All posts tagged misandry

The Provoked Wife by Sir John Vanbrugh (1697)

‘Lord, how like a Torrent Love flows into the Heart, when once the Sluice of Desire is open’d! Good Gods! What a Pleasure there is in doing what we should not do!’
(Lady Brute)

Cast

The cast list is clipped and to the point i.e. not as entertaining as some.

THE MEN
Constant
Heartfree
Sir John Brute
Treble, a Singing-Master
Rasor, Valet de Chambre to Sir John Brute
Justice of the Peace
Lord Rake, Companions to Sir John Brute
Colonel Bully
Constable and Watch

THE WOMEN
Lady Brute
Belinda, her Niece
Lady Fancyful
Madamoiselle
Cornet and Pipe, Servants to Lady Fancyful

Brief plot summary

Sir John Brute is tired of matrimony. He comes home drunk every night and is continually rude and insulting to his wife. She is meanwhile being tempted to embark upon an affair with the witty and faithful Constant. Divorce is not an option for either of the Brutes at this time, but forms of legal separation have recently come into existence, and would entail a separate maintenance to the wife. Such an arrangement would not allow remarriage. Still, muses Lady Brute, in one of many discussions with her niece Belinda, ‘These are good times. A woman may have a gallant and a separate maintenance too’.

Belinda is at the same time being 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 to not marry.

The Provoked Wife is a ‘talk play’, with the focus less on love scenes and more on discussions between female friends (Lady Brute and Belinda) and male friends (Constant and Heartfree). These exchanges are full of jokes, but are also thoughtful and often have an air of melancholy and frustration.

After complications caused by a forged-letter, the play ends with marriage between Heartfree and Belinda and stalemate between the Brutes. Constant continues to pay court to Lady Brute, and she continues to shilly-shally.

Extended plot summary

Lord Brute has a soliloquy about bored he is of being married – he encounters Lady Brute who asks an innocent question and sets off his surly angry replies – then Lady Brute has a soliloquy wondering what she did in her life to merit such treatment (although she admits 1. she married Brute for his money 2. everyone warned her about him, but she thought she could ‘change’ him.)

Enter Belinda, Lady Brute’s niece, and they have an extended dialogue about what a brute Lord Brute is. Belinda has spotted that her aunt is in love with Constant. Lady Brute gives a speech about how women ought to resist the temptation to flirt and coquette. Both then unite in critiquing the character of their neighbour, the exorbitant flirt and narcissistic Lady Fancyful.

Scene 2 Lady Fancyful’s dressing room Where we meet the lady herself and there is comic interaction between her English maid – who tells the truth about her appearance – and her super-flattering French fashion adviser, Mademoiselle, who tells her what she wants to hear. A letter arrives containing a song some admirer has composed for her. Lady Fancyful calls for Pipe her musician who comes and sings it.

Another letter arrives, Fie! she is so popular! It is more prosaic, from an admirer who says he will tell her all her Faults if she comes to the Walk in St James’s Park. There follows a comic dialogue between Lady Fancyful, who feigns to be shy and nervous of meeting an unknown man. Mademoiselle hands her all her accoutrements and virtually drags her out the door.

(It is a notable feature of this scene that entire sentences from Mademoiselle are in French, indicating that the audience was expected to understand it. Does this indicate the openly educated aristocratic audience which plays were still targeted at, at this late date?)

Act 2 Scene 1 St James’s Park Enter Lady Fancyful and Mademoiselle. The letter writer turns out to be Heartfree, who they know already to be ‘a profess’d Woman-hater’. Heartfree proceeds to tell Lady Fancyful she’s a damn attractive woman but has made herself so prettified and pretentious that she has become a figure of fun. He says he will reform her. Lady Fancyful decries his awful manners, and they exit.

Heartfree is immediately greeted by Constant (who we know from Scene 1 that Lady Brute knows is paying court to her) and they have a dialogue which is, in effect, Cynicism (Heartfree) talking to True Love idealism (Constant). Heartfree provides one summary:

I persuade a Woman she’s an Angel, and she persuades you she’s one.

At greater length:

As for her Motion, her Mien, her Airs, and all those Tricks, I know they affect you mightily. If you should see your Mistress at a Coronation dragging her Peacock’s Train, with all her State and Insolence about her, ‘twou’d strike you with all the awful Thoughts that Heav’n itself could pretend to from you; whereas I turn the whole Matter into a Jest, and suppose her strutting in the self-same stately Manner, with nothing on her but her Stays and her under scanty quilted Petticoat.

Constant has loved Lady Brute since he first saw her at her wedding and wonders why she studiously avoids him. Heartfree says ‘Tis women for you’, but we know it’s actually because ‘Lady Brute’ does in fact love him but wants also to remain true to her principles.

Enter Lord Brute who is brutishly blunt about how he hates being married, though he concedes that Lady Brute is virtuous. He invites Constant and Heartfree to come out tonight, get drunk and bed some whores.

Scene 2 Lady Fancyful’s Lady Fancyful admits to Mademoiselle that Heartfree’s rudeness did in some manner affect her. Enter Mr Treble who has set a poem of Lady F’s to music. He sings it. She asks if there are any new songs in Town and Treble produces another one which they get Lady F’s singer, Pipe, to sing.

The chief characteristic of the poems in these plays is how utterly mechanical and unlyrical they are (like the plays themselves, like the taste of the times):

Not an Angel dwells above,
Half so fair as her I love.
Heaven knows, how she’ll receive me;
If she smiles, I’m blest indeed;
If she frowns, I’m quickly freed;
Heaven knows she ne’er can grieve me.

Lady Fancifull can’t get Heartfree out of her thoughts and agonises about writing a letter to him.

Act 3 Lord and Lady Brute and her niece Belinda are just finishing luncheon. He declares he will smoke and is anticipating being visited. The womenfolk wonder if the visitor is Constant and vow to stay in the room, despite his choking smoke. They deliberately prattle about their petticoats to wind up Sir John until he loses his temper, throws his pipe at them, and drives them out the room.

Heartfree and Constant arrive at this moment and ask Sir John what’s wrong and he curses all women. He invites them to sit and share a glass, he notices Constant is sad, because of a woman, is it? This is dramatic irony because it is, of course, because of Sir John’s own wife that Constant is sad. Sir John proposes a toast to Constant’s mistress, with the same ironic effect.

A servant announces some of his hearty friends (Lord Rake and Colonel Bully) are at the door calling him away to drink and make some kind of plan for the evening. He tells our two heroes to stay till he gets back. Heartfree realises this is an opportunity for Constant to forward his troth and agrees. Exit Lord Brute.

Enter Lady Brute and Belinda who good-humouredly spar with Constant (who feels faint with love for Lady B) and Heartfree, who allows himself to be taught how to be a Perfect Man by pert Belinda.

Enter Lady Fancyful (‘an Inundation of Impertinence’ as Lady Brute calls her) who lights up the stage very much as Lord Foppington lights up The Relapse. She proceeds to tell the ladies how rudely Heartfree addressed her and suggested she reform her entire appearance and manner and very amusingly to act out how clumsy and crude he would have her be.

Belinda realises that Lady Fancyful is in love with Heartfree, and decides to make her jealous by a little flirting with Heartfree. It works, as Lady Fancyful reveals in an aside to the audience: she does fancy Heartfree and Belinda flirting with him does make her jealous.

Heartfree grows bored, realises there’s no scope for Constant to advance his love suit to Lady Brute with the room full of women, and they leave. Lady Fancyful is very irked by the devout leave Heartfree takes of Belinda, while almost ignoring her. She vows to go home and study her revenge.

Re-enter Constant leading to a very elevated dialogue with Lady Brute, in which he declares his love and she replies with her Virtue.

LADY BRUTE: He who has Discretion enough to be tender of a Woman’s Reputation, carries a Virtue about him may atone for a great many Faults.
Const. If it has a Title to atone for any, its Pretensions must needs be strongest where the Crime is Love. I therefore hope I shall be forgiven the Attempt I have made upon your Heart, since my Enterprize has been a Secret to all the World but yourself.
LADY BRUTE. Secrecy, indeed, in Sins of this kind, is an Argument of weight to lessen the Punishment; but nothing’s a Plea for a Pardon entire, without a sincere Repentance.
CONSTANT: If Sincerity in Repentance consists in Sorrow for offending, no Cloyster ever inclos’d so true a Penitent as I should be.

You need your wits about you to really grasp the cut and thrust of these sharp remarks. There is something very intimate about such a deep and searching matching of wits, more so than in conventional love compliments. Constant and Lady Brute draw very close but at the end, when he asks for some token that he may have hopes his suit is heard, she tears his hand from hers and says that’s all she has time for and runs out.

When Heartfree re-enters Constant is in raptures that Lady Brute has at least given him Hope although, when Heartfree asks how she expressed it, it is comedy (and maybe an indication of how difficult it was even for contemporary audiences to follow such a cut-and-thrust dialogue) that Constant can’t remember the precise form of words she used. In fact, if you have to carefully reread the end of the dialogue to realise that she didn’t.

Scene 2 Sir John, Lord Rake, Colonel Bully in a pub, drinking and singing songs about going to the Devil. It is interesting that these songs are all cast in opposition to the government and the prevailing culture. They reference recent legislation about freedoms of speech and association, which they declare themselves against. It is the old aristocratic culture defying the new mercantile, legislative Whig culture of William III.

Scene 3 Lady Brute’s bedchamber Lady Brute and Belinda have a complex dialogue in which they first declare that women only behave the way they do (wear uncomfortable stays, go to plays, walk in the dusty park, even live in smoke-filled London) with the aim of attracting men, as if they were trivial frivolities they could throw off at any moment.

They then go on to describe in minute detail all the artifices they employ at the theatre to show themselves off to men, to smile to show off their teeth, show a variety of facial expressions, Yes it is a ridiculous world in which women so perform for men. And yet, Lady Brute finishes, Nature has given them One Thing which ensures they will always be top.

Yet our kind Mother Nature has given us something that makes amends for all. Let our Weakness be what it will, Mankind will still be weaker; and whilst there is a World, ’tis Woman that will govern it.

Then they talk about their loves. Lady Brute confesses she is weakening under Constant’s constant attack and pledges of love. But she wishes she had a partner in crime and asks if Belinda will not surrender to Heartfree. He isn’t that interested, Belinda replies. They agree to see the two young blades again, in Spring Garden, but will wear masks next time for greater amusement.

Act 4 Scene 1 Version 1 Lord Brute, Lord Rake and the Colonel refer to having stabbed someone i.e. in a drunken street brawl! They confirm their aristocratic, Royalist sympathies by accosting a passerby who turns out to be a dissenting i.e. non-confirmist tailor. They steal the vicar’s gown that the tailor was carrying, Lord Brute dresses up in it, and then they accost what the jovially refer to as ‘the enemy’ i.e. the constable and watch. Lord Brute attacks them with a club but the watch overcome him and arrest him (the others run off).

Version 2 In 1725 the play was revived and Vanbrugh, still living, rewrote this scene to make the poor tailor who the posh drunks (the ‘Courtiers’ as he calls them) attack, a woman’s tailor – and he is carrying not just any woman’s outfit, but a dress he has made for Lady Brute!

Sir John Brute immediately requisitions it and puts it on so that, when they are stopped by the constable and the watch, the latter joke about him being an Amazon, and Sir John drunkenly jests that he is Boudicca:

SIR JOHN: Sirrah, I am Bonduca, Queen of the Welchmen; and with a Leek as long as my Pedigree, I will destroy your Roman Legion in an Instant—Britons, strike home!

This makes the repartee with the constable, and then with the justice of the peace they bring him before, much funnier, in the broad pantomime tradition of men dressing up as women – if he is the queen then his accompaniers must be his maids of honour and so on – there is much more scope for banter, but it doesn’t stop there.

David Garrick in Vanbrugh’s Provoked Wife, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane painted by Johann Zoffany (1763)

Still drunk, Sir John tells the justice that he is none other than Lady Brute. This raises things to a new comic level, with Sir John giving an extended impression of a rebellious, drunken, lawless wife and the justice and officers sympathising with the poor – and they think, absent – Sir John.

But I am intrigued: did Vanbrugh revise this scene because it made the plot tighter, tying in his wife even to Sir John’s wild nights out, and shedding a drunken ironic light on the marriage which is the subject of the play?

Or because, by 1725, ridiculing the clergy had simply become untenable in what, over the 25 years to the revised version, had become a much more restrained and bourgeois society? That it had become too controversial and disrespectful to appear in a ‘comedy’? Whereas grown men dressing up as women is not only timelessly funny, but politically safe?

Scene 2 Heartfree can’t get the thought of Belinda out of his head and when Constant joins him he can’t help revealing that he, too, is one of the party of unhappy lovers. A servant brings a letter, pretending to be from anonymous admirers but infact from Lady B and Belinda, inviting them to a rendezvous in Spring Walk that evening at 8pm. Heartfree says he is too lovestricken to go, but Constant persuades him.

Version 1 Drunk Sir John Brute in the disguise of a cleric is brought by the constable to the house of the justice who politely tries to get to the bottom of it. When asked his name Sir John hiccups and says his name is Hiccup and the justice asks if he is one of the Hiccups of Norfolk. After more banter the justice lets him go. On the way out Sir John asks the constable if he wants to go pick up a whore, and when the latter says no, curses him and staggers off into the night.

Version 2 As explained above, in the 1725 revision of the play, Sir John is dressed in his wife’s dress, and this allows for the a joke whereby drunk Sir John accuses the arresting officer of trying to ravish him! It is literally knockabout stuff:

SIR JOHN Sir, there may have been Murder, for aught I know; and ’tis a great Mercy there has not been a Rape too—that Fellow wou’d have ravish’d me.
SECOND WATCH: Ravish! Ravish! O lud! O lud! O lud! Ravish her! Why, please your Worship, I heard Mr. Constable say he believed she was little better than a Maphrodite.
JUSTICE: Why, truly, she does seem a little masculine about the Mouth.
SECOND WATCH: Yes, and about the Hands too, an’t please your Worship; I did but offer in mere civility to help her up the Steps into our Apartment, and with her gripen Fist—ay, just so, Sir.
[Sir John knocks him down.]

Scene 3 the Spring Garden Heartfree and Constant meet with Lady Brute and Belinda wearing masks/disguises. All of them are shadowed and eavesdropped on by Lady Fancyful and Mademoiselle, also in masks. Heartfree & Constant & Lady Brute and Belinda are just commencing some heavy bantering when Sir John enters the scene, still dressed as a doctor of divinity and roaring drunk. He hails Constant and Heartfree as friends and grabs both the women, assuming they are their whores. Lady Fancyful and Mademoiselle retired in fear to a nearby arbour.

Heartfree, who never wanted to come anyway, leaves, Sir John starts insulting the ‘whores’, at which Lady Brute runs to Constant for protection and shows him her face. Heartfree re-enters, Belinda runs to him and shows him her face. Realising who the ladies are, Constant and Heartfree order Sir John to leave which, a little improbably, he does.

Belinda and Heartfree now have a fairly frank conversation in which he admits he loves her and might even go as far as marriage. It’s getting dark. She invites him to take a turn around the park and the exit. Meanwhile, Constant is chatting up Lady Brute and tells his friend not to hurry back.

Constant tells Lady Brute his love but she puts up objections; she is married and is not her virtue, her loyalty to her awful husband, part of what Constant likes about her? If she abandoned her virtue would it not destroy his love? And more of the same. Constant decides to storm the citadel and starts kissing her hand, her arm, her neck and pulls her towards a nearby arbour. Except this is the very arbour Lady Fancyful and Mademoiselle are hiding in. As Constant and Lady Brute reach the entrance to it, Lady Fancyful and Mademoiselle come running out past them.

Because of this, Lady Brute is thrown into utter terror that they witnessed her kissing a strange man, her reputation will be shot, her virtue worthless, her life not living. Terribly upset, she grabs Belinda, who is now just returning from her stroll with Heartfree, and rushes her off home.

The last word goes to Lady Fancyful, who is herself upset at seeing Heartfree pay court to Belinda, and out of her upset emerges a determination to take revenge.

Act 5 Scene 1 Lady Fancyful’s house A brief recapitulation of Lady Fancyful’s determination to be revenged.

Scene 2 Sir John Brute’s house The men have come back to Lady Brute’s house i.e. there are Constant, Heartfree, Lady Brute and Belinda. The servant assures them Sir John was seen staggering blind drunk into a tavern and will be some while, so ladies invite the men to stay and play a round of cards. But they have barely settled before the servant reappears to announce Sir John was kicked out of the tavern and has unexpectedly arrived home!! Quick quick, a panic-stricken Lady Brute hides the men and Belinda in the closet!

Sir John staggers in, filthy and bloody, and is rude and insulting to his wife. He begs a kiss, and she is so disgusted he deliberately smothers her in kisses till she is as dirty as him, then ‘tumbles her’, presumably onto a couch or divan. First he wants a ‘cold tea’ and proceeds to kick open the door of the closet and discovers… Heartfree and Constant! Sir John is elaborately, drunkenly polite to them and Lady B begs them to leave which – after assuring Sir John of his wife’s virtue they do.

Sir John has a bit more rant, slumps into a high chair and falls asleep snoring. Lady Brute is thrown into a panic (again) about her reputation. Belinda comes up with A Cunning Plan. They’ll tell Lord Brute that Belinda and Heartfree are now a loving couple and that they hid in the closet to escape detection and rumour, Constant hid with them so as to protect her ladyship’s reputation. Belinda says she’ll even go so far in backing up the story as to marry Heartfree – which leads to more dialogue about suitable and unsuitable marriages.

Having arrived at this plan, they ironically curtsey to the stinking filthy slob in the chair and call a servant to clean him and put him to bed.

Rasor, the servant they give this task to, alone on stage, now reveals that he has overheard everything the women said and will use this information to tell the French maid he is in love with in order to win her favours!

Scene 3 Lady Fancyful’s house Mademoiselle has told Lady Fancyful that her own paramour is Rasor from Lord Brute’s household i.e. she is the paramour Rasor was talking about a a moment ago. Lady Fancyful tells Mademoiselle to tell Rasor to tell Lord Brute everything that happened in the Spring Garden, masks, making love, kissing and all i.e. to betray Lady Brute’s adultery to him.

Exit Lady Fancyful. Enter Rasor who rushes over and snogs Mademoiselle, and then dangles his news in front of her, demanding kisses before he tells her everything he overheard i.e. Lady Brute loves Constant, the trio hiding in the closet, Lady Brute conspiring to help Belinda marry Heartfree.

But then Mademoiselle, conversely, dangles her news in front of him, demanding kisses as she tells him about the couple meeting in Spring Walk. She gets Rasor quite worked up and, for more ‘favours’, demands that he goes back and tells his master (Sir John) all she has revealed. He exits.

However, only seconds later, Lady Fancyful enters and regrets her course of action. It will probably lead to Belinda and Heartfree getting married, which is the last thing she wants. She tells Mademoiselle to call Rasor back!

Scene 4 Constant’s lodgings It is, by now, the next morning. Heartfree and Constant are pondering how to talk Sir John out of his suspicions at finding the pair of them in his wife’s closet when a letter arrives. It’s from the ladies who say explain their Cunning Plan i.e. to tell Sir John the couple were hiding because of Heartfree and Belinda’s secret intention to get married, which they wished to keep hid.

Good plan, but Heartfree is reluctant and it leads to an extended dialogue about fidelity in marriage (that old, old, old chestnut).

Scene 5 Sir John Brute’s house Constant and Heartfree rendezvous with Lady Brute and Belinda. Belinda asks Heartfree how he fancies the idea of matrimony and he says it’s a leap in the dark but he’s prepared to risk it (hardly young love).

Enter Sir John who is not unnaturally quite rude about finding two strange men in his wife’s closet. But Constant quickly rises to defend Lady Brute’s virtue and discovers (as Heartfree had told him) that the coward Sir John quickly backs down.

Sir John soliloquises, declaring he’s never loved his wife and she’s never loved him, he doesn’t know why she married him, and lamenting that he is without doubt a cuckold to the young stallion in front of him, who has threatened to draw his sword. The choice comes down to dying a hero or living a rascal. Oh well…

And so he gives his hand to Constant and, when Heartfree asks for the hand of Belinda, willingly gives it – all the while cursing and damning them both as dogs!

Two Revelations Meanwhile, Lady Fancyful has crept in in disguise, takes Belinda aside and reveals – in disguise – that she is an anonymous woman who is already married to Heartfree who made her swear not to tell anyone or he’d murder her! With wild improbability, instead of spotting this as a scam, clever Belinda is depicted as believing it and herself betrayed by Heartfelt’s bigamy.

At the same time a servant hands Heartfree an anonymous letter, supposedly from ‘a friend’, claiming the author has slept with Belinda, had a child by her and another is on the way!

Thus when Constant turns to ask the happy couple if they want to send for a priest, they both burst out with bitter accusations of the other, insisting the wedding be delayed, and start to chase each other round the stage!

Rasor, the servant, watching this, laments his part in their downfall and decides to set all right. He exits and returns a) dressed in sackcloth as a repentant b) pulling in Lady Fancyful and Madamoiselle.

He undoes all the complications of the plot. he tells the cast that Lady Fancyful lied in the anonymous letter as from a woman who was married to Heartfree; that the letter claiming Belinda was ever made pregnant was also a lie; and he tells Sir John that no illicit activity took place before the closet scene i.e. he is not a cuckold.

Rasor sets all straight and miserably apologises to the whole cast.

Belinda and Sir John ask who made him do it? Rasor claims he did it, he fell like Adam, out of Lust. Who was his Eve? He pulls off the mask of Mademoiselle. The company gasp! But behind her was the snake, Satan. Rasor pulls off the mask of Lady Fancyful!! The company gasp again!!

ALL: Lady Fancyful!
BELINDA: Impertinent!
LADY BRUTE: Ridiculous!
ALL: Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Lady Fancyful tries to put a brave face on it till the end, claiming that Belinda and Heartfree will make such a wretched couple she was doing them a favour – then pompously exits, followed by Mademoiselle.

Heartree and Belinda promptly forgive each other and prepare to go to church. Constant interrupts to sing a love song which, inappropriately, describes the sad fate of an innocent maid in ancient Greece who lets herself be ravished then is abandoned by her lover. Hmmm. In the last six lines Belinda and Heartfree say, nonetheless, they’ll risk it, and:

HEARTFREE: Then let’s to Church: And if it be our Chance to disagree——
BELINDA: Take heed—the surly Husband’s Fate you see.

Constant and Lady Brute are, however, no further forward in their love affair. It is an oddly muted and almost sad finale.

Thoughts

This play isn’t as good as The Relapse because a) its central the monster figure, Lady Fancyful, isn’t as epically monstrous as Lord Foppington was in that play, and b) there is something frustrated and melancholy about the frustrated love of Constant and Lady Brute.

Unless I’m missing something, they don’t even speak in the finale, let alone get anywhere near marrying – for that would overthrow the premise of the play which is Lady Brute’s solid virtue.

Articles about The Provoked Wife describe it as ‘a talk play’ or even a ‘problem play’ i.e. one designed to prompt discussion of the ‘issues’ by the audience. I hazard the suggestion that this is to overcredit theatre audiences as moral philosophers rather than as, well, people out for a night’s entertainment.

If you went for dinner after seeing the play, in the middle class tradition. possibly one line of chat would be to discuss the rights and wrongs of Lady Brute’s behaviour – which is certainly complex. My opinion would be that she made the same mistake so many women do (I say this because I listened a few days ago to a radio news item about the new legislation being brought in to help battered wives in which the same way of thinking came up again and again) – that she could change a brute. She had an over-high opinion of her ability to change someone, and an under-real understanding of how difficult it is to change anybody. (I speak as the father of two teenagers who I have been trying to persuade to get up before noon and tidy their own rooms for what seems like several hundred years.) Changing people’s behaviour is hard; changing their character almost impossible.

So is she right to reject Constant and remain in her unhappy marriage? It certainly feels wrong to have played Constant along as far as she did, if she has no real intention of leaving her husband.

But in my opinion, the real talking point of the play is that it is marred. In a number of ways it doesn’t quite come off, it feels unfinished, it feels like it needed one more draft to make it mesh.

The most obvious aspect of this is the way the traditional ‘blocker’ of the happy marriage of the young couple doesn’t evolve organically from the setup but is introduced only at the end of the final act (Lady Fancyful’s scheme to discredit Heartfree and Belinda)… and then is promptly undone about two minutes later. These plays veer close to being farces, and this last minute complication and last second resolution feel stuck on with sellotape.

And the ad hoc, last-minute feel of the Complication goes some way to undermining the comic grandeur of Lady Fancyful. She has such epic comic promise in the first half, that we feel her determination to outdo Belinda and grab Heartfree for herself deserved some grander, wilder, more elaborate Scheme.

So maybe it is to some extent the ‘issues’ which it deals with which give The Provoked Wife its rather chewy, problematic flavour. But it is also the way the entire plot structure feels a little undercooked and leaves you feeling somehow cheated.

Vanbrugh’s style

That said, Vanbrugh’s prose style again shows itself much more clear, direct, comprehensible and therefore more obviously funny than many of the other comedies I’ve read. This quote isn’t particularly funny, I give it as an example of his clarity.

BELINDA: Sure it must feel very strange to go to Bed to a Man.
LADY BRUTE: Um – it does feel a little odd at first; but it will soon grow easy to you.

‘A little odd’, I was just struck by the perfect naturalness of a phrase which we still use 320 years later.

Here’s another example.

BELINDA: And some careful Thoughts on your own, I believe, have hindered you from sleeping. Pray how does this matrimonial Project relish with you?
HEARTFREE: Why, ‘faith, e’en as storming Towns does with Soldiers, where the Hope of delicious Plunder banishes the Fear of being knock’d on the Head.

Hmm. Maybe what I like about it is its lack of subtlety and sophistication. Possibly I am not sophisticated enough to appreciate the more recherché and long-winded texts. Whatever the reason, I think there’s no denying Vanbrugh’s style is pithier, his phrasing more direct and accessible than his contemporaries.

Sir John Brute has a handy quote which sums up the thing I’m talking about, the way many characters in other Restoration comedies express themselves in such lengthy and convoluted phraseology, sometimes mixed up with legal or specialised jargon, that you need notes to understand them – and that the characters sometimes don’t even understand each other!

SIR JOHN BRUTE: Your People of Wit have got such cramp ways of expressing themselves, they seldom comprehend one another.

In my view, Vanbrugh is never like that. He is always lucid and forceful in his expressions.

(After writing that, I read the Wikipedia article which explains that The Relapse was deliberately phrased simply and bluntly ‘to be suitable for amateurs and minor acting talent’, but that The Provoked Wife was written for more versatile professionals including leading actors of the day, and so is deliberately more emotionally subtle. That may be true, especially the scenes in which Lady Brute and Belinda, or Constant and Heartfree, discuss the emotional subtleties of their situations – but I don’t think it disproves my basic point that, even in those situations, Vanbrugh has a gift for clarity of expression unmatched by his rivals.)

Misandry

BELINDA: Well, you Men are unaccountable things, mad till you have your Mistresses, and then stark mad till you are rid of ’em again. Tell me honestly, Is not your Patience put to a much severer Trial after Possession than before?
HEARTFREE: With a great many I must confess it is, to our eternal Scandal;

Misogyny

LADY BRUTE: We are as wicked, Child, but our Vice lies another way: Men have more Courage than we, so they commit more bold, impudent Sins. They quarrel, fight, swear, drink, blaspheme, and the like: Whereas we, being Cowards, only backbite, tell Lyes, cheat at Cards, and so forth.

As I’ve mentioned, in my opinion these formulations aren’t intended to be the statement of some great philosophy or worldview, the reverse. They are the social clichés and stereotypes of their day, bromides and truisms which have little or no value as statements of fact, but are the oil which lubricates the complicated machinery of the comic plots.

HEARTFREE: I shou’d have, if I had a good Opinion enough of her’s, to believe she cou’d do as much by me. For to do ’em right, after all, the Wife seldom rambles, till the Husband shews her the way.
CONSTANT: ‘Tis true, a Man of real Worth scarce ever is a Cuckold, but by his own Fault. Women are not naturally lewd; there must be something to urge ’em to it. They’ll cuckold a Churl, out of Revenge; a Fool, because they despise him; a Beast, because they loath him. But when they make bold with a Man they once had a well-grounded Value for, ’tis because they first see themselves neglected by him.

You can choose to read this stuff as meaningful and so be upset by the way it transgresses our 21st century woke values. Or you can see it as the verbiage and small change of conversation which is required to make the plays go.

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Reviews of other Restoration plays

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by Simon on August 12, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on August 12, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/the-provoked-wife-john-vanbrugh/

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 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 easier 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, it is a surprise to then read 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.

Related links

Reviews of other Restoration plays

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by Simon on August 10, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on August 10, 2020

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

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