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Epicoene, or the Silent Woman by Ben Jonson (1609)

CLERIMONT: For God’s sake, let’s effect it: it will be an excellent comedy of affliction…

Epicoene is an older archaic spelling, nowadays we spell it ‘epicene’. Epicene means ‘having characteristics of both sexes or no characteristics of either sex; of indeterminate sex’. Intersex is, I think, the modern term.

Cast

Men

Morose: A gentleman that loves silence
Sir Dauphine Eugenie: A knight, Morose’s nephew
Ned Clerimont: A gentleman, Dauphine’s friend
Truewit: Dauphine’s other friend
Epicoene: A young gentlewoman, supposedly the silent woman
Sir John Daw: A knight, Epicoene’s servant
Sir Amorous la Foole: A knight
Thomas Otter: A land and sea captain
Cutbeard: A barber, also aids in tricking Morose
Mute: One of Morose’s servants

Women

Madame Haughty: one of the Ladies Collegiates
Madame Centaure: one of the Ladies Collegiates
Mistress Mavis: one of the Ladies Collegiates
Mistress Trusty: one of the Ladies Collegiates
Mistress Otter: The captain’s wife
Parson

Plot summary

Act 1

London. Morose is a wealthy old man with an obsessive hatred of noise, going as far as to live on a street too narrow for carts to enter. Morose is morbidly and comically averse to noise of any kind. He lives in a room with double walls and treble ceilings, the windows closed and caulked. It has a voicetube from his room to his servant, aptly named Mute. If they are in his presence, he insists he answers his questions by shaking their left or right legs. He turned away a serving man who came to the house because his new shoes squeaked!

With the miserly ill-will typical of a Jonson character, Morose plans to disinherit his nephew, Sir Dauphine Eugenie, partly because of them mean practical jokes Eugenie has carried out in the past, aided by his two buddies, Ned Clerimont and Truewit.

Dauphine concocts a plan with Cutbeard, Morose’s barber (itself a joke, since barbers were meant to be notoriously gabby), such that Cutbeard presents to Morose a prime candidate for marriage, a young and – here’s the point – very quiet woman to marry.

This main plot continues with Morose being introduced to Epicœne and testing her with questions to see whether she really is a silent woman. He tells her not to succumb to the temptations of the court and tells her about the virtues of silence. Under the assumption that his fiancée, Epicœne, is an exceptionally quiet woman, Morose excitedly plans their marriage. Unbeknownst to him, Dauphine has arranged the whole match for purposes of his own.

But there is a jungle of sub-plots which help to make this play unusually long. First there are two idiots – affected fops, Sir Jack Daw who thinks of himself as a clever intellectual who likes to drop Latin phrases into conversation, and Sir Amorous La Foole, a fop, who fancies himself as a great man-about-town and hosts grand parties. He’s holding a big feast tonight at the house of Captain Otter, a former sea captain and then supervisor of a bear-pit, whose wife is a relative of La Foole’s.

Second, we are told about a ‘college’ of strong-minded women, the so-called ‘Collegiates’ Lady Haughty, Lady Centaure, Mistress Dol Mavis:

an order between courtiers and country-madams, that live from their husbands; and give entertainment to all the wits, and braveries of the time, as they call them: cry down, or up, what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine, or rather hermaphroditical authority; and every day gain to their college some new probationer.

These ladies, too, have been invited to La Foole’s big party.

Act 2

Truewit takes it upon himself to visit Morose a) upsetting him by blowing a horn, such as postmen use but b) with the main purpose of delivering an extended lecture on why women are awful and so Morose should not marry. Almost all of this is copied from Juvenal’s satire against women, and it genuinely terrifies Morose about the prospect of marriage. Truewit warns him he will be made so miserable by a wife that he wants to kill himself, and humorously leaves him a noose behind on his departure.

Jack Daw fancies himself as a poet and so Eugenie and Clerimont egg him on to show his ignorance by a) reciting one of his bad poems and b) giving his ignorant opinions about the famous poets of history, during which it becomes clear that he has a vast library but has never read a book, taking the names on the covers to be famous authors even when, in fact, they are the titles. So, an extended satire on would-be literary pretentiousness.

Truewit returns to his friends and proudly announces that he has put Morose off marrying, for life. Eugenie is devastated and only now reveals to his friend that they have been planning for months to marry him to Epicœne precisely because she will be an agent of Eugenie’s and get Morose to reinstate him as his heir.

Scene 5

Cutbeard presents Epicœne to Morose. Morose has come to suspect that Truewit was sent by Eugenie deliberately to put him off marrying – and that has made him more determined than ever to bed wed! Morose cross-questions Epicœne at length, with Epicœne only rarely answering and then very briefly and softly. Excellent! Just what Morose requires. Morose is so delighted he gives Cutbeard the freehold to the property he was renting.

Scene 6

Cutbeard reports back his success to Eugenie, Truewit and Clerimont, who are delighted. When he’s gone they take the mickey out of the barber’s fondness for Latin tags, they are surrounded by pretentious idiots. Truewit suggests the practical joke of redirecting all the guests heading for La Foole’s feast round to Morose’s to celebrate his wedding. The noise will drive him mad. They all agree it’s an excellent idea.Then they mock Tom Otter, who they rank alongside La Foole and Jack Daw as a fool. Otter has retired from the bear-baiting business to open a pub which he keeps stocked with tankards with animal heads. He is hen-pecked by his powerful wife.

Act 3

Act 3. Scene 1. Tom Otter’s pub

Otter is being nagged and harangued by his wife who ridicules everything about him. The wits – Eugenie, Clerimont and Truewit establish that she is preparing to host La Foole’s party. The wits persuade Jack Daw to divert the party-goers to Morose’s house. La Foole enters and they con him, telling him Daw was trying to spoil his party but La Foole can get his own back be deliberately relocating his party to Morose’s house – which he promptly agrees to do.

Act 3. Scene 4

Cut to Morose who has been married by a feeble Puritan preacher with a heavy cold. And now takes place the Comic Reversal of the play which is that… Epicœne, once wed, turns out to be a chatterbox and a shrew, and immediately falls to nagging her poor husband.

MOROSE: Oh immodesty! A manifest woman!

She immediately starts bossing him around, not just him the servants, too. When Mute comes in and starts making the silent bodily signals Morose has requested, Epicœne scolds him and tell him no longer to use such silly unnatural signing.

MOROSE: She is my regent already! I have married a Penthesilea, a Semiramis, sold my liberty to a distaff.

Truewit arrives and ironically congratulates Morose on sticking to his guns despite his (Truewit’s) advice. Morose curses the barber Cutbeard and he and Truewit engage in several pages of comic abuse and elaborately appropriate curses for a barber.

Act 3. Scene 6

Daw arrives with three of the leading Collegiates to Morose’s horror. The Collegiate ladies are impressed by Epicœne’s self-possession and decide to invite her into the college. They then set about berating Morose for the hole-in-the-wall way he’s got married and criticise him for not having costumes and music and masques and an epithalamium. Morose shrivels with misery.

Act 3. Scene 7

Clerimont arrives with musicians who all start playing at once. La Foole arrives with Mistress Otter and her servants carrying an elaborate wedding dinner. Obviously this is all to the mounting horror and disbelief of Morose, but there is additional comedy when Mistress Otter argues with some of the Collegiates about the order they should enter Morose’s house. Sisters etc. Then arrives Captain Otter, with some trumpeters and drummers. Morose’s misery is complete.

Act 4

Act 4. Scene 1 Morose’s house

Clerimont and Truewit laughingly describing the racket in the house. Dauphine enters and tells Truewit Morose has retired to the tallest attic in the house and wrapped his head in nightcaps. Truewit proceeds to give an extended description of ‘women’ i.e. how they need to be pursued, only pretend to be coy, sometimes must be taken by force. Enough to make a feminist explode. Truewit’s role, after all, is the lecturer, compared to his lighter friends, and he delivers a massive block of prose about how to chat up and insinuate yourself with all types of women. Off the back of this rodomontade we learn that Eugenie is taken with the Collegiates, all of them.

Act 4. Scene 2

Enter Daw, La Foole and Otter who has brought his tankards with the lids shaped into the heads of different animals. They’re already drunk and proceed to have a drinking game and get even drunker. The three wits decide to encourage drunk Otter to express what he really feels about his wife, and get her to come and eavesdrop. He is predictably rude about all wives, in fact gives a very funny description of how Mistress O is assembled from a host of false parts (hair, eyebrows, teeth) manufactured in all parts of London, which have to be laboriously assembled every morning. Overhearing, Mistress O is predictably furious and falls on, starts beating him, while the wits order the trumpets and drums to play and yell, ‘A battle, a battle.’ Presumably all wives and husbands in the audience were laughing with recognition or mock horror.

Morose appears with a huge sword and drives the musicians and Mistress Otter away and runs off shouting, Eugenie follows him, and Truewit and Clerimont are left laughing. But it is very typical of Jonson that their last comments are not charitable, but are spiteful.

TRUEWIT: His humour is as tedious at last, as it was ridiculous at first.

Earlier Truewit had commented on Jack Daw that:

TRUEWIT: A mere talking mole, hang him! no mushroom was ever so fresh.
A fellow so utterly nothing, as he knows not what he would be.

Truewit is excellent at being vicious about people behind their backs. He is the driving force of the play and his motivation is malice and spite.

Act 4. Scene 3

The Collegiate ladies instruct Epicœne. They tell her to exploit her husband mercilessly, to demand a carriage and servants. And then to encourage men to court her, at the theatre, at the Exchange. For taking lovers never hurt anyone. In other words, a stereotyped list of all the behaviours moralists blamed women for.

Act 4. Scene 4

Enter Morose telling Dauphine he would do anything, anything, to be free of all these guests, this racket and his wife. Dauphine positions himself as the One Man Who Can Fix It – with a view to being reinstated as the heir.

Morose is so beside himself that Epicœne then declares he is going insane or having a fit (Truewit lets us know that she is being paid to play a part and is devising inspired means of her own to torment Morose; he is genuinely impressed). This leads into a comic couple of pages where the half-wit men (La Foole, Daw, Otter, ‘a brace of baboons’, Truewit calls them) and the pretentious women outdo each other with absurd remedies for mental illness drawn from a selection of wildly inappropriate contemporary authors.

On and on they pile the agony, Epicœne saying she will read him from each of these authors, at length, every night. We learn that Epicœne talks in her sleep. And snores. Very loudly. Morose storms off followed by Dauphine. The others set about insulting Dauphine behind his back so Truewit instructs Epicœne to go in and praise him to the skies. Dauphine recognises that Truewit is driving the narrative. ‘You have many plots,’ he says.

Act 4. Scene 5

Truewit vows to do down the baboons who were so recently denigrating Dauphine to the ladies. Hide behind the arras he tells Clerimont and Dauphine and watch a master at work. Enter Jack Daw. Truewit persuades Daw that La Foole is after his blood. He hustles Daw into a side room and locks the door, and then loudly pretends as if La Foole had charged up with drawn sword ready to hack Daw to pieces. He begs Dauphine to drag La Foole away, waits a beat then opens the door to Daw who is now petrified and convinced La Foole will murder him. Much ironic humour for the audience as Truewit monstrously exaggerates how many weapons La Foole was carrying and makes Daw admit he’d gladly sacrifice an arm or a leg so long as he lives. Truewit locks him into the room again.

Clerimont asks if he can have a role in part two but Truewit says it requires tact and quick wits. As you might expect, La Foole now appears in the corridor and Truewit similarly persuades him that Daw is out for his blood. Terrified, cowardly La Foole lets himself be pushed into the other room of this corridor and Truewit pretends to be talking to Daw now, who he pretends is outside with a bomb! He shouts through the door to La Foole what terms he will accept. Anything anything, La Foole replies.

Now Clerimont and Dauphine come out of hiding between the arras. Clerimont has the bright idea of going to fetch the ladies, so they can see the climax of the comic drama Truewit has contrived, although Dauphine thinks this is going too far, thinks Truewit is in love with his own contrivances.

Truewit now invites Daw out of the room where he’s been hiding and says La Foole is prepared to let bygones be bygones after payment of a small forfeit. First Truewit teases him by saying La Foole wanted his upper lip and six teeth! Then just two front teeth. Then that he’d be content with five good hard kicks. Daw agrees and Truewit signals to Dauphine, who is heavily disguised, comes out of hiding and delivers five swift kicks. ‘Six’ says Daw, so Dauphine gives him one more then retires. Grateful for his escape, Daw hands over his sword and is locked back in his room.

Now Truewit gives La Foole the same treatment, tells him to come out and, to save his life, must submit to be blindfolded and beaten around the mouth. So once he’s blindfolded Dauphine sneaks in (pretending to be Daw) and beats him round the mouth. Truewit pretends to restrain him and eventually send him away. He unblindfolds La Foole and locks him in his room

Now – all this was because La Foole and Daw joined in a bit of drunken banter about Dauphine and insulted his reputation, saying he was poor and forced to run errands for a living. This extended farce seems both elaborate and cruel. Cruel judgement, disproportionate and harsh punishment, is a characteristic of Jonson’s comedies.

Act 4. Scene 6

The Collegiate ladies arrive onstage having witnessed part of the last scene which has successfully disgraced La Foole and Daw in their opinion, and hugely raised Dauphine. They all fancy him and itemise his attractions.

And now Truewit crowns his farce by calling the two ridiculed knights out of their hidey rooms – first he and Dauphine cautioning the ladies not to titter or give any sign that have seen the ridiculing. And so Daw and La Foole emerge from their rooms and greet each other with excessive politeness and bow and smile and everyone else on stage and in the audience knows what fools they are.

Act 4. Scene 7

Enter Morose, back from the courthouse where he tried to find a lawyer to divorce him but couldn’t they were all so busy shouting at each other. Truewit promises he’ll get him the best lawyer in town, and packs Morose off inside. Then asks Dauphine to run and fetch Otter and the barber Cutbeard from wherever they’ve gone. He will dress them up and transform them into a learned divine and an imposing lawyer. This will be the final humiliation for act 5.

Act 5

Act 5. Scene 1

A scene in which Clerimont eggs Daw and La Foole on to boat about their feats with women, by telling them their reputations go before them as ladykillers, the Collegiate ladies all talk about them… and then lets them both stutter and hand over to the other and try to avoid having to tell any specific anecdote, giving the strong impression they might both be virgins. Clerimont even asks if it’s true they’ve both enjoyed Epicœne’s favours and they mumblingly admit that, yes, it might be true.

Act 5. Scene 2

Dauphine really is a hit with the ladies. Here we see him walking with Lady Haughty who flatters him then tells him to come to her chamber tonight, bouncy bouncy, her maid will let him in, she gives him a jewel to wear for her sake.

She is closely followed by Lady Centaure who tells him not to trust Lady Haughty, that she is over 50 and paints her face, you should see her first thing in the morning! No, he should come and visit her, Lady Centaure, one evening… She is followed by Mavis (another of the Collegiates) who gives him an Italian poem to translate before flitting off. Enter Clerimont who congratulates him on his popularity with the women.

Also to tell him that the rest of the company have carried on getting Daw and La Foole so drunk and egging them on so much that they are both fiercely claiming to have slept with Epicœne, almost vowing to have done so today. Dauphine is delighted, as their comeuppance is inevitable.

Act 5. Scene 3

Enter Truewit, the malicious impresario of the play. As planned he has dressed up Cutbeard and Otter as a canon lawyer and a divine, respectively. Now we realise why it was made a notable feature of both characters that they had a penchant for Latin tags: now they can go made and quote all kinds of dog Latin each other, while Morose stands between them being driven mad by their incomprehensible jargon.

Act 5. Scene 4

The ladies enter and interrupt the lawyerly bickering. Epicœne asks whether anyone ever saw anything so shameful as a bridegroom on his wedding day employing two professionals to help him get divorced. The women suggest they beat or blanket Otter and Cutbeard out of the building. Truewit prompts Morose to come forward and throw himself on the mercy of the women, abjectly apologise and reveal that he is, in fact, impotent!

The ladies all gasp in horror, but then insist he is inspected by a doctor; or why not by them (asks Mistress Otter) and Morose is reeling from this suggestion, when Epicœne caps it by saying she forgives him and will take him anyway.

At this point, there is yet another torment, namely Clerimont bringing forward Daw and La Foole who, if you remember, had been drunkenly banteringly persuaded to confess that they had slept with Epicœne. Reassured that Morose actually wants them to say this, they both agree, that yes, they have had Epicœne as their mistress. This crushes Morose right into the dirt.

MOROSE: O my heart! wilt thou break? wilt thou break? this is worst of all worst worsts that hell could have devised! Marry a whore, and so much noise!

Now at his lowest point, his nephew Dauphine steps forward and offers to save him. He tells Morose that he well knows that he, Dauphine, has repeatedly asked to be given £500 a year out of Morose’s annual income of £1,500 and the full amount upon Morose’s death. Now he gives him a document to sign to that effect. Morose signs it, all the company witness it – at which Dauphine steps forward and takes off Epicœne’s wig.

Epicœne is a boy! Dauphine has been planning the con, and paying Epicœne to act a woman, for 6 months. Now he dismisses Morose who shuffles back into his house without a word. He takes off Cutbeard and Otter’s disguises, telling the former he can keep his property and the latter that he will be reconciled with his wife.

A boy! Epicœne is a boy! Truewit congratulates Dauphine who has, for once, outwitted even him (Truewit). Truewit points out that the fact Epicœne is a boy makes a mockery of Daw and La Foole’s claims to have slept with her, but not with gentle ribaldry, with the savage cruelty which is so characteristic of Jonson:

Away, you common moths of these, and all ladies’ honours. Go, travel to make legs and faces, and come home with some new matter to be laugh’d at: you deserve to live in an air as corrupted as that wherewith you feed rumour.

He tells the Collegiate ladies to take care of such wretched braggarts in future, then steps forward and briskly asks the audience to clap if they liked the play, now that Morose has gone into his house he will not be disturbed.

Comedy of affliction

CLERIMONT: For God’s sake, let’s effect it: it will be an excellent comedy of affliction…

It’s hard to think of this as anything other than bullying. In the main plot the entire cast bands together to bully and humiliate and vex Morose. In the big farce sub-plot in act 4, Truewit contrives the extended humiliation and shaming of Jack Daw and La Foole. The plot amounts to as much humiliation, shaming and vexation as can be fitted into three hours.

Morose repeatedly begs for mercy:

MOROSE: Alas, do not rub those wounds, master Truewit, to blood again: ’twas my negligence. Add not affliction to affliction.

Pleas which are completely ignored and, indeed, mocked. When Morose trusts anyone, they deceive him, especially the self-appointed impresario of his torments, Truewit.

MOR: Do your pleasure with me gentlemen; I believe in you: and that deserves no delusion.
TRUEWIT: You shall find none, sir [Morose exits]… but heap’d, heap’d plenty of vexation.

Behind their backs Truewit is scathing. I found his character far more despicable than Morose’s. In fact what is wrong with wanting a quiet life? Whereas reducing a fellow human being to tears of despair doesn’t strike me as being a particularly admirable achievement.

MOROSE: O, my torment, my torment!

Themes

Quite clearly the play’s two main themes are gender and speech. They both seem pretty straightforward. As to gender, the three wits – Truewit, Clerimont and Dauphine – unman and humiliate all the other male characters, most notably Morose (who is forced to admit he is not a ‘real’ man at the play’s climax, then is dismissed) Daw and La Foole (who are subjected to the extended kicking and punching ordeal before being revealed as monstrous liars regarding sleeping the Epicene). Otter and Cutbeard are used to bring out the sham knowledge and empty argot of doctors and lawyers.

And ‘women’ as a gender come in for sustained and vitriolic criticism from Truewit on numerous occasions, besides being portrayed as manipulating exploiters of men who pretend to a noble sisterhood, while in fact secretly scheming and undermining each other (the Collegiate ladies) or straight-out nags and shrews (Mistress Otter).

As to language, clearly the entire play is built on the destruction of Morose’s wish for silence, and celebrates the triumph of cacophony, itself made up of countless different styles and rhetorics, from Mistress Otter’s nagging, to Truewit’s reversioning of Roman satire, to Otter and Cutbeard’s preposterous pretence of Latin learning as the fake doctor and divine. There’s the fake sisterhood of the Collegiate women and the pretended literary knowledge of Jack Daw and La Foole. The closer you look at it, the more you realise the play represents a kind of riot of rhetorics.

The more the play’s charivari of gulls and manipulators babbled on, the more I sympathised for Morose’s forlorn wish for them all just to shut up and go away.

Historic position

Apparently, Epicoene was the first play to be performed when the London theatres re-opened after the restoration of Charles II. He returned to England in May 1660 and as quickly as the next month some of the theatres had re-opened and Epicoene was being staged.

R.V. Holdsworth, in the introduction to the Mermaid edition of the play, speculates that this may have been because the play features many characteristics which appealed to the audience of the time and went on to influence or be reflected in many Restoration comedies, namely: it’s concern with upper-class manners and morals, the centrality of a mock marriage, the cynical libels on both sexes, the fundamental motive of the play – which is a young man extracting money from an old relative – and its colourful parade of wits, fops and middle-aged grotesques.

To my astonishment, John Dryden in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) considered the construction of Epicoene ‘the greatest and most noble of any pure unmixed comedy in any language.’ Really? Rather than any of Shakespeare’s comedies? This surprising opinion is an indicator of the height and influence of Jonson’s reputation for generations after his death.

Boys

It beggars belief that the play was written to be performed by boys, specifically the Children of Her Majesty’s Revels. It is packed out with bawdy double entendres and sexual references, not least Daw and La Foole’s boasting about their sexual escapades, all the Collegiate women making sexual appointments with Dauphine, Morose shouting that he is impotent – every page is (according to the notes) packed with sexual innuendo. And all performed by children!

The Wikipedia article on boy players says the actors were generally aged 8 to 12, chosen because they hadn’t yet hit puberty or their voices broken! I wonder if anyone in the modern era has tried to restage any of these plays a) entirely played by boys b) with a cast of 8 to 12 year olds? What would be the aesthetic, psychological, comedic impact of watching a lot of 8 to 12 year old boys spending three hours speaking a sustained barrage of sexual innuendo?

Related links

Elizabethan and Jacobean reviews

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by Simon on August 11, 2023  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on August 11, 2023

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2023/08/11/epicoene-ben-jonson/

The Relapse by John Vanbrugh (1696)

Sir John Vanbrugh wrote a handful of plays before going on to a complete change of career, and becoming one of England’s finest country house architects, whose masterpieces include palatial private homes such as Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace.

The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger, the first of his plays, was in fact a sequel to someone else’s.

The original play was Love’s Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion written in 1695 by a young actor-dramatist, Colley Cibber. In Cibber’s play a free-living Restoration rake named Loveless is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife-to-be, Amanda. Supposedly, Vanbrugh saw the play and realised the ending didn’t really conclude the story. So he conceived The Relapse, in which the ‘reformed’ rake comes back up to London from his happy rural love nest, and succumbs all over again to the bright lights and pretty women.

The cast

The men

Sir Novelty Fashion, newly created Lord Foppington
Young Fashion, his Brother
Loveless, Husband to Amanda
Worthy, a Gentleman of the Town
Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, a Country Gentleman
Sir John Friendly, his Neighbour
Coupler, a Matchmaker
Bull, Chaplain to Sir Tunbelly
Syringe, a Surgeon
Lory, Servant to Young Fashion
Shoemaker, Taylor, Perriwig-maker, &c.

The women

Amanda, Wife to Loveless
Berinthia, her Cousin, a young Widow
Miss Hoyden, a great Fortune, Daughter to Sir Tunbelly
Nurse, her Governant,

The plot

Loveless is the reformed rake who has retired to the country with his pure and noble wife, Amanda.

Most of their dialogue consists of high-minded sentiments of fidelity and marital honesty cast in unrhymed verse or poetry. Being used to the oppressively consistent rhyming couplets of Alexander Pope and 18th century poets, and even the solidly iambic pentameters of Shakespeare’s plays, I was pleasantly surprised to find this verse more irregular and varied, with some lines having six beats, some only three.

Can you then doubt my Constancy, Amanda?
You’ll find ’tis built upon a steady Basis——
The Rock of Reason now supports my Love,
On which it stands so fix’d,
The rudest Hurricane of wild Desire
Wou’d, like the Breath of a soft slumbering Babe,
Pass by, and never shake it.

Fortunately, however, these insipid lovers are not the prominent figures. They decide – rashly – to come up to London on business, both swearing they won’t be tempted back to their wicked old ways – with inevitable results.

The play only really gets going with the introduction of Young Fashion and his servant Lory. Fashion is the second son and so has inherited a measly £200-a-year allowance and has managed to blow all of that so that, as the play opens, he is skint. His enterprising servant, Lory, makes the obvious suggestion that he apply to his elder brother, Sir Novelty Fashion, who inherited most of the family fortune.

Sir Novelty Fashion has only recently (within 48 hours) paid for and received the title of Lord i.e. he is now Lord Foppington. He is the most spectacularly grand and affectedly foppish fop I’ve encountered in any of these plays and he is a marvel, a cynosure of extravagant pretension, and he really lights up the play every time he appears.

Why the Ladies were ready to puke at me, whilst I had nothing but Sir Novelty to recommend me to ’em——Sure whilst I was but a Knight, I was a very nauseous Fellow… [but now I am a Lord] Well, ’tis an unspeakable Pleasure to be a Man of Quality —— Strike me dumb —— ‘My Lord’ —— ‘Your Lordship’ —— ‘My Lord Foppington’ — Ah! c’est quelque chose de beau, que le Diable m’emporte ——

The only catch is that the honour cost him £10,000! leaving him short of ready cash. Thus, when his starveling kid brother turns up begging for his debts to be paid off, Lord Foppington dismisses him with an airy wave and says he has to go dine with important people. Young Fashion is mortified and aggrieved.

Just after he’s been humiliatingly dismissed, Young Fashion bumps into Old Coupler, a marriage arranger who’s known him since he was a boy. Coupler also dislikes Lord Foppington and so the two quickly cobble together A Plan.

Coupler had been hired to find a rich widow who Lord Foppington can marry in a hurry to pay off his debts, and has contracted with a nice plump partridge of a widow woman living fifty miles away in the country. Lord Fashion had promised to pay Coupler £1,000 once the marriage was secured. Coupler now says that for £5,000 (!) he will secure the rich widow for Young Fashion.

The Plan is simple: Lord Foppington wrote the widow’s family to expect him in two weeks’ time; Young Fashion should go straightaway and pretend to be his brother, sign the contract, bed the widow, and bob’s your uncle. Or as Coupler puts it:

Now you shall go away immediately; pretend you writ that letter only to have the romantick Pleasure of surprizing your Mistress; fall desperately in Love, as soon as you see her; make that your Plea for marrying her immediately; and when the fatigue of the Wedding-night’s over, you shall send me a swinging Purse of Gold, you Dog you.

‘A swinging purse of gold’. This is by far the most vividly and clearly written of the Restoration plays I’ve read recently – Vanbrugh has a lovely swinging style.

They shake on the deal. When Coupler has gone, Young Fashion has a sudden pang of conscience, and vows he will give his brother a second chance to take pity.

If you take a ‘moral’ or psychological view of literature or plays, this shows that Young Fashion has a conscience and ‘develops the play’s themes of responsibility’.

But I don’t take that kind of view. I tend to think of works of literature as language machines built to deliver a wide range of often complex and sophisticated pleasures, and I’m interested in analysing the mechanisms and linguistic tools they use to do so.

So on my reading – divested of its ‘moral’ content – this decision to give Lord Foppington a second chance is really just a pretext for another comic scene with the monstrous Lord Fashion.

Act 2

Amanda and Loveless arrive at their London lodgings and have a long poetic exchange in which both reveal, to each other and themselves, that they have been a little distracted by the pleasures of the Town i.e. the opposite sex. Loveless in particular reveals that he went to the play the night before and was struck by a stunning beauty. Amanda is understandably upset but Loveless insists he admired but didn’t speak.

At that moment the servant announces the visit of Amanda’s cousin, Berinthia, and damn me if she isn’t exactly the woman Loveless was struck with the night before! Barely has Loveless recovered from this surprise, when Lord Foppington pays a visit.

Foppington gives a comic account of a Day in The Life of a Fop, note the affected pronunciation whereby ‘o’ is pronounced ‘a’ in ‘nat’ and ‘bax’:

I rise, Madam, about ten o’clock. I don’t rise sooner, because ’tis the worst thing in the World for the Complection; nat that I pretend to be a Beau; but a Man must endeavour to look wholesome, lest he make to nauseous a Figure in the Side-bax, the Ladies shou’d be compell’d to turn their eyes upon the Play.

Foppington goes on to explain in the most cynical way possible one attends church solely for the Society one meets there and has nothing to do with religion. Having regarded Amanda for some time, he thinks he is in love with her and, with absurd miscalculation takes her hand, kisses it and declares his passion for her.

Foppington has heroically misjudged, for Amanda snatches back her hand and boxes him round the ears, then Loveless draws his sword, engages him in a duel and appears to run him through. In fact it is the barest of scratches but the women run screaming and return with a doctor, Syringe, an excellent comic turn who declares it is a wound large enough to drive a coach and horses through and extorts a fee of £500 from Foppington before he gets servants to carry the Lord to the doctor’s house.

Consistent with his pretentious style, Foppington grandly forgives Loveless as he is carried away, as if from his death bed, but once he’s gone, Loveless tells Amanda it was just a scratch.

Enter a citizen named Worthy, who performs a structural function, namely while Loveless returns to lusting after Berinthia, Worthy can start to have designs on Amanda, creating a neat parallelism.

The menfolk leave the stage to Amanda and Berinthia who have a long dialogue about Modern Man and love affairs.

Over the course of this long scene Berinthia creates a kind of atmosphere of urban naughtiness in which Amanda is encouraged to slowly reveal her secrets. Berinthia explains that Worthy is a kind of anti-fop or anti-beau; an outwardly sensible sober man – but in fact he is quietly having affairs with half the women of quality in the Town.

By encouraging Amanda to speculate what she would do if Loveless were to die (God forbid!), Berinthia encourages her to think about a successor and replacement for her husband, and thus slyly encourages her to start to harbour thoughts about ‘other men’. Corrupts her, in other words.

Act 3

Scene 1

Lord Foppington is recovered (from his scratch) and preparing to go out when he is visited for the second time by his brother, Young Fashion, who proceeds from politely asking his brother to help him out, to pleading consanguinity, to becoming more and more infuriated by his unprovocable nonchalance.

Young Fashion: Now, by all that’s great and powerful, thou art the Prince of Coxcombs.
Lord Foppington: Sir — I am praud of being at the Head of so prevailing a Party.

Fashion vows to tame maximum revenge on his brother.

Scene 2

Loveless, in heroic poetry, ponders his mixed feelings. He knows he owes his wife everything, and yet.. and while he’s hesitating, the beautiful Berinthia enters and, after some flirting, they catch hold of each other in a big snog! They have barely begun kissing before a servant enters to say Amanda has arrived home, Loveless exists, Berinthia has a paragraph sighing about him — which is overheard by Worthy who has just entered.

Worthy now tells Berinthia he saw everything and so has her in his power. He wants to use her to persuade Amanda to have an affair with him, Worthy. Worthy proposes a precise Scheme: Berinthia should persuade Amanda that Loveless is having an affair with someone else; then Berinthia can a) pose as her friend b) carry on her affair with Loveless unsuspected. Berinthia can confirm that, during her earlier conversation, Amanda had admitted that – her husband gone – she could be tempted to another man, and even that Worthy might be a candidate.

Exit Worthy. Berinthia now finds herself in the position of carrying Worthy’s cause forward for him, not quite pimping for him, but… Vanbrugh disappoints me a little by having her express some stock anti-women sentiments:

I begin to fancy there may be as much pleasure in carrying on another body’s Intrigue, as one’s own. This at least is certain, it exercises almost all the entertaining Faculties of a Woman: For there’s employment for Hypocrisy, Invention, Deceit, Flattery, Mischief, and Lying.

Mind you, this is immediately followed by the entrance of Amanda who is in a foul mood with her husband, suspecting him of infidelity, with many insults and aspersions. Berinthia follows Worthy’s Plan and encourages her doubts, indeed says she knows exactly who her husband is in love with, without naming names (and of course she does – it is herself!).

Scene 3. The country house

Hilarious scene where Young Fashion and Lory arrive at the country house of the plump partridge widow who Coupler has recommended. It starts with the house being semi derelict and the door only reluctantly opened by suspicious yokels armed with a blunderbuss and scythes, led by the crude country squire, Mr Tunbelly Clumsy.

Cut to the country widow in question, Miss Hoyden who, in a bit of comic business, Sir Tunbelly orders to be locked up anytime anybody pays a visit. She appears to be quite a rude, rustic yokel of a young woman. Meanwhile Young Fashion impresses himself on Sir Tunbelly as a confident London fop and tries to hurry along the deal – can’t they get married that very night?

Act 4. Still at the country house

In a brief scene Miss Hoyden tells her Nurse she is keen to be married simply in order to escape the country, get up to London and start flaunting like a Grand Lady. Enter Young Fashion and he and Miss Hoyden quickly reach agreement that they should be married immediately. They call in the Nurse so Young Fashion can flatter her, give her half a crown, and get her on their side. And then ask her to use her influence with the local chaplain to get them married in a hurry. Luckily, it turns out the Nurse has been flirting with the chaplain for these past seven years, so it should be a doddle.

Scene 2

Cut to Amanda and Berinthia praising Worthy as a most excellent lover, dwelling on how he spent a couple of hours praising every one of Amanda’s features. Then Worthy himself walks in, apologises for the lateness of the hour, says he’s been sent by Loveless to say that Loveless is out very late with friends and so the women invite Worthy to make up a hand of ombre (a card game).

Scene 3. Berinthia’s chamber

Enter Loveless. He has completely ceased to be the ideal husband of act one and has reverted to being a scheming rake. He has gotten access to Berinthia’s bed chamber and now ponders where to hide. He has barely hidden in the closet before Berinthia enters, explaining that she left Worthy and Amanda to play cards, begging the excuse of having to write some letters. Loveless springs out of her closet and they embrace. After some flirting he carries her into the ‘closet’ (which is obviously more like an actual room) to ravish her!

Scene 4. Sir Tunbelly’s House

Young Fashion and Miss Hoyden have just been married by the vicar, Bull, and are congratulating each other when Lory rushes in to tell them that his brother – the real Lord Foppington – has arrived at the gates with a coach and horses and 20 pages and the full panoply. Sir Tunbelly arrives to ask what the devil is gong on, and Fashion braves it out, telling him the man claiming to be Lord Foppington is an imposter and they’ll deal with him by inviting him in, raising the drawbridge, then firing a few shots which will make his people scatter.

Scene 5. At the gate

They carry out this plan. Tunbelly admits Lord Foppington, and as soon as he’s inside the gates swings them shut, his servants fire a few shots in the air and all Lord Foppington’s servants scarper. When Lord Foppington declares who he is, Sir Tunbelly (who may be a country bumpkin but is also justice of the peace in these parts) calls him as a rascally imposter come to ravish his daughter and orders him to be tied down. The rest of the family come in to abuse him, Miss Hoyden as was, declaring he deserves to be dragged through the horse pond. Lord Foppington takes this all with tremendously aristocratic sang-froid.

The comedy heightens when Young Fashion enters and Foppington’s familiarity with him (calling him Tom since he is, after all, his younger brother) offends the other characters (the lady, Tunbelly, even Bull the chaplain). They all clamour for more punishment. Foppington is intelligent enough to realise all the people regard Tom as Lord Foppington and decides his best course is to play along, so he switches to calling him that, asking him for a close-up quiet parley in private. Tom comes close and Lord Foppington offers his brother £5,000 to be set free (!). Too late, says Tom.

His offer rejected, Foppington suddenly remembers there is a local gentleman who will vouch that he is Lord Foppington and Young Fashion a mere rascal. Who? asks Tunbelly sarcastically. Why Sir John Friendly. ‘Tis true he lives not a mile away and has just returned from London, admits Tunbelly – and sends a servant to fetch him.

But as chance would have it the servant comes straight back to tell Tunbelly that good Sir John has just alighted at the main gate and is entering the house. Young Fashion realises the game is up. He tells Lory to run and secure the first two horse he finds in the stables, Tom will slip out in a few minutes and they’ll leg it. Lory and Young Fashion slip out one door as Sir John enters by another.

There is a big Revelation Scene when Sir John finally gets to see Lord Foppington and confirms he is who he claims to be – the result is mortification and humiliation on the part of Sir Tunbelly who immediately swears fire and vengeance on Young Fashion, the imposter. But he’s long gone.

In a final short scene the Nurse, Miss Hoyden and Bull are in a conclave in the next room wondering how on earth to get out of the dilemma of Miss H being just married to Young Fashion when Lord Foppington and, more importantly, her father think she is still a maid. The solution they all innocently / cynically / comically decide on is: She shall simply marry again.

Act 5

Scene 1

Back in London. Young Fashion and Lory meet with Coupler, tell him the whole story and he caps it with what he’s heard, which is that Lord Foppington did swiftly marry Miss Hoyden – who is therefore now Lady Foppington – as told in a letter from Foppington himself in which he a) swears revenge on Young Fashion b) says that, although they are legally married, he has not yet fulfilled the divine part i.e. physically consummated the marriage.

Tom Fashion’s vexed rage prompts some good comic lines.

Coupler: Nothing’s to be done till the Bride and Bridegroom come to Town.
Young Fashion: Bride and Bridegroom! Death and Furies! I can’t bear that thou shouldst call them so.
Coupler: Why, what shall I call them, Dog and Cat?

They’re not the funniest lines ever, just expressed in a surprisingly modern, direct and understandable way which makes them feel funnier.

Anyway, Coupler suggests that they seek some kind of solution by suborning the priest, Bull who, like most modern priests, ‘eats three pounds of beef to reading one chapter’ of his Bible.

Scene 2

Worthy tells Berinthia he has all but seduced Amanda but she is still holding out with a last scruple about ‘Virtue’. Berinthia comes up with A Plan. Lord Foppington is having a Grand Supper tonight with dancing and music to celebrate his marriage. Berinthia will arrange for Amanda to see Loveless at a tryst with his lover; Amanda will be so furious, she’ll come home filled with thoughts of revenge and a little lewdness, and Worthy can pay a polite visit to escort her to Foppington’s supper and – whoops – take advantage of Amanda’s taste for revenge!

There is then another of the many comic touches which really lift this play. Worthy is so awed by Berinthia’s Machiavellianism, that he gets down on his knees before her:

Worthy [Kneeling] Thou Angel of Light, let me fall down and adore thee.
Berinthia: Thou Minister of Darkness, get up again, for I hate to see the Devil at his Devotions.

Scene 3. Tom Fashion’s lodgings

Coupler has a Plan: Some vicar has died leaving a £500-a-year living empty, and Tom has it in his gift if he can prove himself the lawful wife of Miss Hoyden.

To this end they have summoned the Nurse and the Priest to Tom’s lodgings. Initially scared at finding themselves confronted by the ‘Rogue’, Coupler sends the priest into another room with Lory, while he and Tom work on the Nurse. Tom tells her he would and will make a much better husband for Miss Hoyden than the Lord.

They go on to say that if the couple will vouch Tom is the legal husband, he will immediately present the priest with the £500 living. The Nurse is convinced. When the priest is brought back in, the three of them convince him to vouch for Tom and to win both her and the living. Coupler has some comic lines about the Nurse, comparing her to a rather rundown house:

Coupler: [Rising up.] .. The Living’s worth it: Therefore no more Words, good Doctor: but with the [Giving Nurse to him.] Parish — here — take the Parsonage-house. ‘Tis true, ’tis a little out of Repair; some Dilapidations there are to be made good; the Windows are broke, the Wainscot is warp’d, the Ceilings are peel’d, and the Walls are crack’d; but a little Glasing, Painting, White-wash, and Plaster, will make it last thy time.

You can imagine the gestures confident Coupler would make at the bewildered Nurse during this speech. Vanbrugh’s dialogue is vivid and dramatic.

Scene 4

Amanda gets home furious at having seen her husband meet with his sweetheart. Worthy is lying in wait for her and indulges in an extended seduction in high-flown rhetoric which involves forcing her onto a couch and kissing her hand. But, although torn, Amanda remains true to herself.

Amanda: Then, save me, Virtue, and the Glory’s thine.
Worthy: Nay, never strive.
Amanda: I will; and conquer too. My Forces rally bravely to my Aid, [Breaking from him.] and thus I gain the Day.

Not only this, but she preaches a sermon at Worthy, telling him to repent his fleshly urges and succeeds. He is given a speech saying he has seen the error of his ways.

Scene 5

The Nurse explains the situation to Miss Hoyden-Lady Foppinton, who in any case doesn’t like her pretentious new husband half so much as the first one.

Scene 6. Foppington’s supper

Enter Foppington, Miss Hoyden, Loveless, Amanda, Worthy and Berinthia. Foppington apologises for wooing Loveless’s wife (the pretext, if you remember, for the sword fight in act 2). Loveless forgives him.

Enter Sir Tunbelly and musicians and dancers, as at the end of every Restoration comedy. Tunbelly is the master of ceremonies and is drunk. A lengthy masque in which Cupid and Hymen present versified forms of their characters and cases.

Enter Tom Fashion with the Priest and Nurse who he lines up to testify in front of everyone that he – Tom – married Miss Hoyden first, to which Miss Hoyden herself testifies. Astonished, Lord Foppington asks the priest if it’s true.

It’s very funny that Sir Tunbelly is raving drunk and has to be held back from attacking Tom with a horsewhip. He is particularly upset when he discover the Nurse he has employed all these years lied to him. Why did she do it? The Nurse replies, because Miss Hoyden so wanted to be married.

Tom asks ‘the court’ of all the characters for their judgment and they declare him the honest husband. Sir Tunbelly says they can all go to hell and reels out drunk. Beautifully, Lord Foppington rises above it all with effortless superiority.

The epilogue

The epilogue is spoken by Foppington and is the only one of the half dozen I’ve read which I either understood or enjoyed because it is a further hymn to the wonderful superiority of noble beaux such as himself and how they have never lowered themselves to plots or violence or treason or criminality – Good Lord, no, such things are only done by the badly dressed – and so continues the comic conceit of his character right to the end of the play.

Vanbrugh’s prose

Vanbrugh’s prose is immeasurably more lucid and easy to read than the other Restoration figures I’ve been reading.

Lory. Why then, Sir, your Fool advises you to lay aside all Animosity, and apply to Sir Novelty, your elder Brother.
Young Fashion: Damn my elder Brother.
Lory: With all my heart; but get him to redeem your Annuity, however.
Young Fashion: My Annuity! ‘Sdeath, he’s such a Dog, he would not give his Powder-Puff to redeem my Soul.

It’s still 17th century prose, obvz, but it seems to me beautifully clear and easy to follow, and the clarity makes the vigour of the simile all the more vivid. I’m not sure it’s the best, exactly, but it strikes me as being the clearest of the comedies I’ve read:

Berinthia: Pray which Church does your Lordship most oblige with your Presence?
Lord Foppington: Oh, St. James‘s, Madam – There’s much the best Company.
Amanda: Is there good Preaching too?
Lord Foppington: Why, faith, Madam, I can’t tell. A Man must have very little to do there, that can give an Account of the Sermon.

See how brisk the dialogue is – question, answer, question, answer, leading up to a comic punchline – the joke being (in case it’s not obvious in this quote taken out of context) that Foppington is such a very model of a Restoration aristocrat that religion is quite literally the last thing he goes to church for; in fact the blasted sermonising etc gets in the way of the socialising!

There’s something intrinsically comic about a character asking a question and the the second character repeating the substance of the question but with a comic reversal or alternative at the end:

Servant: Will your Lordship venture so soon to expose yourself to the Weather?
Lord Foppington: Sir, I will venture as soon as I can, to expose myself to the Ladies.

And the relationships in the play have just the same clarity and precision. I liked young Fashion, the poor younger brother from the moment he started talking, and really warmed to his long-suffering, inventice and sarcastic servant, Lory, and enjoyed their relationship immensely.

After young Fashion gives his older brother an opportunity to help him out financially, and he refuses to, Fashion declares his moral reservations at an end. It’s not the decision itself, it’s the alacrity with which Lory responds which makes it bracing and funny.

Young Fashion: Here’s rare News, Lory; his Lordship has given me a Pill has purg’d off all my Scruples.
Lory: Then my Heart’s at ease again: For I have been in a lamentable Fright, Sir, ever since your Conscience had the Impudence to intrude into your Company.
Young Fashion: Be at peace, it will come there no more: My Brother has given it a wring by the Nose, and I have kick’d it down Stairs.

Vanbrugh’s sentences are short and punchy. In his robust good humour, Lory reminds me a bit of Sam Weller in the Pickwick Papers.

The accent of a fop

Vanbrugh goes to pains to spell out Lord Foppington’s pronunciation. By the look of it, the kind of rarefied courtier he is aspiring to be had a particular accent or idiom, a distinctive way of pronouncing English. In particular, ‘o’ becomes ‘a’, so that ‘constitution’ and ‘horse’ become ‘canstitution’ and ‘harse’:

  • what between the Air that comes in at the Door on one side, and the intolerable Warmth of the Masks on t’other, a Man gets so many Heats and Colds, ‘twou’d destroy the Canstitution of a Harse.
  • Fore. My Lord, I have done. If you please to have more Hair in your Wig, I’ll put it in.
    Lord Foppington: Passitively, yes

‘Or’ becomes ‘ar’:

  • Lord Foppington: I have arder’d my Coach to the Door:

‘Ot’ becomes ‘at’:

  • Lord Foppington: … when I heard my Father was shat thro’ the Head

‘U’ becomes ‘e’, e.g. ‘judge’ becomes ‘jedge’.

  • Lord Foppington: As Gad shall jedge me, I can’t tell; for ’tis passible I may dine with some of aur Hause at Lacket‘s.

He calls his brother Tam instead of Tom:

  • Lord Foppington: Don’t be in a Passion, Tam; far Passion is the most unbecoming thing in the Warld

Misogyny and misandry

I was very struck when I read some of the feminist introductions to these plays to discover that feminist critics dismiss all Restoration comedies – and indeed all Restoration society – as misogynist.

I take the point that there is a lot of anti-women propaganda in the plays, and that, on a deeper level, you could say the women are treated like chattel. Except that when you actually read the plays, you discover that a lot of the women characters are tough, independent, free to come and go as they please, take lovers, attend the theatre, and that many of them have independent means and live very well.

I’m not suggesting 17th century London was like 21st century New York in terms of women’s liberation and legal equality, but having been warned about the utter oppression of women in the period, it comes as a surprise to discover how much freedom and independence they did have.

And as to statements or sentiments, for every specifically anti-woman generalisation, there is one attacking men. Thus Amanda and Berinthia in Act 5:

Berinthia: Ay, but there you thought wrong again, Amanda. You shou’d consider, that in Matters of Love Men’s Eyes are always bigger than their Bellies. They have violent Appetites, ’tis true, but they have soon din’d.
Amanda: Well; there’s nothing upon Earth astonishes me more than Men’s Inconstancy.

If you are a feminist and want to be offended by what characters say in a play, it’s easy to find hundreds of anti-women beliefs and sentiments. But it is just as easy to find groups of women expressing anti-men sentiments.

For my part, I see statements like this as the kind of glue which binds together the plot. The dialogues are composed of sententious clichés which fill the down-time between the more urgent comic events. Often the sentiments are tendentious, and characters are using these cliches and stereotypes to bend someone to their will (generally women being persuaded that all men are faithless so-and-sos or all men being persuaded that all women are, well, the same).

They are a kind of rhetorical lubrication which keeps the engine of the play – its comic plotline – ticking over. And the women give just as good as they get. Maybe better.

Good Gods—What slippery Stuff are Men compos’d of!
Sure the Account of their Creation’s false,
And ’twas the Woman’s Rib that they were form’d of.

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Posted by Simon on August 10, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/08/10/the-relapse-john-vanbrugh/

The Plain Dealer by William Wycherley (1676)

‘I’ll have no leading-strings; I can walk alone: I hate a harness’
(Manly in The Plain Dealer, Act One)

William Wycherley wrote four comedies during the Restoration era. The Plain Dealer is the fourth and final one and is generally thought to be the best. It is a free adaptation of The Misanthrope (1666), one of the best-known plays of the French dramatist Moliere (1622 to 1673).

The protagonist, Manly, is a sea captain now returned to shore. His ship sank (he is said to have scuttled it after being trapped by Dutch enemy ships) and now he is back on land in lodgings. In any case, he only went to sea to get away from people, who he loathes:

You must pardon me, I cannot wish well to pimps, flatterers, detractors, and cowards, stiff nodding knaves, and supple, pliant, kissing fools

Manly prides himself on his plain-speaking and plain-dealing – in stark contrast to the society around him which he thinks is made up of fawning, lying hypocrites.

What, thou art one of those who esteem men only by the marks and value fortune has set upon ’em, and never consider intrinsic worth! but counterfeit honour will not be current with me: I weigh the man, not his title

Inevitably, his boasted plain dealing strikes others as rudeness and cruelty.

Manly has a friend or confidante, Freeman, who is the auditor of his extended soliloquies about society’s hypocrisies. Freeman is ‘a gentleman well educated, but of a broken fortune, a complier with the age’. I like that description, a complier with the age. Am I a complier with my age, I wonder.

In fact, Manly brusquely tells Freeman that the latter is not his friend; he (Manly) has only one friend, one true deep friend (and even as he says this, the reader suspects that this ‘friend’ is fated to betray him).

Manly is in love with Olivia, a wealthy woman who is tough and misanthropic in her own right. He is so confident of her love he has deposited with her some £6,000 of his fortune including a pile of jewels.

Olivia, also, purports to hate ‘the filthy world’. She has a cousin, Eliza, who is her confidante i.e. who she can confide in, and who is a sarcastic, ironic foil to her, in their first scene together listening to Olivia’s long description of how she despises the world and then, when Novel visits, embarrassingly proving that she is in fact an expert at all the hypocritical practices she has just condemned (gossiping, criticising etc).

OLIVIA: Hold, cousin, hold; I hate detraction. But I must tell you, cousin, his civility is cowardice, his good-nature want of wit; and he has neither courage nor sense to rail: and for his being always in humour, ’tis because he is never dissatisfied with himself.

Manly is beloved by Fidelia, who dressed up as a man to serve aboard his ship, won his trust and now, back on land, continues to dress as a man, all the time professing her love for Manly, declaring in an aside to the audience that she owes him her:

 love, faith, and duty to you, the bravest, worthiest of mankind

Then there’s a flotilla of secondary, comic characters, including a couple of sailors who sailed with Manly and now do him the office of doormen or bouncers, tasked with keeping all his callers at bay, plus:

  • Novel – ‘a pert railing Coxcomb, and an admirer of novelties’ who tries to woo Olivia
  • Major Oldfox – ‘an old impertinent Fop, given to scribbling’, who is wooing Widow Blackacre
  • Lord Plausible – ‘a ceremonious, supple, commending Coxcomb, in love with Olivia’
  • Widow Blackacre – ‘a petulant, litigious Widow, always in law, and Mother of Squire Jerry’
  • Squite Jerry – feeble, hen-pecked son of the Widow Blackacre

The scenes with Novel and Plausible are particularly funny. As the play progresses, so do the complications.

Act 2

Act 2 starts with Olivia explaining at length how she also despises society, and rejects company and visits, to her foil Eliza. Which makes it funny when she is promptly paid lots of visits – by the dandies and fops, Novel and Lord Plausible, and indulges in the very kind of catty gossip she has just criticised to Eliza.

Half-way through this scene Manly, Freeman and Fidelia arrive and, from a secret vantage point (one of the conventions of Restoration comedy) watch Olivia consorting with the fops. Manly overhears Olivia criticising him, a tone she continues once they’ve fully walked onstage and announced their presence. In fact Manly’s arrival prompts Olivia to make the shock declaration that she is married, a revelation which staggers all Manly’s hopes.

MANLY: I wish I never had seen you.

Olivia tells the assembled cast that she is married to an honourable gentleman and I, for one, immediately suspected this will be none other than ‘the one man’ Manly esteems as friend.

Manly and Olivia part with vehement curses of each other. But, during the visit, Olivia has taken a fancy to young Fidelia, dressed as a man, who was accompanying Manly.

When Lady Blackacre is announced, Freeman declares he will stay and woo her, impossible though she is, in order to inherit her money and to pay off his own debtors. Freeman’s bare-faced attempt to chat the Widow up turns into a comic scene as he competes with Lady Blackacre’s constant companion, a dried-up older man, Major Oldfox, who mostly exists to provide a comic foil to Freeman. The scene morphs into a parody of a courtroom confrontation, with either side flinging legalistic accusations at each other in order to prove their ’cause’, i.e. the widow’s hand and money.

The Widow is given a magnificent series of imaginative, long insults which match Falstaff at his finest:

WIDOW BLACKACRE: Thou withered, hobbling, distorted cripple; nay, thou art a cripple all over: wouldst thou make me the staff of thy age, the crutch of thy decrepidness?

Act 3. Westminster Hall

Manly has been summonsed there to be a witness in Lady Blackacre’s law suit. There is a touch of Jarndyce and Jarndyce about a character entirely consumed by one never-ending law suit, and it gives Manly and Freeman the opportunity for conventional criticisms of the law and lawyers.

Enter Fidelia who says she’ll do anything for him, so Manly asks her to go and win back Olivia on his behalf. Obviously, Fidelia is appalled at being given a task which runs directly counter to her own wishes.

Enter Widow Blackacre surrounded by a flock of cavilling lawyers named Blunder, Quaint and Petulant, Buttongown and Splitcause, Quillit and Quirk. When the Widow exits, Freeman takes the opportunity to chat up her poor, put-upon son, Jerry, lending him money to buy a book, encouraging his hopes.

FREEMAN: Steal away the calf, and the cow will follow you.

To which the fabulous Widow replies:

WIDOW: What sir, d’ye think to get the mother by giving the child a rattle?

Anyway, Freeman arranges for one of Manly’s sailor-servants to pinch the Widow’s bags full of years of legal papers which she had left with Jerry to guard. When Jerry re-enter to say they’re all gone, the Widow is distraught, Jerry is mortified, and Freeman gets the sailor-servant to drag Jerry off to Manly’s apartments. I smell a scam!

Manly re-enters and tells Freeman that he has managed to get into three lawsuits already, just by candidly telling some lawyers and a poet what he thinks of them, before going on to dispense with a suite of other characters, Oldfox, various lawyers, an aldermen and a City merchant with withering humour, commented on by Freeman. You realise it is a deliberate gallery of London types, of men of the world – all of them fawning cheats, in Manly’s opinion.

Act 4

Scene 1. Manly’s lodging

Dialogue between Manly and Fidelia (still dressed as a man). He hopes she has come back from Olivia’s to say she won her round to his cause. Instead Fidelia says the diametric opposite, that Olivia extravagantly insulted Manly and then took her (Fidelia) in her arms and showered her with kisses and would have done more but they were interrupted, and Olivia begged her to return for an assignation.

Manly leaps to the conclusion that Fidelia is in love with Olivia, and has made the story of her abusing him up and begins attacking her.

Freeman enters and joins in a philosophical trio about Love. Then the Widow Blackacre and Major Oldfox enter. Oldfox has penned some poetry to the Widow but she comically counters with her writs and lawyer’s letters, her preferred genre of writing.

Then Freeman enters with Jerry: he has successfully corrupted the boy, who now wants to escape his mother’s apron strings and live the London life of theatres, pubs and brothels. In a confrontation the boy demands his right to a life of his own (backed up by Freeman) – but the Widow reveals that Jerry was born out of wedlock, is a bastard and so shall not inherit her jointure

Jointures crop a lot. A jointure is: ‘an estate settled on a wife for the period during which she survives her husband, in lien of a dower.’

Scene 2. Olivia’s lodging

Novel and Lord Plausible compete with each other, claiming Olivia is vowed to them. Her servant gives them each identical letters, stating she despises their rival and loves only them… except that they swap and read them out loud and realise she is tricking both of them.They leave. Olivia enters, dispenses with her serving boy and prepares to meet Fidelia in the dark, as she had earlier arranged. Except that in the darkness a new character named Vernish arrives and embraces her, Olivia enthusiastically responding. He is, we discover, her husband!

After Olivia cleverly covers her initial mistake thinking of thinking Vernish was her secret lover, we learn that Vernish has been out of town five days; it is during that time that Manly rearrived in town i.e. after encountering the Dutch in the Channel, sinking his ship and making it back to shore; and that Olivia and Vernish have deliberately conned Manly out of his money, she persuading Manly to give her his £6,000 while he appears to have given Vernish some £1,000 guineas to be held at a goldsmith’s.

They now plan to be so cruel to Manly as to encourage him back to sea where, hopefully, he will drown. Vernish goes. Olivia soliloquises, making it clear she plans to swindle him, as well.

Enter Fidelia (still dressed as a man) trailed at a distance by Manly. Olivia instantly starts kissing her but when Fidelia asks about Manly, Olivia is crushingly honest, saying she never loved the brute, only wanted him for his money – which Manly, in hiding, hears.

Olivia says she’ll just pop into the other chamber and lock the doors. This gives Manly and Fidelia time to discuss Olivia’s treachery. Manly is initially for murdering her, which Fidelia talks him out of, but then comes round to a more savage revenge, and slips into the darkened room after Olivia, presumably to ravage her pretending to be Fidelia.

But just moments later he slips out of the room again and says his savage revenge would be pointless if no-one witnesses it. Therefore he tells Fidelia to tell Olivia that she (Fidelia) has to leave, but will return same time tomorrow night. By which time Manly will have set up his scam.

Olivia returns and Fidelia successfully feigns illness (‘the falling sickness’) and so says she must leave – but promises to return tomorrow night. But she has no sooner exited than she hurries back onstage saying a man is coming up the stairs with a candle. ‘Tis Vernish! Olivia disappears into the inner room – but Vernish catches Fidelia, thinking she is a male adulterer, draws his sword and threatens to stab her.

At which point Fidelia confesses she is a woman. Vernish pulls off her wig then squeezes her breasts. Yes, she is a woman! Still angry and puzzled, Vernish says he’ll have one final proof that Fidelia is a woman and drags her towards the bedroom, obviously to **** her. Fidelia starts screaming.

At which point a servant enters to tell Vernish that an alderman has sent his ‘cashier’ round with some money he had promised money, and the servant is is even now coming up the stairs. Forced to abandon his attempt at ravishment, Vernish gets the servant to help him push Fidelia into an adjoining room and lock the door.

Act 5

Scene 1. Eliza’s lodgings

Eliza is just telling Olivia off for the bad reputation she’s acquired when enter Vernish who promptly tells Olivia off for consorting with a woman dressed in men’s clothes.

Olivia is greatly confused, thinking Fidelia must have persuaded Vernish that ‘he’ is a woman. Then it begins to dawn on her that Vernish might be telling the truth, that Fidelia might be a woman in disguise!

Either way, Vernish lets slip that he terrified the girl by pretending he was going to ravish her – at which point Olivia finds an opportunity to accuse Vernish of being a heartless ravisher, and in the first month of their marriage, too!

So Vernish finds himself having to apologise and gives Olivia 200 of the guineas he has just received from the cashier. He then asks Eliza to accompany i.e. take Olivia home. Vernish leaves, at which point Eliza teases Olivia about this woman dressed as a man who was no doubt the lover and gallant Olivia was boasting about, and this turns into an almighty argument, with both women ending up damning each other.

Scene 2. The Cock pub in Bow Street

Fidelia is back in her costume as a man explaining to Manly how s/he managed to persuade Vernish that s/he was a woman. Manly is now desperate to know what Olivia’s husband looks like, but Fidelia didn’t get a clear view (the room was darkened). So in a bid to find out, Manly insists that Fidelia send a note telling Olivia she will visit again, tonight, at seven.

Enter Freeman who asks Manly why, now that he’s poor (he gave Olivia all his money), he doesn’t call on old friends and old obligations. This is a prompt for Manly to give an extended explanation of his misanthropy.

Disappointed in Manly, Freeman leaves to carry on his schemes re. the Widow Blackacre.

Enter Vernish to meet Manly amid a great display of enthusiasm and, sure enough, he does turn out to be the One Good Friend In The World Manly thinks he has while the audience, of course, knows Vernish is gulling and robbing him.

The conversation turns immediately to Olivia and Vernish joins in hypocritically damning her for a mercenary… Until Manly claims to have slept with her, at which point Vernish (who we know is Olivia’s ‘secret’ husband becomes genuinely angry. Manly sends him, as his best friend, to ask if Olivia will give him even a little of his money back.

The buzzing fops, Novel, Lord Plausible and Oldfox barge into Manly’s room, leading to comedy at their pretensions and foibles, namely stupid Novel insisting it is a sign of great wit to make loud noises and break windows.

This is just business to pass the time during which Vernish is supposed to have gone and asked Olivia for some of Manley’s money. Now he re-enters the room, and Manly kicks the fops out. Vernish tells Manly that Olivia told him to go to hell.

Vernish is still uncertain whether Olivia’s slept with Manly or not but, in any case, in an aside, confesses he would gladly slit Manly’s throat. Some friend!

In a scene drenched in dramatic irony, Manly laughs with Vernish about what a poor, wretched cuckold Olivia’s husband must be, about how he has been sending a go-between to Olivia who persuaded the fool he was a woman, and how he – Manly – now has an appointment with Olivia, as the time is coming up to 7.30 at night.

Vernish is confused and angry, he’s sure Fidelia was a woman, why is Manly describing him as a man? (Because Manly doesn’t yet realise that Fidelia is a woman, that’s why.) Manly goes to keep his appointment and Vernish shares his bewilderment with us, his plan to catch them at it (whatever it is) and his abiding hatred of Manly. He is a genuinely bad man.

Cut to Manly arranging with Freeman for the latter to scour all the drinkers in the pub and bring them all to Olivia’s place in half an hour precisely. Manly wants as many people as possible to witness his humiliation of her.

Scene 3. Another room in the Cock pub

Widow Blackacre suborns some professional perjurers and lying witnesses she will need in her next court case.

She has barely finished and dispatched them before Major Oldfox appears with a waiter who overcomes the widow and ties her to her chair and gags her! Is Oldfox going to rape her? No. Worse! He is going to read her his poetry!!

But he hasn’t even started before Freeman, Jerry, three bailiffs a constable and his assistants all burst into the room. They untie the Widow, Oldfox scarpers, but they haven’t come for him, they’ve come to serve an enormous suit on the Widow for ten thousand pounds!

This has all been cooked up by Freeman who now tells the Widow there’s only one way out of it which is to marry him. But the Widow is a legal expert, and suggests instead that she pays all his debts and settle an annuity on him. Hmmm, Freeman throws in £40 a year for Jerry (and free access to the Widow’s maid’s bedroom) and it’s a deal. He has lawyers at hand to draw up a contract.

Scene 4. Olivia’s lodging

Olivia has barely welcomed Fidelia (followed silently by Manly) into her darkened chambers and is leading her to the bed, than there are sounds at the door, which is locked and starts to be forced.

Panicking that it is her husband, Olivia tells Fidelia they’ll climb out the window down a rope made of curtain.

In the dark Olivia just has time to give Manly – thinking he is Fidelia – her purse and cabinet (presumably containing all the money she took from Manly) and disappear out the window, before Vernish forces the door and charges at Manly with his sword out.

In the pitch black, Manly unswords Vernish and throws him to the floor, Olivia returns and embraces Manly thinking him Fidelia, at which point Freeman, Novel, Plausible, Jerry and Widow Blackacre all barge in carrying torches.

So it is finally revealed that Vernish, pinned to the floor – Manly’s best friend – is Olivia’s husband. Manly is appalled.

In the struggles Fidelia’s wig has fallen off and she is revealed as a woman! She makes a speech about how she has loyally loved and followed Manly everywhere. Realising the depth of her loyalty, Manly pledges his love to her, too, and gives her the cabinet and purse.

Olivia and Vernish exit after being admonished, and now condemned to live as faithless man and wife in poverty.

Fidelia announces her family name is Grey and her father left her £2,000 a year. Money money money is always the ultimate subject of Restoration comedy.

The philosophy of Love

For thousands of years writers have been anatomising, categorising and philosophising about Love. Huge swathes of these Restoration comedies are devoted to this subject of apparently endless fascination and are stuffed with sweeping generalisations about men, women and Love.

MANLY: Why, what did you hear me say?
FREEMAN: Something imperfectly of love, I think.
MANLY: I was only wondering why fools, rascals, and desertless wretches, should still have the better of men of merit with all women, as much as with their own common mistress, Fortune.
FREEMAN: Because most women, like Fortune, are blind, seem to do all things in jest, and take pleasure in extravagant actions. Their love deserves neither thanks, nor blame, for they cannot help it: ’tis all sympathy; therefore, the noisy, the finical, the talkative, the cowardly, and effeminate, have the better of the brave, the reasonable, and man of honour; for they have no more reason in their love, or kindness, than Fortune herself.
MANLY: Yes, they have their reason. First, honour in a man they fear too much to love; and sense in a lover upbraids their want of it; and they hate anything that disturbs their admiration of themselves; but they are of that vain number, who had rather show their false generosity, in giving away profusely to worthless flatterers, than in paying just debts. And, in short, all women, like fortune (as you say) and rewards, are lost by too much meriting.

I find this stuff quite exhausting to read. It is tempting to skim over this eternal opinionising about men and women and Love in order to get to the plot, where people discuss actual events and plans and schemes, and where there is a lot more comedy.

Anti-women propaganda

  • MANLY: Yes; for she is not (I tell you) like other women, but can keep her promise
  • MANLY: for women’s wants are generally the most importunate solicitors to love or marriage.
  • OLIVIA: Well, we women, like the rest of the cheats of the world, when our cullies or creditors have found us out, and will or can trust no longer, pay debts and satisfy obligations with a quarrel, the kindest present a man can make to his mistress, when he can make no more presents.
  • FREEMAN: Well, you see now, mistresses, like friends, are lost by letting ’em handle your money; and most women are such kind of witches, who can have no power over a man, unless you give ’em money: but when once they have got any from you, they never leave you till they have all. Therefore I never give a woman a farthing.

Insulting servants

Olivia calls her servant, Lettice, ‘you dowdy’, ‘insatiable creature’, you buffle-headed stupid creature you’, and the boy who serves her ‘you little unthinking fop’, ‘you heedless little animal’ and so on. Manly curses his sailor-doormen as rogues

The Widow Blackacre

Is a quite marvellous comic creation. All the scenes with her come vividly to life. Her language is supercharged with vitriol and imaginative insult. She is a kind of female Falstaff, and a magnificent invention. Voltaire, himself a playwright, considered her ‘the most comical character that was ever brought upon the stage’ (Letters Concerning The English Nation, 1733).

Related links

More seventeenth century reviews

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by Simon on July 24, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on July 24, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/the-plain-dealer-william-wycherley/