The Relapse: or, Virtue in Danger

…it with a sequel, The Relapse: or, Virtue in Danger (1696), in which Cibber’s character Sir Novelty Fashion has become Lord Foppington, a role created by Cibber. In 1700 Cibber produced his famous adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which held the stage as the preferred acting version of that play…

Vanbrugh’s first comedy, The Relapse: Or Virtue in Danger, was written as a sequel to Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift. It opened in 1696 and was highly successful. His next important piece, The Provok’d Wife (1697), was also a triumph. In 1698 the churchman Jeremy Collier published an…

…Sir John Vanbrugh’s comedy The Relapse, there appear, among a gallery of familiar characters with type names, Lord Foppington and his brother Young Fashion. Type names continued to be a fixture of English literature in the latter part of the 18th century, as is evident in some of the characters…