Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless Shakespeare".
The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion.
Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of the many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb, fribble, popinjay, dandy, fashion-monger, and ninny. Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion.
Anne Oldfield was an English actress and one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
Thomas Southerne was an Irish dramatist.
Sir Arthur Cecil Tyrrell Beck was a British Liberal Party politician.
Henry Graham White, known as Graham White, was a radical British Liberal Party politician.
Thomas Oswald was a Labour Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom. He represented Edinburgh Central from 1951 until he retired at the February 1974 general election.
The Conscious Lovers is a sentimental comedy written in five acts by the Irish author Richard Steele. The Conscious Lovers appeared on stage on 7 November 1722, at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and was an immediate success, with an initial run of eighteen consecutive nights.
Hiacoomes was a Wampanoag American Indian from the island of Martha's Vineyard,, who in 1643 became the first member of his society to convert to Christianity under the tutelage of the missionary Thomas Mayhew Jr. He would then, with the assistance of Mayhew, become a leading preacher to his fellow Wampanoag on the island, playing a major role in the widespread conversion of the Wampanoag from their traditional beliefs to Christianity.
William Pinkethman was an English comic actor, a low comedian with a droll style, and theatre manager. He was considered an imitator of Anthony Leigh.
His Honour John Neal MC was an English Judge and Liberal Party politician.
St John Hutchinson KC was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician.
Sir Hubert Stanley Houldsworth, 1st Baronet, QC was a barrister, Chairman of the National Coal Board and a British Liberal Party politician.
Sir Arthur Probyn Jones, 2nd Baronet, was a British barrister, baronet and Liberal Party politician.
Lt-Col. John Edward Tennant DSO MC was a British airman, explorer, banker and Liberal Party politician.
Basil Feilding, 6th Earl of Denbigh and 5th Earl of Desmond was an English nobleman and courtier.
Sentimental comedy is an 18th-century dramatic genre which sprang up as a reaction to the immoral tone of English Restoration plays. In sentimental comedies, middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials. These plays aimed to produce tears rather than laughter and reflected contemporary philosophical conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray by bad example. By appealing to his noble sentiments, a man could be reformed and set back on the path of virtue. Although the plays contained characters whose natures seemed overly virtuous and whose problems were too easily resolved, they were accepted by audiences as truthful representations of the human predicament.
Joseph Williams was an English stage actor of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
Jane Lucas was an English stage actress and singer of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. From around 1693 she was a member of the United Company based at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In 1697 she had fellow actor Colley Cibber arrested, although the reason was not clear and she remained acting in the company alongside him for some years afterwards.
