Editing John Vanbrugh (section)

====''The Relapse''====
'''Cibber's ''[[Love's Last Shift]]'''''
Colley Cibber's notorious tear-jerker ''Love's Last Shift, Or, Virtue Rewarded'' was written and staged in the eye of a theatrical storm. London's only and mismanaged theatre company, known as the United Company, had split in two in March 1695 when the senior actors began operating their own acting cooperative, and the next season was one of cutthroat rivalry between the two companies.

Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing a play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of ''Love's Last Shift'', wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control [[Rake (character)|Restoration rake]] husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses the depth of his repentance.

''Love's Last Shift'' has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked: the play was a great box-office hit.

'''Sequel: ''[[The Relapse]]'''''
Vanbrugh's witty sequel ''The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger'', offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending the flat characters from ''Love's Last Shift'' a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider [[psychology|psychological]] (see Hume {{Page needed|date=September 2010}}).

In a [[trickster]] subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in ''Love's Last Shift'' (Sir Novelty has simply in ''The Relapse'' bought himself the title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume {{Page needed|date=September 2010}}).

''The Relapse'', however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for the large cast required by ''The Relapse''. Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on 19 November 1696 "and unless a new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.londontheatredirect.com/venue/11/Theatre-Royal-Drury-Lane.aspx |title=Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London |publisher=London Theatre Tickets |access-date=18 July 2010}}</ref> That new play, ''The Relapse'', did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the ''Relapse'')", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success".<ref>Lowe, p. 216.</ref>