Richard III (play) The earliest certain performance occurred on 1633, when Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria watched it on the Queen's birthday. Colley Cibber produced the most successful of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare with his version of "Richard III", at Drury Lane starting in 1700. Cibber himself played the role till 1739, and his version was on stage for the next century and a half. It contained the lines "Off with his head; so much for Buckingham" – possibly the most famous Shakespearean line that Shakespeare did not write – and "Richard's himself again!". The original Shakespearean version returned in a
Colley Cibber call Cibber a hypocrite, and in general the attacks on Cibber are conducted in the notes added to the "Dunciad", and not in the body of the poem. As hero of the "Dunciad", Cibber merely watches the events of Book II, dreams Book III, and sleeps through Book IV. Once Pope struck, Cibber became an easy target for other satirists. He was attacked as the epitome of morally and aesthetically bad writing, largely for the sins of his autobiography. In the "Apology", Cibber speaks daringly in the first person and in his own praise. Although the major figures of the