Note 43 — STUDIES IN THE WORK OF COLLEY CIBBER

“The furious John Dennis, who hated Cibber for obstructing, as he imagined, the progress of his tragedy, called The Invader of His Country, in very passionate terms denies his claim to this comedy: ‘When The Fool in Fashion was first acted,’ says the critic, ‘Cibber was hardly twenty-two years of age; how could he, at the age of twenty, write a comedy with a just design, distinguished characters, and a proper dialogue who now, at forty, treats us with Hibernian sense and Hibernian English?’” Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies, III, 410.