Fops Vs Tops: Character and Attention in the Country Wife

• Published in: ELH Vol. 90; no. 3; pp. 667 - 691
• Main Author: Houghton, Eve
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.09.2023
• Subjects: Actors; Attention; Audiences; British & Irish literature; Celebrities; Comedies; Conversation; Currency; Dryden, John (1631-1700); English literature; Etymology; Men; Sympathy; Theater
• ISSN: 0013-8304; 1080-6547; 1080-6547
• DOI: 10.1353/elh.2023.a907205

According to his friends, Horner, Harcourt, and Dorilant, he is "one of those nauseous offerers at wit" whose attempts to be funny can immediately ruin the mood: "No, the rogue will not let us enjoy one another, but ravishes our conversation, though he signifies no more to't than Sir Martin Mar-all's gaping and awkward thrumming upon the lute does to his man's voice and music. "4 In their tortured, tortuous, and often time-consuming bids for regard, they remind us that, as Jonathan Crary has shown, attention is both etymologically and conceptually linked to ideas of tension, stretching, and waiting.5 Fops frequently arrest or stretch the focus of the audience—by arriving at unexpected times, by straining against the norms of conduct shared by other characters, or by otherwise capturing audience interest and turning it in unexpected directions—and the performers who embodied them onstage possessed a similarly unpredictable force.6 How much and in what ways does Sparkish signify to the conversation between these men? The question of how characters "signifie" thus requires particular attention to the Restoration theatrical event as the environment in which signification unfolds—an imaginative effort to reconstruct the conditions of performance and the contributions of the actors who embodied the roles. [...]we might think about the scene-stealing of the character actor as the metatheatrical equivalent of The Country Wife's impotence trick: foregoing a certain kind of currency in order to enjoy a much more satisfying form of congress. i. stealing the scene in the country wife Contemporary accounts describe Haines as an improvisational performer who combined physical comedy with linguistic wit.11 He was cast in comic and foppish roles throughout his career, but he also frequently performed prologues and epilogues as himself, building a strong celebrity persona and audience demand for his brand of comedy.12 In this sense he was one in a line of Restoration character actors who created a distinctively eccentric comic persona.