"If I Appear to Any One Like a Counterfeit": Liminality in Rochester's Alexander Bendo's Brochure

"If the people wish to be deceived, deceive them," reads the epigraph on the title page of Thomas Alcock's The Famous Pathologist or The Noble Mountebank, his account of John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester's masquerade as Dr Alexander Bendo.¹ Written for Rochester's daughter Ann in 1687, Alcock's explanatory letter and reproduction of Rochester's pamphlet provide a back-story for Alexander Bendo's Brochure, one of the few examples of Rochester's writing that was published in his lifetime.² The pamphlet, or brochure, in which Dr Bendo advertises his services in "Physick, Chymical and Galenic, in Astrology, Physiognomy, Palmistry, Mathematicks, Alchimy, and even Government itself " (9-11) before conducting a criticism of the royal court, stands out as one of Rochester's sharpest criticisms of Charles II. Given this subject matter and the pamphlet's importance as Rochester's only surviving prose writing other than his letters, Alexander Bendo's Brochure is an understudied work that deserves more attention for its illumination of Rochester's satire. I will add to the existing criticism on this text by examining the textual performance within the pamphlet to show that Rochester used performance techniques to produce a liminal space where his satire operates on several levels to destabilize his reader. By creating a space where his readers are left uncertain whether they are targets of the satirist or co-conspirators with him, while wishing to be seen as understanding the satire, Rochester entraps his readers and creates a venue for a successful critique of the Restoration court.

Of the existing criticism on Rochester's writings, only Kirk Combe and Anne Righter have discussed Alexander Bendo's Brochure at length.³ Combe presents Rochester's satire as operating on at least two levels, satirizing both the credulous lower ranks who fall for such bills and the middle and upper-ranked political establishment (125), while Righter discusses the contradictions inherent in Rochester's theatrical approach, noting "man's efforts to conceptualize, language itself, is under attack" (66). Using both Rochester's pamphlet and Alcock's letter to Rochester's daughter, Ann, I will build upon such existing criticism to show how this satire openly operates on these two levels, while providing further hints to the identity and purpose of the writer and calling into question the nature of knowledge. Rochester destabilizes the position of his readers, leaving them trapped in an unresolved liminal space because the satire targets all readers of the brochure, as each of these readers is left uncertain whether he or she is fully "in" on the joke. He is able to do so because satire, all satire, operates as a rite of passage for the reader, where he or she attempts to pass from a position of not understanding the writer's satire to one of becoming part of the writer's ideal audience through his or her perception of the writer's irony. As Dr Bendo, Rochester creates a small coterie of wits who understand the point of his satire and then he leaves them uncertain, wondering if there is another, smaller coterie that sees them as the "true" butt of the joke. By doing so, Rochester can satirize the whole of the aristocracy and the court, leaving no one untouched, without becoming publicly seditious.

As Combe has already deconstructed the pamphlet, I need not repeat his arguments here except as they reveal several layers of satire and illuminate the primarily political nature of the writing (124-32). Instead, I shall concentrate on Rochester's use of performance in the text to produce the conditions for his satire and show how his performance causes this satire to become a multi-layered event, separating and destabilizing his various audiences. I have chosen to use the word "audience" rather than "reader" to highlight the performance aspect of this interaction and to avoid confusion with reader response and reception theory. For the purposes of this satire, the audience can be divided into two groups: the "outside audience" and the "backstage audience." I have adapted...