Making Monkeys of Important Men: Performance Satire and Rochester's Alexander Bendo's Brochure

Abstract

Room 7 of the National Portrait Gallery in London is titled II: The Restoration of the Monarchy. Seventeen portraits hang in this room, most of them typically sedate. For visitors in the know, however, a libertine energy fills the air. In Hawker's portrait of the king, Charles shows a lot of leg for an obviously older man. While dignified portraits of the queen and Charles's sister hang to side of him, to the other side of the king hang portraits of two royal mistresses. Verelst's rendition of Nell Gwyn shows the spunky actress displaying much bosom dressed loosely in her smock-sleeves and bodice. In Lely's painting, Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, poses with her infant son, Charles Fitzroy (later Duke of Cleveland), of the king's many illegitimate offspring. As though such a painting is not audacious enough, the duchess has decided to appear in a portrait historie, that is, a portrait showing a recognizable sitter in the role of a figure from history or mythology. In this case, Charles's mistress and bastard pose as the Madonna and child.The libertine showstopper of Room 7, though, is the portrait of John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, pictured with his trusty monkey (John Wilmot). No matter how profound their touristic stupor, most museumgoers halt to ponder and comment on this unusual painting. Even after some 350 years, Rochester still looks down on visitors, wearing a condescending nearsmirk on his face, wryly commanding attention by performing and transgressing. If not exactly a portrait historie, Rochester offers certainly a portrait satirique, and that demands interpretation. For example, in the portrait, Rochester is dressed in the tunic of a Roman aristocrat, thus wearing symbols of authority, knowledge, and power.1 Could Rochester, then, be impersonating the king? Poetic comparisons of Charles to Augustus had been common since the wave of celebratory verse greeting his return at the Restoration. In particular, John Dryden, in both Astraea Redux (1660) and Annus Mirabilis (1667), had made it his special business to cast the restored Stuart reign as a new Augustan age. By adding the detail of an anachronistic tunic to his costume, perhaps Rochester comments wryly on such equivalences as well as the sycophancy that produces them.A plainer signal that Rochester might be mimicking Charles, of course, is the kingly performance he feigns by awarding the laurels, which is where the monkey comes into play. By holding a wreath of laurels over the head of the chattering and fawning little beast, while it eagerly tears and offers up pages from a book, is Rochester suggesting that the monkey is like John Dryden, Charles's poet laureate? Given the uneasy relationship between Rochester and Dryden, such a slap at the latter would be no surprise.2 When Dryden won the laureateship in 1668, he had produced marginal comedies, obsequious celebrations of Charles's regime (after having just as fervently praised Cromwell), and caterwauling heroic drama. Similar to the hopeful simian in the painting looking to please its master, Dryden seemed intent on wooing royal and popular favor by producing whatever was politically expedient or currently fashionable. Moreover, also hanging in Room 7 is Wright's portrait of Dryden that the poet had painted in celebration of his newly acquired laureateship. As whimsical and colorful as is Rochester's portrait, Dryden's is antithetically staid and somber. It is, in addition, wholly and characteristically self-promoting. In little else than shades of brown, Dryden surrounds himself with honorific wreaths of various leaves-oak, ivy, laurel, and olive-and a cartouche featuring short Latin quotations from six poets: Virgil, Horace, Martial, Juvenal, Ovid, and Silvius. The primary inscription is Par omnibus Unus, translatable as one [poet] a match for [them] all. Might Rochester's painting be a pointed response to such pompous careerism by Dryden? Far from transcending the ancients, is Dryden depicted, perhaps, in Rochester's monkey as merely a base imitator of the greats? …