The Rake as Symbol of Social Disorder in Restoration Drama

Introduction: The Rake and the Institution of Marriage

One of the distinctive features of Restoration comedy is the figure of the rake as romantic hero. The image of the rake-hero is of a witty, cynical, calculating, and self-serving man who pursues his own pleasure above all other considerations. Antagonistic to established rules and mores, the rake rejects conventional ideas of virtue, integrity, fidelity, and restraint; above all, he adopts a rhetorical position of opposition to the institution of marriage. However, it is significant that in most plays which feature a rake-hero in a prominent role, he becomes reconciled to the concept of marriage and ends up either actually married or firmly committed to it.

It is the contention of this paper that, first, it is overly simplistic to see the rake as irredeemably opposed to marriage, and that the relationship between such figures and the institution of wedlock is more ambiguous than has often been perceived; and that, second, this reflects the particular context of the Restoration period in England. The violence and discord of the Civil War (1642–9), the repressive moral climate of the Interregnum (1649–60), and the tumultuous return of the Monarchy in the Restoration (1660) had constructed a social and moral context in which a rejection of narrow Puritan morality, the re-establishment of potentially licentious entertainments such as the theater, and the welcoming of a degree of license in matters of personal conduct and morality combined with a concern to re-establish social and political conservatism. The aim was to ensure that no such breakdown in social structure as the Civil War and consequent events had represented would be allowed to occur again. In short, the rake-hero simultaneously celebrates the new moral freedom of permissiveness and asserts the importance of limits on that freedom; he marks out the acceptable rules of conduct for the revived court bourgeoisie of Restoration England while reflecting the new climate which they had created.

In this paper the significance of the rake-hero as a symbol of social disorder will be examined against this wider context. Three plays will be considered in detail: The Careless Lovers (1673) by Edward Ravenscroft; The Man of Mode (1676) by George Etherege; and Love's Last Shift (1696) by Colley Cibber. In The Careless Lovers, the seemingly incorrigible rake Careless is reconciled to marriage by his love for the seemingly equally libertine Hillaria; in The Man of Mode, Dorimant proposes to Harriet Woodvil and agrees to follow her into the country to receive her answer; in Love's Last Shift, Loveless returns to his virtuous and faithful Amanda after a conversion from his rakish ways. The first two plays come from the period sometimes seen as the apogee of Restoration comedy, in which the libertine quality of the earliest Restoration plays begins to reflect more of a concern with morality and humanity; the latter play marks the beginnings of sentimental drama, in which the reform of character through appeal to his or her noble qualities — and, by extension, to the same qualities in the audience — is the central concern of the drama. Throughout this period, the rake remains central to the modes of engagement of stage comedy with the social concerns of its time.

The Rake and His Times

The rake-hero is almost an over-familiar figure in Restoration stage comedy; he has become such a cliché of the age that it is hard to look at him afresh and understand in depth what he is all about. In particular, both scholarship and popular estimate have tended to lump all rake characters together and regard them in a rather simplistic manner. As Robert D. Hume has remarked:

Reading modern scholarship, one might deduce that "Restoration comedy" is full of unrepentant rakes; that the plays expounded a "libertine" philosophy; and that they are essentially hostile to marriage. Sensible critics have realized that the third proposition is ridiculous and that the other two require significant qualification. (Hume (1983), 138)

Hume goes on to distinguish between the three categories of the "extravagant rake," the "vicious rake," and the "judicious rake" or "philosophical libertine" (Hume (1983), 159), and points out that these characters are very different in their outlooks and motivations and in the ultimate consequences of their actions. In particular, the quality and significance of any "reform" these different characters display are very variable: '"Reform" may be anything from a pro forma convenience to an occasion for moral preachment' (Hume (1983), 139). There is no simple model of libertinage giving way to reform, but nor is it a matter of the rake acting as a rebel against conventional morality and — within the confines of comic form — triumphing over it by the end of the play, as the critic Virginia Birdsall suggested in 1970:

They [the rakes] create their own morality, which has little to do with conventional morals and which may be termed a morality of honesty or of integrity in the most basic meaning of the word... Confronted with a world which lacks any sense of comic orderliness and abstract moral certainty and which has committed itself to civilized forms largely derivative and hollow, they make their spirit prevail. (Birdsall (1970), 8)

Such a point of view depends on our understanding of rakish attitudes as being rooted in a genuine opposition to restrictive social norms; "social and moral repression... give[s] rise to that rebellion" (Birdsall (1970), 7). If such characters as Careless, Dorimant, and Loveless are in rebellion against conventional morality, particularly in the form of marriage, they seem signally not to triumph and make their spirit prevail, as they all end up one way or another within the confines of conventional marriage. Why this should be the case surely touches on some fundamental issues concerning the nature of Restoration drama and its relationship with the world it depicted.

Marriage was a fundamental institution in seventeenth-century society, and it was an institution whose forms were clearly defined and were difficult to challenge or change. As the social historian Lawrence Stone has described the situation, marriage lay at the center of the interlocking structures of birth and death, ownership and inheritance, legal and social status, patterns of moral conduct, and systems of outward respectability. Furthermore, it was a one-way process; you could enter the state of marriage, but except in very specific and uncommon circumstances only death could get you out again: "England in the early modern period was neither a separating nor a divorcing society: death was virtually the sole agent for dissolving marriage" (Stone (1990), 2). This was the fundamental point underlying the Restoration genre of the "marriage play" (Cordner and Clayton (1998), xx). It was an institution that had to be taken seriously, and the Restoration rake does take it seriously. Initially, he protests his irreconcilability to the married state in terms expressive of its restrictive qualities. Often the rhetorical demands of the rakish character require that such protests are framed in terms of the ending of libertinage and irresponsible pleasure entailed in marriage, but this relatively light-hearted critique is formed by an awareness, shared by character and audience, of marriage's very real demands for the social class depicted. As one literary scholar has recently written, with reference to the Restoration dramatic world in general:

From the 1660s to the 1680s authors like Dryden, Shadwell, Robert Howard, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, and Aphra Behn regard the genres of tragedy, heroic drama, romance, wit comedy, humours comedy, and farce not merely as pleasing and useful (or offensive and useless) verbal constructs, but as cultural indices with overt class associations. (Dharwadker (1997), 461)

Recognition of the role of such "cultural indices" serves to weaken the argument that the world of the Restoration rake is essentially comic and distinct from the concerns of real life; on the contrary, as critics have increasingly noted, the social and cultural context constantly shapes both the work of art and its reception. The rake-hero does not reflect that context simply to subvert it, as an act of rebellion against stifling convention, as Birdsall has suggested: "The Restoration comic hero does not turn the world of inherited rules upside down merely for the smutty or destructive fun of it. If he is self-consciously wicked, it is because the prevailing system has proved repressive of his élan vital and hence prompts him to demand more flexible and expressive forms. For him the only true morality is living well and fully" (Birdsall (1970), 20).

It seems far more credible to argue that it is the rebellion that is neutered by reason of its location in the realms of comic exaggeration and dramatic rhetoric, and that the affirmation of social mores expressed in the characters' ultimate acceptance of marriage is the true cultural index of the plays. The paradigm of marriage thus represented is a challenge to a certain type of conventional morality: the morality that accepted loveless and essentially hollow unions to fulfil economic and social functions and then criticized those within such marriages — perhaps particularly women — who did not then act in accordance with an illusory, idealized social form of union. In that sense, there can be said to be a subversive honesty at the heart of the rakes' acceptance of the married state, but that subversive intent is not directed against the institution of marriage per se; on the contrary, it tends to assert an idealized concept of marriage freely chosen between two free individuals who will continue to express that freedom within their marriage.

Careless in The Careless Lovers

Edward Ravenscroft's The Careless Lovers has been described as "an engaging trifle" (Hume (1976), 296) and as a "farcical intrigue of a very boisterous sort" expressing a "genuine appreciation of the Restoration comic spirit" (Lynch (1965), 160–1). It is little-known today, as is the case with all of Ravenscroft's work, and is perhaps chiefly notable for the appearance of Careless, the "Town Gallant," an almost paradigmatic representation of the Restoration rake-hero. His character is established from the opening scene. "Wilt thou never leave this lewd wild Humour?" asks his friend Lovell, to which Careless replies:

Not upon the score of Matrimony; Why, Jack Lovell, I'le tell thee I am now like a Colt in the Fenns, that stragles every where, and feed where I like best; But shou'd I Marry, I shou'd be tether'd to my Spot of ground; at best, confin'd to an Inclosure. (CL, I.i, 9–14)

Careless's declarations of his addiction to wenching and his antipathy to matrimony are exaggerated and almost amount to caricature — as Robert Hume has observed, the author is consciously making fun of the clichés of Restoration comedy (Hume (1976), 296). This in itself suggests that in these statements we are witnessing not a subversive attack on matrimony itself, but a rhetorical device intended to establish the character and the author's purpose in the audience's minds. At the end of the first act, by which time Careless has met and been smitten by a masked Hillaria, Ravenscroft takes care to emphasize the existence of a "way out" for Careless, outlining the circumstances under which his creed that "Love is an excellent Meat, but Marriage is an ill Sauce" (CL, I.i, 19–20) will be challenged and willingly overturned as a result of the dramatic effect that Hillaria has upon him:

Careless. Nay, if you have a mind to't you do't; let me think what I will. And if you won't pull off your Masque, I'le e'en begone and leave you. Fare you well. / Hillaria. And fare you well. / Careless. Nay, if you look o're Shoulder after me, I'le turn again, for you [Turn from each other, and looks back o're their Shoulders.] have no mind I should be gone I am sure. / Hillaria. Why did you look back at me? / Careless. To see — (CL, I.i, 234–41)

The play thus revolves around a confirmation of the value of transcendent love as the basis for Careless's reformation and his acceptance of matrimony. He cannot turn away from Hillaria, and that inability undermines the whole basis of his libertinage: "If for a Wife my Liberty I'de Loose, / One of these Two shou'd catch me in a Noose" (CL, I.ii, 470–1) are the closing words of Act I, spoken by Careless.

It can thus be argued that it is love, not social convention, that draws Careless and Hillaria together and produces the somewhat unconventional character of their marriage. Careless does not turn his back on his rakish ways when he promises to marry Hillaria, and tells his mistresses "you must not think you have quite lost me because I am Married" (CL, V.ii, 350–2); and the latter, for her part, similarly declines to accept conventional narrow standards of behaviour, declaring that "I will be your Wife, and since I can't have a Gallant before Marriage, I'le do like other Wives, and have one after" (CL, V.ii, 297–8). This marriage is contrasted with the more conventional pairing of Lovell and Jacinta and, it is suggested, will prove more satisfactory because more genuine and sincere; as Careless declares to Lovell:

You shall see our Marriage (which you think is slapt up out of a frolick) go on more cheerfully than yours, made out of stark Love and desperate Affection; we, like two Birds (though we Roost together at Night) will have our freedom all Day, and flie Chiripping about, whil'st you like two Domestick Animals, ti'de too close together in a string, shall still be snarling and biting one another. (CL, V.ii, 340–6)

This is not a rejection of matrimony but an affirmation of a new form of marriage, based on honesty and a recognition by each party of the freedom of the other. It is, perhaps, a balancing of the need for social conformity with a recognition of new pressures of individualism in society: "What is important to both of them is their freedom... although they are contracted at the end of the play, Ravenscroft indicates that in this relationship they are to be distinguished from Jacinta and Lovell whose strict union is accomplished within the normal dictates of convention" (Henry (1987), xliii).

Works Cited

Birdsall, Virginia Ogden. Wild Civility: the English Comic Spirit and the Restoration Stage. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1970.

Cibber, Colley. Love's Last Shift. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973.

Clayton, R. & Cordner, M., eds. Four Restoration Marriage Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Dharwadker, Aparna. "Class, Authorship, and the Social Intertexture of Genre in Restoration Theater." Studies in English Literature, 37, 3 (1997), 461–82.

Etherege, George. The Man of Mode. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Hughes, Derek. English Drama 1660–1700. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

Hume, Robert D. The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1976.

Hume, Robert D. The Rakish Stage: Studies in English Drama, 1660–1800. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.

Lynch, Kathleen M. The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy. New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965.

Ravenscroft, Edward. The Careless Lovers. Ed. Edmund S. Henry. New York: Garland, 1987.