Plot
The protagonist of The Man of Mode is Dorimant, a notorious libertine and man-about-town.
The story opens with Dorimant addressing a billet-doux to Mrs. Loveit, with whom he is having an affair, to lie about his whereabouts. An "Orange-Woman" is let in and informs him of the arrival in London of a beautiful heiress – later known to be Harriet. Dorimant's closest friend and fellow rake, Medley, arrives and offers more information on her. Dorimant expresses his wish to break off his relationship with Mrs. Loveit, being already involved with her younger friend Belinda. The two friends plot to encourage Mrs. Loveit's jealousy so that she will break off the relationship with Dorimant. Young Bellair, the handsome acquaintance of both men, enters and relates his infatuation with Emilia, a woman serving as companion to Lady Townley—his devotion is ridiculed. The three debate the fop Sir Fopling Flutter, newly come to London. Bellair learns of his father's arrival, that he lodges in the same place as his Emilia and of his desire for a different match for his son. A letter arrives from Mrs. Loveit and Dorimant departs.
Lady Townley and Emilia discuss the affairs of town, particularly Old Bellair's professing of love for Emilia and his lack of awareness about his son's affections for her; he intends instead for him to marry Harriet. Young Bellair admits to having written a letter promising his acquiescence to his father's will in due time so as to deceive him. Medley arrives and boasts to the ladies of Dorimant's womanising status.
Mrs. Loveit becomes enraged with jealousy at Dorimant's lack of attention to her, while her woman, Pert, attempts to dissuade her from such feelings. Belinda enters and informs her of a masked woman that Dorimant was seen in public with. Dorimant appears and accuses the women of spying on him and also that Mrs. Loveit has encouraged the affections of Sir Fopling; in a pretended state of jealousy, he leaves.
Harriet and Young Bellair act as if they are in love to trick the onlooking Lady Woodvill and Old Bellair. Meanwhile, Dorimant and Belinda meet at Lady Townley's and arrange an imminent meeting. Emilia then reveals her interest in Dorimant to Belinda and Lady Townley. Belinda persuades Mrs. Loveit, on Dorimant's request, to take a walk on The Mall and be 'caught' in the act of flirting with Fopling. Dorimant meets with Fopling and pretends that Mrs. Loveit has affections for him (Fopling). When Mrs. Loveit encounters Fopling she acts flirtatious, in spite of not liking him and succeeds in making Dorimant jealous. Medley suggests he attends a dance at Lady Townley's which Harriet will be, though in the disguise of "Mr Courtage", to take his mind off Mrs. Loveit. Woodvill chides Dorimant and his reputation in front of him, not seeing through his disguise. Dorimant admits to Emilia that he loves Harriet but continues to be obstinate. Fopling appears and almost uncovers Dorimant but the latter leaves to meet Belinda. She expresses her jealousy at Mrs. Loveit, imploring him to never see her again. Young Bellair discovers his father's affections for Emilia, Harriet's for Dorimant and tells Dorimant.
Belinda returns to Mrs. Loveit's in the early hours but taking the same hired chair that Mrs. Loveit had taken when she left Dorimant's, is suspected of being up to something. Dorimant arrives afterwards and confronts Mrs. Loveit; she says she is aware that he is only faking jealousy to spend time with another woman.
Lady Woodvill and Old Bellair rush their children to get married. Dorimant interrupts; his true identity is revealed when Mrs. Loveit and Belinda arrive to confront him. Mrs. Woodvill is in dismay. Young Bellair and Emilia publicly show their love for each other. Old Bellair concedes to the match and Woodvill admits that she likes Dorimant despite the gossip she has heard about him. Harriet admits she loves Dorimant, so Woodvill allows for their marriage while warning Harriet that the match will bring ruin upon her. Both young couples will marry.
Harriet advises Belinda and Mrs. Loveit to stay away from Dorimant (for their own good) and perhaps join a nunnery to preserve their goodness. Dorimant and Harriet will move back to the country to live with the Woodvills. Fopling is glad not to commit to anyone.
"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in 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 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 Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written by William Wycherley and first performed in 1675. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title contains a lewd pun with regard to the first syllable of "country". It is based on several plays by Molière, with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded: colloquial prose dialogue in place of Molière's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle, and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a rake's trick of pretending impotence to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life, especially the fascinating London men. The implied condition the Rake, Horner, claimed to suffer from was, he said, contracted in France whilst "dealing with common women". The only cure was to have a surgeon drastically reduce the extent of his manly stature; therefore, he could be no threat to any man's wife.
Fop became a pejorative term for a man excessively concerned with his appearance and clothes in 17th-century England. Some of the many similar alternative terms are: coxcomb, fribble, popinjay, dandy, fashion-monger, and ninny. Macaroni was another term of the 18th century more specifically concerned with fashion.
Anne Oldfield was an English actress and one of the highest paid actresses of her time.
Susanna Verbruggen, aka Susanna Mountfort, was an English actress working in London.
In a historical context, a rake was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process. Cad is a closely related term. Comparable terms are "libertine" and "debauchee".
Sir George Etherege was an English dramatist. He wrote the plays The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub in 1664, She Would If She Could in 1668, and The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter in 1676.
Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by English author Fanny Burney and first published in 1778. Although published anonymously, its authorship was revealed by the poet George Huddesford in what Burney called a "vile poem".
Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was an English poet and painter, described by contemporaries as "A Grace for beauty, and a Muse for wit." Born in London, she and her family were active in literary and court circles. Killigrew's poems were circulated in manuscript and collected and published posthumously in 1686 after she died from smallpox at age 25. They have been reprinted several times by modern scholars, most recently and thoroughly by Margaret J. M. Ezell.
The Beaux' Stratagem is a comedy by George Farquhar, first produced at the Theatre Royal, now the site of Her Majesty's Theatre, in the Haymarket, London, on March 8, 1707. In the play, Archer and Aimwell, two young gentlemen who have fallen on hard times, plan to travel through small towns, entrap young heiresses, steal their money and move on. In the first town, Lichfield, they set their sights on Dorinda. Aimwell falls truly in love, and comedy ensues. Foigard, a priest and chaplain to the French officer, is actually an Irish priest called MacShane.
Harriet Arbuthnot was an early 19th-century English diarist, social observer and political hostess on behalf of the Tory party. During the 1820s she was the closest woman friend of the hero of Waterloo and British Prime Minister, the 1st Duke of Wellington. She maintained a long correspondence and association with the Duke, all of which she recorded in her diaries, which are consequently extensively used in all authoritative biographies of the Duke of Wellington.
Wit at Several Weapons is a seventeenth-century comedy of uncertain date and authorship.
John Bell (1745–1831) was an English publisher. Originally a bookseller and printer, he also innovated in typography, commissioning an influential font that omitted the long s. He drew the reading public to better literature by ordering attractive art to accompany the printed work.
Mary Saunderson (1637–1712), later known as Mary Saunderson Betterton after her marriage to Thomas Betterton, was an actress and singer in England during the 1660s and 1690s. She is considered one of the first English actresses.
Belinda is an 1801 novel by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It was first published in three volumes by Joseph Johnson of London. The novel was Edgeworth's second published, and was considered controversial in its day for its depiction of an interracial marriage. It was reprinted by Pandora Press in 1986.
Camilla, subtitled A Picture of Youth, is a novel by Frances Burney, first published in 1796. Camilla deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people: Camilla Tyrold and her sisters, the sweet tempered Lavinia and the smallpox scarred Eugenia, and their cousin, the beautiful Indiana Lynmere—and in particular, with the love affair between Camilla herself and her eligible suitor, Edgar Mandlebert. They have many hardships, however, caused by misunderstandings and mistakes, in the path of true love.
George Knightley is a principal character depicted by Jane Austen in her novel Emma, published in 1815. He is a landowner and gentleman farmer, though "having little spare money". A lifetime friend of Emma's, though nearly seventeen years older than she, he enjoys correcting her.
Azemia is a satirical novel, written by William Thomas Beckford, that was first published in 1797. The book parodies what Beckford considered sensationalist writing, as well as political issues of the time.
Sophia is a novel published in 1762 by Charlotte Lennox, a British novelist best known for her 1752 satirical novel The Female Quixote. Originally published in Lennox's periodical The Lady's Museum as Harriet and Sophia between 1760-1, this novel is only the second British novel to be serialized in a magazine, and the first one to be published this way by a woman.
The Rival Widows, or the Fair Libertine is a 1735 comedy play by the British writer Elizabeth Cooper. The plot is a re-gendered mashup of two popular eighteenth-century genres: the libertine comedy and the comedy of sentiment. The beautiful and brilliant libertine widow Lady Bellair battles the hypocritical friend and rival Lady Lurcher for the attentions of man of feeling Freelove. Bellair loves Freelove, but is exasperated by his rhetoric of feeling and his lack of interest in using witty exchanges or clever plotting to try to seduce her and win her love. In response, she creates various strategems to essentially manipulate him into tricking her into agreeing never to love him, knowing that she will desperately want anything that is forbidden to her. Her character is well summarized early in the play with her own comment that "my pleasures are my principles" and Freelove's summary of her character: "she has wit enough to supply the present dearth of it on the stage, and good nature to make that wit agreeable, even at court. In short, she's gay without levity, libertine without scandal, generous without design, and well-bred without affectation" (1.6). Her comments on marriage convey her recognition that power is at the core of all pleasure for a libertine:
