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Albinoni was a prolific composer, although little of his music has remained well known today. He was influential in the development of the instrumental concerto, especially for solo violin. He was the son of a wealthy paper merchant in Venice, and chose to lead life as a dilettante rather than seek employment with church or court.

Colley Cibber (1671-1757) was an actor, theatrical impresario, playwright and poet now remembered only for his bowdlerization of William Shakespeare's Richard III (1955) (Laurence Olivier used Cibber's interpolations in his 1955 film of the play) and for being the model for the chief protagonist of his nemesis Alexander Pope's poem "The Dunciad". He was a very successful actor-manager in his time, famed for playing fops.

Through political connections with the Whig government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, he became Poet Laureate of England in 1730, a scandal at the time (and still scandalous) as Pope, Edward Young and others were far greater artists than Cibber. Cibber was more poetaster than poet. Pope kept up an unrelenting attack in his writing against Cibber ("The King of the Dunces"), whose own plays and poetry were recognized for lacking aesthetic appeal. Cibber was immortalized in an epigram of the time: "In merry old England it once was a rule,/The King had his Poet, and also his Fool:/ But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,/That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet."