Luckless. That’s no easy thing, Marplay.
Mar. jun. Yes, Sir. Odes, Odes, a Man may be oblig’d to write those you know.” These concluding lines plainly refer to the elder Cibber’s appointment as Laureate in 1730, and to those “annual Birth-day Strains,” with which he so long delighted the irreverent; while the alteration of Shakespeare and the cobbling of plays generally, satirised again in a later scene, are strictly in accordance with contemporary accounts of the manners and customs of the two dictators of Drury Lane. The piece indicated by Marplay Junior was probably Theophilus Cibber’s Lover, which had been produced in January 1731 with very moderate success.
After the Intriguing Chambermaid and the revived Author’s Farce, Fielding seems to have made farther exertions for “the distressed Actors in Drury Lane.” He had always been an admirer of Cervantes, frequent references to whose master-work are to be found scattered through his plays; and he now busied himself with completing and expanding the loose scenes of the comedy of Don Quixote in England, which (as before stated) he had sketched at Leyden for his own diversion. He had already thought of bringing it upon the stage, but had been dissuaded from doing so by Cibber and Booth, who regarded it as wanting in novelty. Now, however, he strengthened it by the addition of some election scenes, in which—he tells Lord Chesterfield in the dedication—he designed to give a lively representation of “the Calamities brought on a Country by general Corruption;” and it was duly rehearsed. But unexpected delays took place in its production;
