The play had been written some years before it was finally acted, the parts had been distributed, and everything was practically ready for the presentation in public during the season 1736-7. But so much criticism was leveled at Cibber for daring again to alter Shakspere that one day he quietly walked into the theatre, removed the copy of the play from the prompter’s desk, and went away with it without a word to any one.[37] It was finally presented, as already stated, in 1745, when there was a threatened invasion by the Young Pretender, which made the political and anti-Catholic elements of the play timely. Cibber says in the dedication that he had two reasons for altering the play: antagonism to Catholicism, and a desire to adjust the play to contemporary stage requirements--“to make it more like a play than he found it in Shakspere.” His additions to the anti-Catholic elements of the play are inconsistent with the rest of the action, and the changes in structure have increased rather than diminished the epic quality. He has, without being conscious that he was doing so, gone back of Shakspere’s time in introducing the anti-popish element; a quality of Shakspere’s source which Shakspere had omitted, but which Cibber reintroduced to the detriment of his play as drama. The entire first act of Shakspere’s play is omitted, besides which there are other shorter omissions. The point of view, too, is very different; for in Cibber’s play Pandulph is the central figure, instead of King John, as is indicated by the change of title from _The Life and Death of King John_ to _Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John_. Various short scenes entirely by Cibber are introduced, the most noticeable being one in the last act in which Constance attends the funeral of Arthur at Swinestead, where King John has been brought to die. The characters are more changed than the plot; all those which appear only in the first act are omitted, besides such characters as Peter of Pomfret, Elinor, Austria, and Chatillon. The part of the bastard Faulconbridge is very much cut down and softened, for as Shakspere conceived him he was too “low” and comic for a dignified tragedy according to the views of the eighteenth century. The rôle of Constance is much enlarged as well as that of Pandulph. Cibber’s tragedies are imitative; he showed no creative ability in this field. That his _Richard III_ has held the stage until the present is an indication that it is at least a good stage play. The other tragedies, except _Xerxes_ and _Papal Tyranny_, do not possess any very positive virtues or defects; they are of average merit as compared with the work done by Cibber’s contemporaries.