The Right to Write; or, Colley Cibber and The Drury-Lane Monster

In lieu of an abstract, here is the chapter\u27s first paragraph: During the eighteenth century, it was a matter of some dispute whether Colley Cibber (1671-1757), actor, manger, playwright, and poet, had raised the business of theatre to an art or lowered the art of drama to a business. Though officially the King\u27s servants, the Drury Lane actors and managers had always made their living by commercial success, not patronage. Yet Colley Cibber\u27s very public attempts to turn a profit, please the public, and still rise in stature among men of letters, made him repeatedly the focus and emblem of heated discussions of taste, propriety, and power