interest. What Soveraign Respect, what Religious Address, what Idolizing Raptures are we pester'd with? Shrines and Offerings, and Adorations, are nothing upon such solemn Occasions. Thus Love and Devotion, Ceremony and Worship are Confounded; And God, and his Creatures treated both alike! These Shreds of Distraction are often brought from the Playhouse into Conversation: And thus the Sparks are taught to Court their Mistresses, in the same Language they say their Prayers.⁶² … Here you have the Language of the Scriptures, and the most solemn Instances of Religion, prostituted to Courtship and Romance! Here you have a Mistress made God Almighty, Ador'd with Zeal and Faith, and Worship'd up to Martyrdom!⁶³

Accordingly, Cibber has Dr. Wolf couch his language of love in terms of the most exaggerated religious images:

Ah! thou heavenly Woman! (p. 41) … divine perfection. (p. 41) … soft, and serious Excellence. (p. 41) … At the first Sight of you, I felt unusual Transports in my Soul. (p. 42) … What Bosom can be Proof 'gainst such Artillery of Love? I may resist, call all my Prayers, my Fastings, Tears and Penance to my Aid, but yet, alas! these have not made an Angel of me. (p. 42) … Permit me then on this fair Shrine to pay my Vows, and offer up a Heart. (p. 42) … No, fair spotless Miracle, the Mysteries of Love are not fit for Hearts Recluse, and Elevate as mine. (p. 69)

The portrait of Dr. Wolf is undoubtedly a composite one: Welton, Paul, Howell, Patten, and Hickes—to all these Nonjuring and Jacobite clerics Cibber made allusion in the course of the play. Sufficient evidence has been amassed, however, to suggest that Cibber hated Collier for reasons political, religious, literary, and professional, that at least part of his impetus for writing the play stemmed from a desire to wreak vengeance on Collier for past offenses, and that he incorporated certain real and imagined characteristics of Collier into the personage of Dr. Wolf.

Furthermore, The Non-Juror is more than a libel on Collier himself; it can also be viewed as the quintessential rejection by the playwright of the attitudes expressed in the notorious Short View. Certainly the satire in the comedy on his person and beliefs, both religious and literary, elicited a bitter reply from Collier. When reading his venomous pamphlet on The Non-Juror one thinks of Scandal in Love for Love railing against modern writers, and Valentine's telling comment: “You are as inveterate against our poets as if your character had been lately exposed upon the stage.”⁶⁴ The ferocity of Collier's response to The Non-Juror indicates that Cibber did succeed in drawing blood—a result which the greatest wits of the English stage had for two decades sought in vain.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the play's extraordinary vogue, see Dudley H. Miles, “A Forgotten Hit: The Nonjuror,” SP, 16 (1919), 67-77.

2. “Joseph Gay,” (John Durant Breval), A Compleat Key to the Non-Juror, Explaining the Characters in That Play with Observations Thereon (London, 1718), p. 25.

3. Dudley H. Miles, “The Political Satire of The Non-Juror,” MP, 13 (1915), 126.

4. John Doran, London in the Jacobite Times (London, 1877), I, 296.

5. A Clue to the Comedy of the Non-Juror. With Some Hints of Consequence Relating to That Play in a Letter to N. Rowe, Esq; Poet Laureat to His Majesty (London, 1718), pp. 8-13. Pope's authorship of this anonymous work has been convincingly argued by Norman Ault; see The Prose Works of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1936), pp. cxvii-cxxiv. For a discussion of its satire see my article “Pope, Cibber, and A Clue to the Comedy of the Non-Juror,” forthcoming in Studies in Philology.

6. The Entertainer: Containing Remarks upon Men, Manners, Religion and Policy, Dec. 25, 1717; William Bradford Gardner, “George Hickes and the Origin of the Bangorian Controversy,” SP, 39 (1942), 76.

7. This and future references to The Non-Juror, including page numbers cited in the text, will be taken from the first edition (London, 1718).

8. The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government and to Religion: Occasioned by a Late Book, Written by Jeremy Collier M.A. (1698), in The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore, 1939), I, 165-166.

9. Two other Nonjurors, Arthur Bedford and William Law, were among those who wrote books in support of Collier's position.

10. A Defence of the Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (London, 1699), Preface to the Reader.

11. Ibid., p. 101.

12. An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, ed. Robert W. Lowe (London, 1889), I, 213-216.

13. See, for example, The Weekly Journal; or, Saturday's Post, Jan. 14, 1721, in which Mist refers to “My Lord Foppington's Nonjuror,” and mocks Cibber's affected pronunciation.

14. See Apology, I, 274.

15. See, for example, The Post Man, Feb. 19, 1702. The practice of fining actors was finally ended by Queen Anne when it became obvious that the paid informers, to quote an anonymous pamphlet, “liv'd upon their Oaths, and that what they did, proceeded not from Conscience, but from Interest”: The Laureat (London, 1740), p. 53.

16. The charge that Collier (like Dr. Wolf) was motivated by personal greed rather than piety was frequently made by his opponents: see, for example, the anonymous pamphlet Visits from the Shades; or, Dialogues Serious, Comical, and Poetical (London, 1704), pp. 6-7.

17. Apology, I, 272-273.

18. In his Apology (I, 289-291), Cibber quotes at length from the Defence of the Short View (pp. 25-26), in which passages Collier explained the power of, and his aversion to, theatrical satire.

19. Apology, I, 295.

20. J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors: Their Lives, Principles, and Writings (London, 1902), p. 127. Cf. Thomas Lathbury, A History of the Nonjurors: Their Controversies and Writings; with Remarks on Some of the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1845), p. 248.

21. Thomas Brett's MS “History of the Non-Jurors,” p. 6, quoted in Henry Broxap, The Later Non-Jurors (Cambridge, Eng., 1924), p. 35.

22. Lathbury, A History of the Nonjurors, pp. 263 (n. g), 266.

23. The Nonjurors, pp. 20-21.

24. Broxap, The Later Non-Jurors, pp. 35-36.

25. Brett to Doughty, Dec. 9, 1726, quoted in The Later Non-Jurors, p. 35.

26. Although Wolf is not actually called an outlaw in the play, he was definitely considered such by the author: see Apology, II, 186.

27. Overton has pointed out that “His outlawry indeed was ignored, and he was able to return to his ordinary avocations, but it was an unpleasant situation for any man to be in” (The Nonjurors, p. 127).

28. Cf. the Nonjuror Thomas Hearne's remark: “Last night I heard Mr. Samuel Parker say that some years ago Mr. Jer. Collier said to this effect that we must come as near the papists as we can, that they may not hurt us” (quoted in Broxap, The Later Non-Jurors, p. 49, n. 1).

29. See, for example, the anonymous pamphlet, Mr. Collier's Desertion Dismissed; or, the Office of Worship in the Liturgy of the Church of England Defended against Bold Attacks of That Gentleman, Late of Her Communion, Now of His Own (London, 1719); and Charles Leslie, A Letter from Mr. Lesly to His Friend, against Alterations or Additions to the Liturgy of the Church of England (London, 1718). Both works accuse Collier of leading his unsuspecting disciples into popery.

30. In the year The Non-Juror was written appeared Collier's Reasons for Restoring Some Prayers and Directions as They Stand in the Communion Service of the First English Reformed Liturgy, Compiled by the Bishops in the 2nd and 3rd Years of the Reign of King Edward VI.

31. In A Short View, pp. 244-249, Collier prints a pastoral letter by the bishop of Arras in Flanders.

32. A Short View, p. 6.

33. Ibid., pp. 8-9.

34. Ibid., p. 12.

35. The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford, 1958), II, 694.

36. Ibid., pp. 702-703. The bracketed phrase is Dryden's Greek transliterated.

37. A Short View, pp. 171-173.

38. Ibid., pp. 70-71.

39. The Theatre-Royal Turn'd into a Mountebank's Stage. In Some Remarks upon Mr. Cibber's Quack-Dramatical Performance Called the Non-Juror (London, 1718), pp. 21-22 (I have transliterated Collier's Greek). Collier's authorship of this work has been proven by Sister Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy 1698-1726 (Milwaukee, 1937), pp. 251-259.

40. A Short View, p. 14.

41. This was a common theme of the defenders of the stage: see, inter alia, Tom D'Urfey's Preface to The Campaigners (London, 1698), passim, and Visits from the Shades, pp. 6, 10.

42. A Short View, p. 14.

43. Ibid., p. 17.

44. Ibid., p. 58.

45. Visits from the Shades, p. 2.

46. According to Johnson, “one half of what he said was oaths”: Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), II, 340.

47. A Short View, pp. 56-57. Cf. A Defence of the Short View, p. 101.

48. A Short View, p. 128.

49. Ibid., p. 98.

50. Ibid., p. 100. This role was Cibber's first major acting assignment.

51. At one point Wolf is also called a “Jewish Cormorant” (p. 21); this description served as a sly hit at Collier, who more than once used “Jewish” as an abusive epithet, and had reacted strongly to D'Urfey's calling a priest a “holy Cormorant” (cf. the Short View, p. 201, and D'Urfey's Preface to The Campaigners, pp. 22, 24).

52. A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), in Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), II, 92-93.

53. An expression Cibber used to describe Pope's ad hominem satire (Apology, I, 38).

54. A Short View, p. 136.

55. Ibid., pp. 136-137.

56. Ibid., p. 137.

57. “The Office of a Chaplain,” in Essays upon Several Moral Subjects (London, 1697), p. 185.

58. Ibid., p. 210.

59. A Short View, p. 147.

60. Ibid., p. 228.

61. The author of the pamphlet Of Plays and Masquerades (London, 1719) criticized the masquerades for “exposing the Character and Habit of a Clergyman on these Occasions, as is often done. The Mischief lies in the Consequence of seeing such a one play the Fool, or lead off the Masque” (p. 25). Sister Rose Anthony has attributed this work to Collier (The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, pp. 264-268).

62. A Short View, pp. 282-283.

63. Ibid., pp. 76-77.

64. I.139-141 in Regents edition, ed. Emmett L. Avery (Lincoln, Neb., 1966).