Fangs Of Malice: Hypocrisy Sincerity And Acting

Act Two. They Lie

Act Two t hey lie “Is it possible there should be no Sincerity in the World, and that we dare not confide in anybody?” queries Jean Bellegarde at the beginning of his chapter “Of Imposture” in Reflections upon Ridicule. Bellegarde’s treatise, published in France in 1696 and translated into English shortly thereafter, raises the specter of a society infiltrated and subverted by impostors. “Sincerity,” he proclaims, “is the Soul of Commerce and Civil Society, and yet ’tis a very uncommon Vertue in so refining an Age as this we live in, ’tis an Art and a Trade to disguise the Sentiments; that pretended Openness of Heart, is only a Lure to attract the Confidences of Men; we find none Sincere but those that have not wit enough to play the Impostor.” If, as La Rochefoucauld put it, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue, here the homage slides into substitution. Religious hypocrites, in Bellegarde, are themselves actors: “Their Life is one perpetual Comedy, and they seem always upon the Stage; they hardly ever pull off the Mask; their Vices don’t at all discourage them, provided they are cover’d with a specious Appearance.” Successful impostors boast of their sincerity and become “Tom-Doubles” indistinguishable from their hapless victims. “They put on the Mask of Sincerity,” Bellegarde cautions, “and they affect an easy, natural, and undesigning Ayre. That concerted Sincerity is a subtle and delicate Deception, which leads People where they would have them, and betrays them without perceiving it.”1 “These people,” Bellegarde repeats in his chapter “Of Sincerity,” “bear a great Resemblance to Comedians, who act several Characters in Masks, and change their Habits according to the Parts they play.” Yet what is to be done? “If we banish Sincerity, we must renounce the World: for without it, civil Society is a kind of Kidnapping; we try all Practices to abuse, gull, and surprize the People we converse with” (Reflections, 2:177). Fake sincerity is the worst kind of hypocrisy, as well as a kind of acting. Where Molière’s hypocrites, in their clothes of pious black, set themselves apart from the world, Bellegarde’s are everywhere around us. Instead of dressing up, they lie: their feigning runs deep and lies beneath the surface. Richard Head, in a tract called Proteus redivivus (1675), gives a name to the art of those who pretend to sincerity: The Art of Wheedling, or Insinuation . His book exposes the techniques of “the Art of Insinuation, or Dissimulation, compounded of mental reservation, seeming patience and humility, (self-obliging) civility, and a more than common affability, all which club to please, and consequently to gain by conversation .” Head’s tract, like Bellegarde’s, offers hints for survival in a highly theatricalized social world. The language of antitheatricalism becomes applied to the type of wheedler, who is an actor freed from the confinement of the stage. “They are like a fish called a Polypus,” Head warns of the wheedlers among society, “of whom it is storied, that it hath the power of converting its colour into that which is nearest it, and most contiguous for self-preservation; these Protei of this loose age can turn themselves into any shape, so that the conversion of the form will produce any profit or advantage.” What is troublesome about Head’s wheedlers, as it is about Bellegarde’s religious hypocrites, is that what they feign is sincerity itself. They prey upon the honest person’s inability to feign. The honest person’s passions, Head argues, “mutiny without our leave, and by an impression which they make in our countenance , they teach our enemies all that lies within our hearts, and invite the Wheedle to come, and banquet on our follies.”2 Like the Proteus, the Polypus, and the porcupine, Mr. Wheedle has a sting. He haunts taverns, spas, and, of course, the theater: He is very solicitous to get acquaintance with some of the Actors, not out of any respect he bears to their Ingenuity, but to gain so far an interest in them, as to be let into the house now and then gratis, and upon no other score, than to pick up a Bubble, or some unpracticed young Female, whom he pinches by the Fingers, and cries Damme, Madam, were you but sensible of that Passion I have for you, you could not but instantly show some pity to your languishing Vassal, this he utters at...