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<\/a><\/p>\n\u2018Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.\u2019 WH Auden speaks true \u2013 one of the pleasures of this little project has been sitting down with the past. Sometimes, however, it\u2019s like sharing a meal, some dishes of which taste familiar, while others are so completely baffling you don\u2019t know whether they\u2019re a starter, a pudding or a peculiar kind of medicine. Such is The Town Fop<\/em>, a 1676 comedy by Aphra Behn.<\/p>\n Behn\u2019s plays are more studied than staged, although The Rover<\/em><\/a> is currently being performed by the RSC. It\u2019s a pity, because she has a romantic\u2019s heart and an unshakably realist\u2019s head. Realism mostly wins, which is the appeal of her work. Take The Town Fop<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a play of unwilling marriages, messy romances and poor male behaviour. Behn writes well about blokes: their selfishness, silliness, horniness. How life gives them the breaks and lets them break the rules. She enjoys them even as she takes the piss. Her hero, Bellmour, disappointed in love, gets a terrific bleary-hours scene in a Covent Garden den. He has walked out on his unwanted bride on their wedding night, and now desperately tries breaking bad: gambling (he loses), drinking (can\u2019t handle it), casual sexing (heart\u2019s not in it). All he can do is pick fights with his brother and best mate, and fail explain why he\u2019s behaving so weirdly. It\u2019s oddly more endearing than when he\u2019s just a politely devoted lover.<\/p>\n The fop of the title is Sir Timothy Tawdry. Actors tend to play fops as effeminate, affected clothes-ponies, but that\u2019s not Tawdry\u2019s way. He\u2019s rampantly straight, though immensely resistible; he\u2019s too cheap to bother about clothes. All he wants is to live it up with his cut-price entourage (Sharp and Sham) and get laid, while maintaining a mutually-loathing relationship with the brilliantly named bad-time girl Betty Flauntit. He\u2019s a bit hipster, a bit made in Chelsea, a good deal of a dick.<\/p>\n Liberties College Performance Course performed The Town Fop in Dublin in 215<\/p><\/div>\n It\u2019s with the women that you find yourself doing serious decoding. What does Behn really think of these horribly imperfect relationships? You find modern minds marooned in an antiquated sexual code \u2013 where women will be married off for someone else\u2019s financial advantage, wooed against their will, serially betrayed while somehow keeping their honour. Even when Bellmour\u2019s beloved Celinda disguises herself as a man and proves handy with a sword, she can\u2019t go on the rampage like the blokes do. It\u2019s a caged existence. It feels exhausting.<\/p>\n Behn tugs all the plotlines to some kind of resolution, though you may not be convinced that these compromised unions represent much of a happy ending. Especially Bellmour\u2019s young sister, fresh from a Flanders convent, who is caught up in Tawdry\u2019s half-assed scheming. If the plot is handing out divorces, you\u2019d think she deserves one too, but no such luck. She\u2019s saddled to Tawdry, who as the curtain falls is telling Betty Flauntit, \u2018go home and expect me, thoul\u2019t have me all to thyself within this day or two.\u2019 Happy ever after? Fop off.<\/p>\n Sample stage direction<\/strong> \u2018Enter Celinda like a boy.\u2019<\/em> 12 Plays of Xmas<\/strong><\/a>
\nSample quote<\/strong> Tawdry: \u2018I\u2019m a little mawkish with sitting up all night and want a small refreshment this morning. Did we not send for whores?\u2019<\/p>\n
\nI have, surprise, a lot of books. And I have, surprise, not read them all. So, 12 unfamiliar plays, 12 posts: welcome to 12 Plays of Xmas. See previous posts in the series (from Euripides to Lynn Nottage) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n