Decline
Sloper retired to the country, and Susannah gave up performing for a while. When Cibber appeared as Lord Foppington in The Relapse at Drury Lane, he was pelted with fruit and garbage. The following year, 1739, Cibber brought an action against Sloper for £10,000 for "detaining" his wife. This time he was awarded £500. Susannah went to Ireland and a concert season with Handel while the scandal died down, but later returned to have a successful career at Drury Lane, working with David Garrick and becoming famous as a tragic actress. Cibber lost his influence in the theatre and spent his remaining years switching from venue to venue, taking the occasional part. His exaggerated acting style was out of fashion and unpopular, and he drank to excess.
His father died on 11 December 1757, leaving Theophilus just £50 in his will, and the following day Theophilus wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, asking for work in a theatre. Theophilus' eulogy to his father, delivered on stage dressed in mourning, was not a success, and he was forced to look for work elsewhere. Thomas Sheridan offered him work at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. On the trip to Ireland, his ship, the Dublin Trader with about 60 passengers on board, foundered in a storm, and was wrecked on the Scottish coast. He was lost at sea.
Read more about this topic: Theophilus Cibber
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“The decline of a culture
Mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys.”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“Considered physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually reduces his strength. The effect of ugliness can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever anyone feels depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with ugliness, they rise with beauty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)