nhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless,
and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy is,
therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show what
honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when its
performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution."
Cibber also referred to himself as "the lowest of your subjects from
the theatre," and thus mirrored the servility of the golden Georgian
era.]

"About this time," writes Cibber, telling of the play's presentation,
"Jacobitism had lately exerted itself by the most unprovoked rebellion
that our histories have handed down to us since the Norman Conquest;
I therefore thought that to set the authors and principles of that
desperate folly in a fair light, by allowing the mistaken consciences
of some their best excuse, and by making the artful Pretenders to
Conscience as ridiculous as they were ungratefully wicked, was a
subject fit for the honest satire of comedy, and what might, if it
succeeded, do honour to the stage by showing the valuable use of
it. And considering what numbers at that time might come to it as
prejudiced spectators, it may be allow'd that the undertaking was not
less hazardous than laudable."

And hazardous the project certainly seemed; for, while the uprising in
the interests of the Pretender had been ostensibly crushed, the spirit
of "divine right" was as strong as ever; there were many worthy
gentlemen who drank secret bumpers to the King--"over the water"--and
the Hanoverian throne had as yet a precarious lodgment on English
soil. It was expected, therefore, that these malcontents would have
anything but an appetite for the theatrical feast set before them in
the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted
because the play happened to be an adaptation of Moliere's "Tartuffe."
As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of
the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be
imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they
learned that the moral of "Tartuffe" was to be applied to them.[A]

[Footnote A: Tartuffe, according to French tradition, is a caricature
of the famous Pere la Chaise (Confessor to Louis Quatorze), who had
a weakness for the pleasures of the table, including truffles
(tartuffes). After Cibber's day, Moliere's play was again adapted into
English, under the title of "The Hypocrite."]

"Upon the