Fangs Of Malice: Hypocrisy Sincerity And Acting

Scene Three. Humanizing The Fop

Scene Three humanizing the fop “Seest thou not what a deformed thief this fashion is?” Borachio marvels at the ease by which Claudio can mistake Margaret for Hero in Much Ado about Nothing; “I know that Deformed,” mutters Seacoal of the watch (3.3.123). Like the watchmen who arrest Sir John Brute in either of his disguises, as priest or as lady of fashion, these watchmen are confronted by a performance that they do not understand . Borachio is commenting homiletically upon the way dressing up and showing up at the wrong window can be misread by the spectators. Fashion stands in as shorthand for all kinds of imposture: getting it wrong, of course, the watch gets it right. Borachio’s sententious identification of fashion with monstrous deformity reaches a kind of apogee in the career of the Restoration comedy fop. From the deformities of fashion come even greater deformities . Fops are often presented in these plays as monsters. The Elder Worthy brother in Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift, or, The Fool in Fashion rages that Hillaria humiliates him “by fastning on a Fool, and caressing him before my Face, when she might have so easily avoided him.”68 When his younger brother asks, “But, prithee, who was the Fool she fasten’d upon?” the Elder Worthy obliges with a full character of Sir Novelty Fashion: One that Heaven intended for a Man; but the whole Business of his Life is, to make the World believe he is of another Species. A Thing that affects mightily to ridicule himself, only to give others a kind of Necessity of praising him. I can’t say he’s a slave to any new Fashion, for he pretends to be Master of it, and is ever reviving some old, or advancing some new piece of Foppery; and tho’ it don’t take, is still as well pleased. because it then obliges the Town to take more Notice of him: He’s so fond of a public Reputation, that he is more extravagant in his Attempts to gain it, than the Fool that fir’d Diana ’s Temple to immortalize his Name. (1.1.249–56) Sir Novelty, a compendium of foppish traits assembled by Cibber as a means to augment his own “public Reputation,” is a highly derivative fop. Worthy’s satirical diatribe, however, insists that his conventional comic vanities and affectations must be taken seriously. It is not enough for him to scorn Sir Novelty: what he does in this speech is to utterly dehumanize him. Sir Novelty is of indeterminate species; framed to be a man, he is instead a “Thing.” Not only is he uncertain of species, he also is a radical mishmash of social strata: Elder Worthy cannot tell whether Sir Novelty is a slave to fashion or its master . His ignominious attempts to gain public attention deserve as little notice as the sacrilege of Herostratus, whose effort was rewarded by the passing of a law in Ephesus forbidding the mention of his name. This last detail links the fop’s indeterminacy with violent impiety. The fact that the temple involved is Diana’s adds to the crime an aspect of rape. Sir Novelty is also characterized in theatrical terms. “Oh! Mr. Worthy ,” teases Hillaria (whose condescension to the fop has occasioned Worthy’s jealous outburst), “we are admiring Sir Novelty, and his new Suit: Did you ever see so sweet a Fancy? He is as full of Variety as a good Play.” Here Sir Novelty’s outrageous dress is conflated with the extravagances of dramatic construction. He creates problems of genre as well: “He’s a very pleasant Comedy indeed, Madam, and drest with a great deal of good Satyr, and no doubt may oblige both the Stage and the Town, especially the Ladies,” Elder Worthy replies (2.1.104 –11). Worthy’s point is that Sir Novelty is ridiculous, a walking comic stage hit; but the pun on satyr pushes again in the direction of the fop’s freakishness. Sir Fopling Flutter, in George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, establishes the convention of introducing the fop with a satirical portrait before he appears. He, too, is introduced into the conversation at Dorimant ’s morning toilet in language that places him at the theater and links him with clothes. “No man has a better fancy in his clothes than you have,” Young Bellair assures Dorimant. Medley points out: “There is a great critic...