Product Description

Verbal brilliance, urbane sophistication and sexual conquest are the measures of success for the fashionable set who watched themselves being represented on the Restoration stage. Yet idealisation and satire, as this edition of Etherege's masterpiece shows, are flip sides of the same coin, and the play betrays deep anxieties about ridicule and social failure. Any London beau would emulate Dorimant, the unconscionable rake who loves 'em and leaves 'em, but he would also secretly fear that he in fact resembled Sir Fopling Flutter, the model of all Restoration fops, in his vanity and affectation. The women fare no better, being offered for identification Dorimant's discarded mistress Loveit, scheming for revenge, or the beautiful but hard-headed Harriet, who dares Dorimant to woo her in the country, for 'I know all beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you and that no gallantry can draw you farther'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403829 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
John Barnard is Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds. His research interests are in Restoration literature, Keats and the second generation Romantics, textual criticism, and book history. Recent publications include The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume IV 1557-1695 (2002).

Customer Reviews

A Good Play
If you have read The Libertine then you will be familiar with the mention in it of Etherege's play. There have been some who always have said that Dorimant the rake in this play is based on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, but there is no evidence of this, and when this play was first performed some thought it was another well known rake. There is no evidence that any one libertine was used solely for Dorimant, and it is likely that he is a composite of those around at the time.

When this play was first performed it was a great sucess but alas nowadays it is commonally shied away from, probably due to its being a product of its time, although the comedy is still good. You have Dorimant the rake who wants to get rid of his present lover for someone else. You have Sir Fopling Flutter who has just returned from the continent telling eveyone what a sucess he was in Paris, and wearing all the latest fashions who wants to become like Dorimant. Old Bellair wants his son to marry the woman he has decided upon for him, but Young Bellair has other ideas. Old Bellair falls for his son's choice of woman, and wishes to have her for himself.

With this going on Young Bellair and the woman that his father has picked for him put on a display of courtship that alone makes this play well worth reading. This may have aged but it is still funny and enjoyable to read, definitely a very good Restoration Comedy. Admittedly some of the puns will be missed that were so funny at the time, especially as the Court thought they recognised who the characters were based on but on the whole this is still very accessible.

As with all New Mermaid editions this comes with a comprehensive introduction on the play and the author, as well as containing copious notes and appendices.