118-595: The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh . The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber 's Love's Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion . In Cibber's Love's Last Shift , a free-living Restoration rake is brought to repentance and reform by the ruses of his wife, while in The Relapse , the rake succumbs again to temptation and has a new love affair. His virtuous wife
236-418: A breeches role by Mary Kent , an unusual piece of emergency casting that puts a different face on a uniquely frank homosexual scene where Tom keeps skipping nimbly out of the way of the matchmaker Coupler's lecherous groping. Colley Cibber was a rather unsuccessful young actor at the time of the split, with a squeaky voice and without any of the physical attractiveness of the soon-to-be-dead Horden. After
354-527: A "Petition of the Players" submitted to the Lord Chamberlain . This unusual document is signed by nine men and six women, all established professional actors, and details a disreputable jumble of secret investments and "farmed" shares , making the case that owner chicanery rather than any failure of audience interest was at the root of the company's financial problems. Barely veiled strike threats in
472-638: A "wild" young lover in Love's Last Shift , was the only young, handsome, potential romantic lead Rich had. He was presumably cast by Vanbrugh as Tom Fashion, Lord Foppington's clever younger brother (Holland), and it was a blow to the Patent Company when he was killed in a tavern brawl (more glamorously referred to as a "duel" in older sources) in May. At the première in November, Tom Fashion was instead played as
590-521: A Tub (1664), which has one heroic verse "conflict between love and friendship" plot, one urbane wit comedy plot, and one burlesque pantsing plot. ( See illustration, top right .) Such incongruities contributed to the low esteem held by Restoration comedy in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas today such total theatre experience is again valued on the stage and by postmodern academic critics. The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden , William Wycherley , and George Etherege reflected
708-453: A cutthroat struggle between London's two theatre companies, each of which was "seducing" actors from the other. The Relapse came close to being not produced at all, but the successful performance that was eventually achieved in November 1696 vindicated Vanbrugh's intentions, and saved the company from bankruptcy as well. Unlike Love's Last Shift , which never again performed after the 1690s, The Relapse has retained its audience appeal. In
826-583: A dimension of melancholy and frustration. After a forged-letter complication, the play ends with marriage between Heartfree and Bellinda and stalemate between the Brutes. Constant continues to pay court to Lady Brute, and she continues to shilly-shally. The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness faster than playwrights did. Interconnected causes for this shift in taste were demographic change,
944-648: A distinctly childish fop in contrast to his shrewd and sarcastic butler E. Blackadder (played by Rowan Atkinson). The British Fops , or Lucien Callow ( Mark McKinney ) and Fagan ( David Koechner ), appeared in several episodes during the Saturday Night Live 1995–1996 seasons. The characters first appeared on Weekend Update as the presidents of the Norm Macdonald fan-club, but later appeared in several other sketches, namely monologues. The Fops would appear in late Restoration period clothing and used
1062-519: A fatal slope to the lowest common denominator of public taste. Rich's company notoriously offered Bartholomew Fair -type attractions – high kickers, jugglers, rope dancers, performing animals – while the co-operating actors, while appealing to snobbery by setting themselves up as the one legitimate theatre company in London, were not above retaliating with "prologues recited by boys of five and epilogues declaimed by ladies on horseback". Restoration comedy
1180-465: A fop. "Fop" was widely used as a derogatory epithet for a broad range of people by the early years of the 18th century; many of these might not have been considered showy lightweights at the time, and it is possible that its meaning had been blunted by this time. Pulp fiction in the first decade of the twentieth century introduced the secretive action hero who poses as a fop to conceal his identity. In 1903 The Scarlet Pimpernel , protagonist of
1298-545: A fop." The fop was a stock character in English literature and especially comic drama, as well as satirical prints. He is a "man of fashion" who overdresses, aspires to wit , and generally puts on airs, which may include aspiring to a higher social station than others think he has. He may be somewhat effeminate, although this rarely affects his pursuit of an heiress. He may also overdo being fashionably French by wearing French clothes and using French vocabulary. An example of
SECTION 10
#17327723012701416-495: A gallant and a separate maintenance too." Bellinda is meanwhile grumpily courted by Constant's friend Heartfree, who is surprised and dismayed to find himself in love with her. The bad example of the Brutes is a constant warning to Heartfree not to marry. The Provoked Wife is a talk play, with the focus less on love scenes and more on discussions between friends, female (Lady Brute and Bellinda) and male (Constant and Heartfree). These are full of jokes, but are also thoughtful, with
1534-529: A heavy hand, rather than actually performed it. Today Restoration comedy is again appreciated on stage. The classics – Wycherley's The Country Wife and The Plain-Dealer , Etherege's The Man of Mode , and Congreve's Love For Love and The Way of the World – have competition not only from Vanbrugh's The Relapse and The Provoked Wife , but from such dark, unfunny comedies as Thomas Southerne 's The Wives Excuse . Aphra Behn, once considered unstageable, has had
1652-456: A major middle-class segment. They were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, crowded and bustling plots, introduction of the first professional actresses, and the rise of the first celebrity actors. The period saw the first professional female playwright, Aphra Behn . Charles II was an active and interested patron of drama. Soon after his restoration in 1660 he granted exclusive staging rights, so-called Royal patents , to
1770-468: A moment in time before the change was assured: fearless of self-contradiction, he puts something into his first play to please every section of the audience, combining the old outspokenness with the new preachiness. The way Vanbrugh, in his turn, allows the reformed rake to relapse quite cheerfully, and has the only preaching in the play come from the comically corrupt parson of "Fatgoose Living", has made some early 20th-century critics refer to The Relapse as
1888-446: A new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break." The new play is assumed to have been The Relapse , and it turned out the success Rich needed. "This play", notes Colley Cibber in his autobiography, "from its new and easy turn of wit, had great success, and gave me, as a comedian, a second flight of reputation along with it." Charles Gildon summarises: "This play was received with mighty applause." The Relapse
2006-409: A play by Amy Freed that draws on both The Relapse and its predecessor, Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift , premiered at Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2005, starring Stephen Caffrey as Loveless, Caralyn Kozlowski as Amanda, and Jonathan Freeman as Lord Foppington, and directed by Sharon Ott . Restoration comedy Restoration comedy is English comedy written and performed in
2124-426: A renaissance, with The Rover now a repertory favourite. Distaste for sexual impropriety long kept Restoration comedy off the stage, locked in a critical poison cupboard. Victorian critics like William Hazlitt , though valuing the linguistic energy and "strength" of the canonical writers Etherege, Wycherley and Congreve, found it necessary to temper aesthetic praise with heavy moral condemnation. Aphra Behn received
2242-455: A set of actors whom the public were inclined to support." Performers like the legendary Thomas Betterton , the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry and the rising young comedian Anne Bracegirdle had the audience on their side, and confident of this walked out. The actors gained a Royal "licence to perform", so bypassing Rich's ownership of the original Duke's and King's Company patents from 1660 and forming their own cooperative company. This venture
2360-474: A shambling gait, which was a carelessness, and became him." Modern critics do not find the Loveless part very lively or irresistible, but Vanbrugh was able to count on Verbruggen's shambling male magnetism and "agreeable wildness" to enrich the character. This would originally have worked even in print, since cast lists were included in the published plays: most 1690s play readers were playgoers also, and aware of
2478-662: A silly take on the period's language, mannerisms, culture, and sexual attitudes. Early examples of the fop in media of the twenty-first century include the hair-obsessed Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney ) in the Coen brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou (2001) and the character of Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp ) in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Depp's style has been termed "grunge fop". The actor's mannerisms caused concerns among executives at
SECTION 20
#17327723012702596-482: A single play were appreciated rather than frowned on: audiences prized "variety" within as well as between plays. Early Restoration audiences had little enthusiasm for structurally simple, well-shaped comedies such as those of Molière . They demanded bustling, crowded multi-plot action and fast pace. Even a splash of high heroic drama might be thrown in to enrich the comedy mix, as in George Etherege 's Love in
2714-405: A skirt, outlined by the male outfit." Successful Restoration actresses included Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn , the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry , famous for an ability to "move the passions" and make whole audiences cry, the 1690s comedian Anne Bracegirdle , and Susanna Mountfort ( Susanna Verbruggen ), who had many roles written specially for her in the 1680s and 1690s. Letters and memoirs of
2832-510: A strong middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. The focus in comedy is less on young lovers outwitting the older generation, more on marital relations after the wedding bells. Thomas Southerne 's dark The Wives' Excuse (1691) is not yet "soft": it shows a woman miserably married to the fop Friendall, everybody's friend, whose follies and indiscretions undermine her social worth, as her honour
2950-449: A success. This closed system forced playwrights to respond strongly to popular taste. Fashions in drama would change almost week by week rather than season by season, as each company responded to the offerings of the other, and new plays were urgently sought. In this hectic climate the new genres of heroic drama , pathetic drama and Restoration comedy were born and flourished. Both the quantity and quality of drama suffered in 1682 when
3068-529: A tendency to foppish appearance, e.g. , Adam Adamant Lives! , the third incarnation of Doctor Who and Jason King , they tended not to exhibit mannerisms associated with fops. In Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I , in the French Revolution sequence, one of the king's court is referred to as "Popinjay". In popular series Blackadder the Third, Hugh Laurie portrayed George, Prince Regent as
3186-449: A title and equips him with enough aplomb and selfishness to weather all humiliations. Although Lord Foppington may be "very industrious to pass for an ass", as Amanda remarks, he is at bottom "a man who Nature has made no fool" (II.i.148). Literary historians agree in esteeming him "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée), "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume). In the early 1690s, London had only one officially countenanced theatre company,
3304-541: A varied palette of problems, which forced some unconventional emergency casting. John Verbruggen was one of the original rebels and had been offered a share in the actors' company, but became disgruntled when his wife Susanna , a popular comedian, was not. For Rich, it was a stroke of luck to get Susanna and John back into his depleted and unskilled troupe. John's availability to play Loveless remained precarious, however. In September, when The Relapse had still not been staged after six months of trying (probably because Rich
3422-542: A very common character in Restoration comedy). Wycherley's The Plain Dealer (1676), a variation on the theme of Molière 's Le Misanthrope , was highly regarded for uncompromising satire and earned Wycherley the appellation "Plain Dealer" Wycherley or "Manly" Wycherley, after the play's main character Manly. The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy
3540-399: Is a great success and Horner has sex with many married ladies of virtuous reputation, whose husbands are happy to leave them alone with him. In the famously outrageous "China scene", sexual intercourse is assumed to take place repeatedly just off stage, where Horner and his mistresses carry on a sustained double entendre dialogue purportedly about Horner's china collection. The Country Wife
3658-475: Is also acknowledged. Restoration comedy peaked twice. The genre came to marked maturity in the mid-1670s with an extravaganza of aristocratic comedies. Twenty lean years followed this short golden age, though the achievement of Aphra Behn in the 1680s can be noted. In the mid-1690s a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience. The comedies of the golden 1670s and 1690s peak times are extremely different from each other. An attempt
The Relapse - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-436: Is also subjected to a determined seduction attempt, and resists with difficulty. Vanbrugh planned The Relapse around particular actors at Drury Lane , writing their stage habits, public reputations, and personal relationships into the text. One such actor was Colley Cibber himself, who played the luxuriant fop Lord Foppington in both Love's Last Shift and The Relapse . However, Vanbrugh's artistic plans were threatened by
3894-600: Is an even worse offence against religion and morality, as it positively rewards vice , allowing the trickster hero Tom to keep the girl, her dowry, and his own bad character to the end. Vanbrugh failed to take Short View seriously and published a joking reply, but Collier's censure was to colour the perception of the play for centuries. While it remained a popular stage piece through the 18th century, much praised and enjoyed for its wit, attitudes to its casual sexual morality became increasingly ambivalent as public opinion became ever more restrictive in this area, and more at odds with
4012-418: Is bound up in his. Mrs Friendall is pursued by a would-be lover, a matter-of-fact rake devoid of all the qualities that made Etherege's Dorimant charming. She is kept from action and choice by the unattractiveness of all her options. The humour of this "comedy" is in the subsidiary love-chase and fornication plots, none in the main plot. In Congreve's Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700),
4130-516: Is driven by a succession of near-discoveries of the truth about Horner's sexual prowess (and so the truth about the respectable ladies), from which he extricates himself by quick thinking and luck. Horner never reforms, but keeps his secret to the end and is seen to go on merrily reaping the fruits of his planted misinformation past the last act and beyond. 2. The married life of Pinchwife and Margery draws on Molière's School for Wives . Middle-aged Pinchwife has married an ignorant young country girl in
4248-558: Is first recorded in 1440 and for several centuries just meant a fool of any kind; the Oxford English Dictionary notes first use with the meaning of "one who is foolishly attentive to and vain of his appearance, dress, or manners; a dandy , an exquisite" in 1672. An early example of the usage is in the Restoration drama The Soldier's Fortune , in which a woman dismisses a potential suitor by saying "Go, you are
4366-455: Is less sentimental and more analytical than Love's Last Shift , subjecting both the reformed husband and the virtuous wife to fresh temptations, and having them react with more psychological realism. Loveless falls for the vivacious young widow Berinthia, while Amanda barely succeeds in summoning her virtue to reject her admirer Worthy. The three central characters, Amanda, Loveless, and Sir Novelty (ennobled by Vanbrugh into "Lord Foppington"), are
4484-489: Is made below to illustrate the generational taste shift by describing The Country Wife (1675) and The Provoked Wife (1697) in some detail. The two plays differ in some typical ways, just as a Hollywood movie of the 1950s differs from one of the 1970s. The plays are not, however, offered as "typical" of their decades. Indeed, there exist no typical comedies of the 1670s or the 1690s; even within these two short peak-times, comedy types kept mutating and multiplying. The drama of
4602-407: Is meanwhile tempted to embark on an affair with the witty and faithful Constant. Divorce is no option for either of the Brutes at this time, but forms of legal separation have recently arisen and would entail separate maintenance for the wife. Such an arrangement would prevent remarriage. Still, muses Lady Brute, in one of many discussions with her niece Bellinda, "These are good times. A woman may have
4720-560: Is now again a favourite of the stage. A 2001 revival by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre was described by Sheridan Morley as "rare, loving and brilliantly cast." As so often with commentary on The Relapse , Morley focused on the role of Lord Foppington and its different interpretations : " Alex Jennings superbly inherits the role of Lord Foppington which for 20 years or so belonged to Donald Sinden , and for another 20 before that to Cyril Ritchard ." Restoration Comedy ,
4838-486: Is only over the last few decades that the statement has become untrue, with Restoration comedy acknowledged as a rewarding subject for high theory analysis, and Wycherley's The Country Wife , long branded the most obscene play in the English language, becoming something of an academic favourite. "Minor" comic writers are getting a fair share of attention, especially the post-Aphra Behn generation of women playwrights around
The Relapse - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-455: Is probably Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675). The Country Wife has three interlinked but distinct plots, which each project sharply different moods: 1. Horner's impotence trick provides the main plot and the organising principle. The upper-class rake Horner mounts a campaign to seduce as many respectable ladies as possible, first spreading a false rumour of his own impotence, so as to be allowed where no other men might go. The trick
5074-648: Is singled out for particular censure in the Puritan clergyman Jeremy Collier 's anti-theatre pamphlet Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), which attacks its lack of poetic justice and moral sentiment. Worthy and Berinthia, complains Collier, are allowed to enact their wiles against the Lovelesses' married virtue without being punished or losing face. The subplot
5192-545: Is something of a Restoration problem play in its attention to the subordinate legal position of married women and the complexities of "divorce" and separation, issues that had been highlighted in the mid-1690s by some notorious cases before the House of Lords (see Stone). Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife is tired of matrimony. He comes home drunk every night and is continually rude and insulting to his wife. She
5310-431: Is the way Pinchwife's pathological jealousy always leads him into supplying Margery with the very information he wishes her not to have. 3. The courtship of Harcourt and Alithea is a comparatively uplifting love story, in which the witty Harcourt wins the hand of Pinchwife's sister Alithea from the hands of the upper-class town snob Sparkish, to whom she was engaged until discovering he loved her only for her money. When
5428-527: The "wit duels" between lovers typical of 1670s comedy are underplayed. The give-and-take set pieces of couples still testing their attraction for each other have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the famous "Proviso" scene in The Way of the World (1700). Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife (1697) follows in the footsteps of Southerne's Wives' Excuse , with a lighter touch and more humanly recognisable characters. The Provoked Wife
5546-523: The Drury Lane Theatre , including Colley Cibber , who played Lord Foppington. A fop is also referred to as a " beau ", as in the Restoration comedies The Beaux' Stratagem (1707) by George Farquhar , The Beau Defeated (1700) by Mary Pix , or the real-life Beau Nash , master of ceremonies at Bath , or Regency celebrity Beau Brummell . The sexual recklessness of "beau" may imply homosexuality . Shakespeare's King Lear contains
5664-587: The Glorious Revolution of 1688, William 's and Mary 's dislike of the theatre, and the lawsuits brought against playwrights by the Society for the Reformation of Manners (founded in 1692). When Jeremy Collier attacked Congreve and Vanbrugh in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage in 1698, he was confirming a shift in audience taste that had taken place. At
5782-475: The Glorious Revolution of 1688, and middle-class values of religion, morality, and gender roles became more dominant, not least in attitudes to the stage. Love's Last Shift is one of the first illustrations of a massive shift in audience taste, away from the analytic bent and sexual frankness of Restoration comedy and towards the conservative certainties and gender role backlash of exemplary or sentimental comedy. The play illustrates Cibber's opportunism at
5900-893: The King's Company and the Duke's Company , led by two middle-aged Caroline playwrights, Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant . The patentees scrambled for performance rights to the previous generation's Jacobean and Caroline plays, as the first necessity for economic survival before any new plays existed. Their next priority was to build splendid patent theatres in Drury Lane and Dorset Gardens , respectively. Striving to outdo each other, Killigrew and Davenant ended with quite similar theatres, both designed by Christopher Wren , both optimally providing music and dancing, and both fitted with moveable scenery and elaborate machines for thunder, lightning, and waves. The Restoration dramatists renounced
6018-441: The Restoration period of 1660–1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym for this. After public stage performances were banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, reopening of the theatres in 1660 marked a renaissance of English drama . Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues: The best-known fact about
SECTION 50
#17327723012706136-485: The Tories John Dryden and Aphra Behn . Behn's achievement as an early professional woman writer has been the subject of much recent study. During a second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the "softer" comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh reflected mutating cultural perceptions and great social change. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with
6254-459: The first edition preserves a single fleeting concrete detail about the première performance: George Powell was drunk. He played Amanda's worldly and sophisticated admirer Worthy, the "fine gentleman of the play", and apparently brought an unintended hands-on realism to his supposedly suave seduction attempt: One word more about the bawdy, and I have done. I own the first night this thing was acted, some indecencies had like to have happened, but it
6372-473: The protagonist of the novel American Psycho , and the clothes-obsessed Prince Kai in the book Firebood by Elly Blake (2017). A more recent and minor trend is "fop rock", a form of camp in which the performers don 18th-century wigs, lace cravats , and similar costume elements to perform. The style appears to owe something to glam rock , visual kei , and the New Romantic movement. The look
6490-546: The " bright young things " of the 1920s were decidedly "foppish" in manner and appearance, while, towards the late 1960s, male fashion became notably foppish in style, evocative loosely of the Georgian and Victorian eras. Pop stars often dressed in what might be termed foppish clothing, with the Kinks ' song " Dedicated Follower of Fashion " (1966) capturing well the spirit of the time. While many characters from popular culture had
6608-444: The "United Company", badly managed and with its takings bled off by predatory investors ("adventurers"). To counter the draining of the company's income, the manager Christopher Rich slashed the salaries and traditional perks of his skilled professional actors, antagonising such popular performers as Thomas Betterton , the tragedienne Elizabeth Barry , and the comedian Anne Bracegirdle . Colley Cibber wrote in his autobiography that
6726-469: The 1660s and 1670s was vitalised by the competition between the two patent companies created at the Restoration, and by the personal interest of Charles II, while comic playwrights arose to the demand for new plays. They stole freely from the contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the looted plotlines in adventurous ways. Resulting differences of tone in
6844-419: The 18th century, however, its tolerant attitude towards actual and attempted adultery gradually became unacceptable to public opinion, and the original play was for a century replaced on the stage by Sheridan 's moralised version A Trip to Scarborough (1777). On the modern stage, The Relapse has been established as one of the most popular Restoration comedies, valued for Vanbrugh's light, throwaway wit and
6962-605: The 1920s and 1930s and expanded with the arrival of comic books . The original characterisation of Bruce Wayne in the Batman series carried the trend forward. In Thomas Mann 's 1912 novella Death in Venice (as well as the opera by Benjamin Britten and the film by Luchino Visconti ) a fop is derided by the main character, Gustave von Aschenbach; ironically so, as Aschenbach ultimately dresses in this manner himself. Some of
7080-550: The Lovelesses' drawing-room comedy in favour of the Lord Foppington/Hoyden plot with its caricatured clashes between exquisite fop and pitchfork-wielding country bumpkins. The Man of Quality (1870) was one such robust production, Miss Tomboy (1890) another. Vanbrugh's original Relapse was staged once, in 1846, at the Olympic Theatre in London. During the first half of the 20th century The Relapse
7198-499: The Patent Company in March, but because of the problems with contracting and retaining actors, it did not première until November. It is known from Cibber's autobiography that Vanbrugh had a decisive say in the ongoing casting changes made during these seven months; it is not known whether he altered his text to accommodate them. To reinforce the connection with Love's Last Shift and capitalise on its unexpected success, Vanbrugh designed
SECTION 60
#17327723012707316-606: The Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper.... The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it. The socially diverse audiences included aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on and
7434-613: The Walt Disney Company but prevailed, thereby creating a new generation of fans of the fop. In Channel 4's Vic Reeves Big Night Out , character Graham Lister regularly refers to Reeves as "the Fop". In Quentin Tarantino 's 2012 slavery epic Django Unchained , Jamie Foxx 's title character, when allowed to choose his own clothing for the first time in his life, chose a decidedly foppish outfit which immediately earned him
7552-476: The actors' petition were met with an answering lock-out threat from Rich in a "Reply of the Patentees", but the burgeoning conflict was pre-empted by a suspension of all play-acting from December until March 1695 on account of Queen Mary 's illness and death. During this interval, a cooperative actors' company took shape under the leadership of Betterton and was granted a Royal "licence to act" on 25 March, to
7670-482: The atmosphere at Court. They celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester , a real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never
7788-527: The audience. No fewer than sixteen (most of the old standing) went away; and with them the very beauty and vigour of the stage; they who were left being for the most part learners, boys and girls, a very unequal match for them that revolted. The only well-regarded performers available were the Verbruggens, John and Susanna , who had been re-seduced by Rich from Betterton's company. They were of course used in Love's Last Shift , with John playing Loveless,
7906-525: The best use of such actors as remained after the 1694 split ( see cast list right ). An anonymous contemporary pamphlet describes the "despicable condition" the troupe had been reduced to: The disproportion was so great at parting, that it was almost impossible, in Drury Lane, to muster up a sufficient number to take in all the parts of any play; and of them so few were tolerable, that a play must of necessity be damned, that had not extraordinary favour from
8024-483: The brothel and the bottle, and no longer recognises his wife when he returns to London. Acting the part of a high-class prostitute, Amanda lures Loveless into her luxurious house and treats him to the night of his dreams, confessing her true identity in the morning. Loveless is so impressed that he immediately reforms. A minor part that was a great hit with the première audience is the fop Sir Novelty Fashion, written by Cibber for himself to play. Sir Novelty flirts with all
8142-464: The cast, which included Patricia Routledge as Berinthia and John Moffatt as Lord Foppington, but complained that the production was "full of the simpering, posturing and sniggering which usually stand in for style and sophistication in Restoration revivals." Following Donald Sinden 's outstanding and award-winning performance at the Aldwych Theatre in the mid-1960s Vanbrugh's original play
8260-427: The central roles of Loveless, Amanda, and Sir Novelty for the same actors: John Verbruggen, Jane Rogers, and Colley Cibber. Keeping Rogers as Amanda was not a problem, since she was not an actress that the companies fought over, but holding on to John Verbruggen and Colley Cibber posed challenges, to which Rich rose with energetic campaigns of bribery and re-seduction. Filling the rest of the large Relapse cast presented
8378-441: The climactic scene of Cibber's play, Amanda's virtue reforms her husband, and in the corresponding scene of The Relapse , it reforms her admirer Worthy. Such moments have not done the play any favours with modern critics. Love's Last Shift is the story of a last "shift" or trick that a virtuous wife, Amanda, is driven to reform and retain her rakish husband Loveless. Loveless has been away for ten years, dividing his time between
8496-472: The condemnation without the praise, as outspoken sex comedy was seen as particularly offensive from a woman author. At the turn of the 20th century, an embattled minority of academic Restoration comedy enthusiasts began to appear, such as the editor Montague Summers , whose work ensured that plays of Restoration comedy authors remained in print. "Critics remain astonishingly defensive about the masterpieces of this period," wrote Robert D. Hume as late as 1976. It
8614-420: The consummate acting part of Lord Foppington, a burlesque character with a dark side. Love's Last Shift can be seen as an early sign of Cibber's sensitivity to shifts of public opinion, which was to be useful to him in his later career as manager at Drury Lane (see Colley Cibber ). In the 1690s, the economic and political power balance of the nation tilted from the aristocracy towards the middle class after
8732-409: The dismay of Rich, who saw the threat too late. The two companies that emerged from this labour/management conflict are usually known respectively as the "Patent Company" (the no-longer-united United Company) and "Betterton's Company", although Judith Milhous argues that the latter misrepresents the cooperative nature of the actors' company. In the following period of intense rivalry, the Patent Company
8850-456: The freedom society allowed to men. Some feminist critics such as Jacqueline Pearson saw them as subverting conventional gender roles and empowering female members of the audience. Elizabeth Howe has objected that the male disguise, when studied in relation to play texts, prologues, and epilogues, comes out as "little more than yet another means of displaying the actress as a sexual object" to male patrons, by showing off her body, normally hidden by
8968-490: The high-profile Verbruggens. Happily married in private life and playing the secret lovers Loveless and Berinthia, the Verbruggens have left traces of their charisma and erotic stage presences in Vanbrugh's dialogue. The Relapse even alludes to their real-life relationship, in meta-jokes such as Berinthia's exclamation, "Well, he is a charming man! I don't wonder his wife's so fond of him!" Hildebrand Horden , who had played
9086-473: The hope that she will not know to cuckold him. Horner teaches her, and Margery cuts a swathe through the sophistications of London marriage without even noticing them. She is enthusiastic about the virile handsomeness of town gallants, rakes, and especially theatre actors (such self-referential stage jokes were nourished by the new higher status of actors), and keeps Pinchwife in a state of continual horror with her plain-spokenness and interest in sex. A running joke
9204-414: The last of the true Restoration comedies. However, Vanbrugh's play is also affected by the taste of the 1690s, and compared to a play like the courtier William Wycherley 's The Country Wife of 20 years earlier, with its celebration of predatory aristocratic masculinity, The Relapse contains quite a few moments of morality and uplift. In fact it has a kind of parallel structure to Love's Last Shift : in
9322-522: The lawyer Christopher Rich , who tried to finance a tangle of "farmed" shares and sleeping partners by slashing salaries and dangerously by abolishing traditional perks of senior performers, who were stars with the clout to fight back. The company owners, wrote the young United Company employee Colley Cibber , "had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presum'd they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people. [They] did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave
9440-521: The leading man in the Duke's Company, and played Dorimant, the seminal irresistible Restoration rake , at the première of George Etherege 's Man of Mode (1676). Betterton's position remained unassailed through the 1680s, both as leading man of the United Company and as its stage manager and de facto day-to-day leader. He remained loyal to Rich longer than many of his co-workers, but eventually it
9558-508: The least important draw, no performance being advertised by an author until 1699). Although playhouses were built for large audiences – the second Drury Lane theatre from 1674 held 2000 patrons – they were compact in design and an actor's charisma could be intimately projected from the thrust stage . With two companies competing for their services from 1660 to 1682, star actors could negotiate star deals, comprising company shares and benefit nights as well as salaries. This advantage changed when
9676-492: The male lead, and his wife Susanna the flirtatious heiress Narcissa, a secondary character. The rest of the cast consisted of the new and untried (for instance Hildebrand Horden , who had just joined Rich's troupe, playing a rakish young lover), the modest and lacklustre ( Jane Rogers , playing Amanda, and Mary Kent , playing Sir Novelty's mistress Flareit), and the widely disliked (the opportunist Colley Cibber, playing Sir Novelty Fashion); people who had probably never been given
9794-539: The many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb , fribble , popinjay (meaning 'parrot'), dandy , fashion-monger , and ninny . Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion. The pejorative term today carries the connotation of a person, usually male, who is overly concerned with trivial matters (especially matters of fashion) and who affects elite social standing. The term also appears in reference to deliberately camp styles based on eighteenth-century looks. The word "fop"
9912-582: The matchmaker Coupler with the lecherous interest in Tom becomes decorous Mrs Coupler. A small-scale but notable loss is of much of the graphic language of Hoyden's nurse, who is earthy in Vanbrugh's original, genteel in Sheridan. However, Sheridan had an appreciation of Vanbrugh's style, and retained most of the original text unaltered. In the 19th century, A Trip to Scarborough remained the standard version, and there were also some ad hoc adaptations that sidelined
10030-477: The more successful Duke's Company absorbed the struggling King's Company to form the United Company . Production of new plays dropped off sharply in the 1680s, affected by the monopoly and the political situation (see Decline of comedy below). The influence and incomes of actors dropped too. In the late 1680s, predatory investors ("adventurers") converged on the United Company. Management was taken over by
10148-458: The much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of The Way of the World , Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by the drama of obvious sentiment and exemplary morality. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the sexual frankness of Restoration comedy ensured that theatre producers cannibalised it or adapted it with
10266-464: The nickname "Fancypants". In the 2007 video game Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney , Detective Ema Skye constantly refers to the prosecutor Klavier Gavin as a "glimmerous fop" due to the bling that he would typically wear and his obsession with his appearance. The term fop is also used occasionally to refer to other characters, particularly being picked up by Apollo Justice due to the detective's habit of saying it. Other examples include Patrick Bateman ,
10384-484: The novels by Emma Orczy , set the prototype. Sir Percy poses as an overdressed and empty-headed socialite who is the last person anyone would imagine rescuing people from the feared guillotine of the French Revolution . A similar image is cultivated by Don Diego de la Vega, who rights wrongs as Zorro (1919) in stories by Johnston McCulley . The trend continued with the pulp fiction and radio heroes of
10502-500: The only ones that recur in both plays, the remainder of the Relapse characters being new. In the trickster subplot , young Tom tricks his elder brother Lord Foppington out of his intended bride and her large dowry . This plot takes up nearly half the play and expands the part of Sir Novelty to give more scope for the roaring success of Cibber's fop acting. Recycling Cibber's merely fashion-conscious fop, Vanbrugh lets him buy himself
10620-491: The option of joining Betterton. Betterton's only rival as male lead, George Powell , had most likely been left behind by the rebels with some relief (Milhous); while Powell was skilled and experienced, he was also notorious for his bad temper and alcoholism. Throughout the "seduction" tug-of-war between Rich and Betterton in 1695–96, Powell remained at Drury Lane, where he was in fact not used for Love's Last Shift , but would instead spectacularly demonstrate his drinking problem at
10738-405: The owners of the United Company, "who had made a monopoly of the stage, and consequently presumed they might impose what conditions they pleased upon their people, did not consider that they were all this while endeavouring to enslave a set of actors whom the public… were inclined to support." Betterton and his colleagues set forth the bad finances of the United Company and the plight of the actors in
10856-493: The period show men and women in the audience relishing Mountfort's swaggering, roistering impersonations of young women breeched to enjoy the social and sexual freedom of male Restoration rakes . Male and female actors on the London stage in the Restoration period became for the first time public celebrities . Documents of the period show audiences attracted to performances by the talents of specific actors as much as by specific plays, and more than by authors (who seem to have been
10974-460: The permissive ethos of Restoration comedy. From 1777 Vanbrugh's original was replaced on the stage by Sheridan 's A Trip to Scarborough , a close adaptation but with some "covering", as the prologue explains, drawn over Vanbrugh's "too bare" wit: Sheridan does not allow Loveless and Berinthia to consummate their relationship, and he withdraws approval from Amanda's admirer Worthy by renaming him "Townly". Some frank quips are silently deleted, and
11092-458: The playhouse to watch or re-watch performances by particular actresses and to his enjoyment of these. Daringly suggestive comedy scenes involving women became especially common, although of course Restoration actresses were, just like male actors, expected to do justice to all kinds and moods of plays. (Their role in the development of Restoration tragedy is also important, compare She-tragedy .) A speciality introduced almost as early as actresses
11210-403: The première of The Relapse . Vanbrugh planned The Relapse , too, round these limited casting resources and minor talents, which Peter Holland has argued explains the robust, farcical character of the play; Vanbrugh's second comedy, The Provoked Wife (1697), written for the better actors of the cooperative company, is a much subtler piece. The Relapse was written in six weeks and offered to
11328-413: The resulting actors' cooperative. Betterton played every great male part there was from 1660 into the 18th century. After watching Hamlet in 1661, Pepys reports in his diary that the young beginner Betterton "did the prince's part beyond imagination." Such expressive performances seem to have attracted playgoers as magnetically, as did the novelty of seeing women on the stage. He was soon established as
11446-599: The so-called Frenchified fop is Sir Novelty Fashion in Colley Cibber 's Love's Last Shift (1696). Fop characters appear in many Restoration comedies , including sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege 's The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), Aphra Behn 's diatribe against politic marriages, The Town Fop (1676, published 1677), and Lord Foppington in The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh . Vanbrugh planned The Relapse around particular actors at
11564-482: The staging of The Relapse in 1696, Rich's most desperate venture. Vanbrugh is assumed to have attempted to tailor his play to the talents of particular actors and to what audiences would expect from them, as was normal practice (Holland), but this was exceptionally difficult to accomplish in 1695–96. Love's Last Shift had been cast from the remnants of the Patent Company—"learners" and "boys and girls"—after
11682-476: The success of Love's Last Shift , his status was transformed, with both companies vying for his services as actor and playwright. He made an off-season transfer to Betterton's company in the summer of 1696 and wrote part of a play for the rebels before being re-seduced by Rich by means of a fat contract (Milhous). Cibber as Lord Foppington was thus also assured, and finally the première of The Relapse could be scheduled with some confidence. Cibber's performance in it
11800-436: The tradition of satire recently embodied by Ben Jonson , devoting themselves to a comedy of manners that accepted the social code of the upper class uncritically. The audience of the early Restoration period was not exclusively courtly , as has sometimes been supposed, but it was quite small and could barely support two companies. There was no untapped reserve of occasional playgoers. Ten consecutive performances constituted
11918-528: The turn of the 18th century: Delarivier Manley , Mary Pix , Catharine Trotter , and Susanna Centlivre . A broad study of most never-reprinted Restoration comedies has been made possible by internet access (by subscription only) to the first editions at the British Library . Selected seminal critical studies: Fop Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of
12036-520: The two companies merged in 1682 and the London stage became a monopoly, both the number and the variety of new plays dropped sharply. There was a swing away from comedy to serious political drama, reflecting preoccupations and divisions after the Popish Plot (1678) and Exclusion Crisis (1682). The few comedies produced tended to be political in focus, the Whig dramatist Thomas Shadwell sparring with
12154-511: The two companies were amalgamated in 1682, but the way the actors rebelled and took command of a new company in 1695 is in itself an illustration of how far their status and power had developed since 1660. The greatest fixed stars among Restoration actors were Elizabeth Barry ("Famous Mrs Barry" who "forc 'd Tears from the Eyes of her Auditory") and Thomas Betterton , both active in running the actors' revolt in 1695 and both original patent-holders in
12272-468: The walkout of the stars. Following the surprising success of this young cast, Vanbrugh and Rich had even greater difficulty in retaining the actors needed for The Relapse . However, in spite of the continuous emergency in which the Relapse production was mounted, most of Vanbrugh's original intentions were eventually carried out. To cast Love's Last Shift in January 1696, the Patent Company had to make
12390-414: The women, but is more interested in his own exquisite appearance and witticisms, and Cibber would modestly write in his autobiography 45 years later, "was thought a good portrait of the foppery then in fashion". Combining daring sex scenes with sentimental reconciliations and Sir Novelty's buffoonery, Love's Last Shift offered something for everybody, and was a great box-office hit. Vanbrugh's The Relapse
12508-573: The word, in the general sense of a fool , and before him Thomas Nashe , in Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592, printed 1600): "the Idiot, our Playmaker. He, like a Fop & an Ass must be making himself a public laughing-stock." Osric , in Hamlet has a great deal of the fop's affected manner, and much of the plot of Twelfth Night revolves around tricking the puritan Malvolio into dressing as
12626-544: Was handicapped by a shortage of competent actors. "Seducing" actors (as the legal term was) back and forth between the companies was a key tactic in the ensuing struggle for position, and so were appeals to the Lord Chamberlain to issue injunctions against seductions from the other side, which that functionary was quite willing to do. Later Rich also resorted to hiring amateurs, and to tempting Irish actors over from Dublin . But such measures were not yet in place for
12744-511: Was he who headed an actors' walkout in 1695 and became the acting manager of the new company. Variety and dizzying fashion changes are typical of Restoration comedy. Though the "Restoration drama" unit taught to college students is likely to be telescoped in a way that makes the plays all sound contemporary, scholars now have a strong sense of the rapid evolution of English drama over these 40 years and its social and political causes. The influence of theatre-company competition and playhouse economics
12862-440: Was less well known, his acting skills were considerable and would flourish after January 1697 in the cooperative company, where commentators even started to compare him with the great Betterton. Verbruggen was considered a more natural, intuitive or "careless" actor, with "a negligent agreeable wildness in his action and his mien, which became him well." Anthony Aston vividly described Verbruggen as "a little in-kneed, which gave him
12980-545: Was not my fault. The fine gentleman of the play, drinking his mistress's health in Nantes brandy from six in the morning to the time he waddled upon the stage in the evening, had toasted himself up to such a pitch of vigour, I confess I once gave Amanda for gone. The desperate straits of the United Company, and the success of The Relapse in saving it from collapse, are attested in a private letter from 19 November 1696: "The other house [Drury Lane] has no company at all, and unless
13098-766: Was pioneered in the 1960s by Paul Revere & the Raiders . Adam Ant of Adam and the Ants picked up the trend, occasionally performing in elaborate highwayman outfits. Other notable examples would be Falco 's performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the song " Rock Me Amadeus " (a No. 1 hit in the US, the UK and Canada in 1986), Japanese rock group Malice Mizer , and Boston -based band The Upper Crust . Mid-2000s glam rock revivalists White Hot Odyssey also affected 18th century-style wigs and clothing for their live performances. Prince
13216-521: Was received with even greater acclaim than in his own play, Vanbrugh's Lord Foppington being a larger and, in the estimation of both contemporaries and modern critics, much funnier part than Sir Novelty Fashion. Vanbrugh's play incorporates some of the ad-libbing and affectations of Cibber's by all accounts inspired performance in Love's Last Shift . Cibber has thus imprinted not only his own playwriting but also his acting style and squeaky personality on Vanbrugh's best-known character. Vanbrugh's preface to
13334-734: Was relatively neglected, along with other Restoration drama , and experts are uncertain about exactly when Vanbrugh's original again resurged to prominence on the stage and thereby marginalised Sheridan's version. These experts now believe the play may have been first brilliantly rehabilitated by Anthony Quayle 's 1947 production at the Phoenix Theatre, starring Cyril Ritchard as Lord Foppington and brought to Broadway by Ritchard in 1950. A musical version, Virtue in Danger (1963), by Paul Dehn with music by James Bernard, opened to mixed reviews. John Russell Taylor in Plays and Players praised
13452-518: Was set up with detailed rules for avoiding arbitrary managerial authority, regulating the ten actors' shares, setting the conditions of salaried employees and the sickness and retirement benefits of both categories. The cooperative had the good luck to open in 1695 with the première of William Congreve 's famous Love For Love and the skill to make it a huge box-office success. London again had two competing companies. Their dash to attract audiences briefly revitalised Restoration drama, but also set it on
13570-416: Was still parleying with Cibber about his availability as Lord Foppington), John was still complaining about his employment situation, even getting into a physical fight over it at the theatre. This misbehaviour caused the Lord Chamberlain to declare his contract void and at the same time order him to stay with the Patent Company until January 1697, to give Rich time to find a replacement. The original Loveless
13688-410: Was strongly influenced by the first professional actresses. Before the closing of the theatres , all female roles had been taken by boy players and the predominantly male audiences of the 1660s and 1670s were curious, censorious and delighted at the novelty of seeing real women engage in risqué repartee and take part in physical seduction scenes. Samuel Pepys refers many times in his diary to visiting
13806-403: Was the breeches role – an actress appearing in male clothes (breeches of tight-fitting knee-length pants, the standard male garment of the time), for instance to play a witty heroine who disguises herself as a boy to hide or to engage in escapades disallowed to girls. A quarter of the plays produced on the London stage between 1660 and 1700 contained breeches roles. Women playing them behaved with
13924-592: Was thus finally guaranteed for an autumn season run of The Relapse . Since the loyal Verbruggen couple always moved as a unit, Susanna's services were also assured. The Verbruggens were essential to the play, not least because Vanbrugh had customised the sprightly temptress Berinthia to Susanna's talents and reputation for witty, roguish, sexually enterprising characters, most recently Mrs Buxom in Thomas D'Urfey 's Don Quixote (a success thanks to "the extraordinary well acting of Mrs Verbruggen", wrote D'Urfey). Although John
#269730