SOURCE: “Cibber, Collier, and The Non-Juror,” in Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1, Winter 1979, pp. 61-75.

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...