SOURCE: “Colley Cibber: The Fop as Hero” in Augustan Worlds, edited by J. C. Hilson, M. M. B. Jones, and J. R. Watson, Leicester University Press, 1978, pp. 153-64.

In this essay, Potter demonstrates how Cibber himself created the fop persona that was often used by his enemies to mock him.

It is to Pope that most readers owe their image of Colley Cibber the careless coxcomb, but it was Cibber himself who created that image. He wrote and acted the parts of fops; he was a highly successful speaker of prologues and epilogues ‘in character’ as a fop; most of his non-dramatic writings, even such unlikely-sounding ones as The Character and Conduct of Cicero, deliberately make use of theatrical imagery and the digressive, flippant style of the fop persona. Above all, the Apology and the controversy with Pope reveal a total agreement between Cibber and his opponents as...