About this ebook
Verbal brilliance, urbane sophistication and sexual conquest are the
measures of success for the fashionable set who watched themselves
being represented on the Restoration stage. Yet idealisation and
satire, as this edition of Etherege's masterpiece shows, are flip sides
of the same coin, and the play betrays deep anxieties about ridicule
and social failure. Any London beau would emulate Dorimant, the
unconscionable rake who loves 'em and leaves 'em, but he would also
secretly fear that he in fact resembled Sir Fopling Flutter, the model
of all Restoration fops, in his vanity and affectation. The women fare
no better, being offered for identification Dorimant's discarded
mistress Loveit, scheming for revenge, or the beautiful but hard-headed
Harriet, who dares Dorimant to woo her in the country, for 'I know all
beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you and that no gallantry can draw you
farther'.
measures of success for the fashionable set who watched themselves
being represented on the Restoration stage. Yet idealisation and
satire, as this edition of Etherege's masterpiece shows, are flip sides
of the same coin, and the play betrays deep anxieties about ridicule
and social failure. Any London beau would emulate Dorimant, the
unconscionable rake who loves 'em and leaves 'em, but he would also
secretly fear that he in fact resembled Sir Fopling Flutter, the model
of all Restoration fops, in his vanity and affectation. The women fare
no better, being offered for identification Dorimant's discarded
mistress Loveit, scheming for revenge, or the beautiful but hard-headed
Harriet, who dares Dorimant to woo her in the country, for 'I know all
beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you and that no gallantry can draw you
farther'.
About the author
John Barnard is Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds. His
research interests are in Restoration literature, Keats and the second
generation Romantics, textual criticism, and book history. Recent
publications include The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume IV 1557-1695 (2002).
research interests are in Restoration literature, Keats and the second
generation Romantics, textual criticism, and book history. Recent
publications include The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume IV 1557-1695 (2002).
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