|
Fop
''Fop'' was 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'' (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. Origins The word "fop" 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 Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Relapse
''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 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 a cutthroat struggle between London's two theatre companies, each of which was "seducing" actors from the other. ''The Relap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir ''An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber'' (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style. He wrote 25 plays for his own company at Drury Lane, half of which were adapted from various sources, which led Robert Lowe and Alexander Pope, among others, to criticise his "miserable mutilation" of "crucified Molière [and] hapless William Shakespeare, Shakespeare". He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. Cibber's brash, extroverted personality did not sit well with his contemporaries, and he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, shady business methods, and a social and political opportunism that was thought to have gained him the laureateship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Town Fop Or, Sir Timothy Tawdry
''The Town-Fopp: or, Sir Timothy Tawdrey'' is a Restoration comedy written by Aphra Behn and first staged in 1676. It deals with an unhappy marriage and its dissolution. The play reworks George Wilkins' play ''The Miseries of Enforced Marriage'' (1607), itself based on events from the life of Walter Calverley who, as a result of Tudor wardship practice, was forced into his marriage. A heavy drinker, Calverley stabbed his wife and killed two of his children in 1605, but these crimes are not related in Wilkins' play which contrives a happy ending. In Behn's play the unhappy couple manage to dissolve their marriage and seek happiness with other partners. Plot Bellmour is in love with Celinda, and they are secretly betrothed. However, Celinda's parents intend her to marry Sir Timothy Tawdrey, a fop. Lord Plotwell, who is Bellmour's uncle and guardian, forces him to marry Diana. Bellmour refuses to consummate his marriage to Diana, and tells her that he cannot love her. An angry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Vanbrugh
Sir John Vanbrugh (; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, '' The Relapse'' (1696) and '' The Provoked Wife'' (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714.Robert Chambers, Book of Days Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig, he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner. In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of women's rights in marriage. He was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jerem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies. A dandy could be a self-made man both in person and ''persona'', who emulated the aristocratic style of life regardless of his middle-class origin, birth, and background, especially during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain.''dandy'': "One who studies ostentatiously to dress fashionably and elegantly; a fop, an exquisite." (''OED''). Early manifestations of dandyism were ''Le petit-maître'' (the Little Master) and the musk-wearing Muscadin ruffians of the middle-class Thermidorean reaction (1794–1795). Modern dandyism, however, emerged in stratified societies of Europe during the 1790s revolution periods, especially in London and Paris. Within social settings, the dandy cultivated a persona characterized by extreme posed cynicism, or "intellectual dandyism" as defined by Victorian novelist George Meredith; whereas Thom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love's Last Shift
''Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion'' is an English Restoration comedy by Colley Cibber from 1696. The play is regarded as an early herald of a shift in audience tastes away from the intellectualism and sexual frankness of Restoration comedy and towards the conservative certainties and gender role backlash of sentimental comedy. It is often described as "opportunistic" (Hume), containing as it does something for everybody: daring Restoration comedy sex scenes, sentimental reconciliations, and broad farce. Character list Men:Cibber, Colley. Love's last shift: or, the fool in fashion. A comedy, as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane, by Their Majesties servants. Written by C. Cibber. London, 1735. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. 27 Sept. 2009 . * Sir William Wisewoud, a rich old gentleman who fancies himself a great master of his passion, which he only is in trivial matters * Loveless, of a debauched life, grew weary of his wife in six months ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Man Of Mode
''The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter'' is a Restoration comedy by George Etherege, written in 1676. The play is set in Restoration London and follows the womanizer Dorimant as he tries to win over the young heiress Harriet and to disengage himself from his affair with Mrs. Loveit. Despite the subtitle, the fop Sir Fopling is only one of several minor characters and the rake Dorimant the protagonist. The character of Dorimant may have been based on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester; there is no evidence of this. The part was first played by Thomas Betterton and Sir Fopling, the flamboyant fop of the hour, by William Smith. In 2007 the National Theatre produced a modern dress production of the play, directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Tom Hardy as Dorimant. Rory Kinnear received a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance as Fopling. Characters *Mr. Dorimant *Mr. Medley *Old Bellair *Young Bellair, ''in love with Emilia'' *Sir Fopling Flutter *Lady Town ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macaroni (fashion)
A macaroni (formerly spelled maccaroni) was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of 18th-century Britain. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually epicene and androgynous manner. The term "macaroni" pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of high-end clothing, fastidious eating, and gambling. He mixed Continental affectations with his British nature, like a practitioner of macaronic verse (which mixed English and Latin to comic effect), laying himself open to satire. The macaronis became seen in stereotyped terms in Britain, being seen as a symbol of inappropriate bourgeois excess, effeminacy, and possible homosexuality – which was then legally viewed as sodomy. At the time, homosexuality was frowned upon, and was even punishable by death. Many modern critics view the macaroni as representing a general change in 18th-century British society such as political ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Etherege
Sir George Etherege (c. 1636 – c. 10 May 1692) 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. Biography Early life George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in about 1636, to George Etherege and Mary Powney, as the eldest of their six children. Educated at Lord Williams's School, where a school building was later named after him, he was rumoured to have attended the University of Cambridge, William Oldys, '' Biographia Britannica.'' Vol. III, 1750. p. 1841. although John Dennis states that to his certain knowledge Etherege understood neither Greek nor Latin, thus raising doubts that he could have been there. Etherege served as an apprentice to a lawyer and later studied law at Clement's Inn, London, one of the Inns of Chancery. He probably travelled abroad to France with his father, who stayed with the exiled queen He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beau Nash
Richard "Beau" Nash (18 October 1674 – 3 February 1762) was a Welsh lawyer who as a dandy, played a leading role in 18th-century British fashion. He is best remembered as the master of ceremonies at the spa town of Bath, Somerset. Biography Nash was born in St Mary's Street, Swansea, Wales, in 1674. His father, Richard, a native of Pembroke, had risen to be partner in a glass-works at Swansea, which - although he was "of modest means" - gave him the means to pay for his son's education. Nash's mother was a niece of the Welsh merchant John Poyer, who was mayor of Pembroke town and served during the English Civil War. The Nash family were "known" in the countryside, but the Poyer family was of "gentler blood". Nash's comparatively obscure origins were sometimes the subject of comment; when the Duchess of Marlborough mentioned it, Nash replied "Madam, I seldom mention my father in company, not because I have any reason to be ashamed of him, but because he has some reason to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Pix
Mary Pix (1666 – 17 May 1709) was an English novelist and playwright. As an admirer of Aphra Behn and colleague of Susanna Centlivre, Pix has been called "a link between women writers of the Stuart Restoration, Restoration and Augustan literature, Augustan periods". Early years Mary Griffith Pix was born in 1666, the daughter of a rector, musician and Headmaster of the Royal Latin School, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire; her father, Roger Griffith, died when she was very young, but Mary and her mother continued to live in the schoolhouse after his death. She was courted by her father's successor Thomas Dalby, but he left with the outbreak of smallpox in town, one year after a fire that burned the schoolhouse. In 1684, at the age of 18, Mary Griffith married George Pix (a merchant tailor from Hawkhurst, Kent). The couple moved to his country estate in Kent. Her first son, George (b. 1689), died very young in 1690. The next year the couple moved to London and she gave birth to an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Farquhar
George Farquhar (1677The explanation for the dual birth year appears in Louis A. Strauss, ed., A Discourse Upon Comedy, The Recruiting Officer, and The Beaux' Stratagem by George Farquhar' (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1914), p. v. Strauss notes that "Our sole source of information as to the time of his birth is the entry of his matriculation in the register of Trinity College" on 17 July 1694, where "His age is given as 17." Earlier biographers took this to mean Farquhar was in his 17th year—hence born in 1678—and Strauss favors this date. But later writers, such as William Myers, ed., George Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer and Other Plays'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. vii, give the dual year, and John Ross, ed., ''George Farquhar: The Recruiting Officer (New Mermaids),'' 2nd ed., (London: A&C Black, 1991), p. xiii, gives a birthdate of "''ca.'' 1677" for the playwright. – 29 April 1707) was an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
