‘Virtue is as much debased as our Money:’ Generic and Economic Instability in Love’s Last Shift

This essay examines the formal unnevenness of Colley Cibber’s comedy, Love’s Last Shift (1696), which awkwardly mixes sexually explicit humor with moralistic sentimentality. Cibber does not lack control of his material, as many critics have assumed; rather, he uses the play’s rapid tonal shifts to reveal the resistance of the Restoration theatrical repertory to the kinds of updates called for by groups like the Societies for the Reformation of Manners. The play further examines these problems of cultural reform through extensive allusions to the ongoing currency crisis and related monetary innovations. England’s Financial Revolution is held up for scrutiny and is found to be as superficial and hypocritical as the push for greater morality in art and public life. By reframing the reform movements of the 1690s within a historical cycle of novelty-seeking, rather than as part of an arc of social progress, Cibber’s play undercuts dominant Enlightenment discourses of improvement.

Portions of this essay were later reproduced with permission as part of my book, Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets, 1688-1763 (University of Virginia Press, 2021).

Recommended citation: Burkert, Mattie. (2016). "Virtue is as much debased as our Money: Generic and Economic Instability in Love’s Last Shift." Modern Philology. 114(1): 59-81. https://doi.org/10.1086/686632
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