John Wilmot, the frolicsome Earl of Rochester, loved a debauch with all
his heart. No man was more typical of his age, and his age was the
polished era of Restoration libertinism in the profligate court of King
Charles II. It was an era when men — and women — had the
courage to fulfil their lust through whimsy.
Upon his release (due to a wink from Charles), he gallantly volunteered
for service in the Second Dutch War, but in due course found himself
back in his proper environment as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the
King, whereupon he married pretty Mistress Malet and had her appointed
Groom of the Stole to the Duchess of York. They enjoyed a happy
marriage, resulting in four children, but it is likely that she was the
excuse rather than the inspiration for his bawdy heterosexual love
lyrics.
He no doubt got it off with the Duke of Buckingham and other gays in
the nobility, as well as a host of stable-boys et
al., and on occasion even disguised himself as a woman,
for Rochester eschewed none of the pleasures of either sex.
Unfortunately libertinage is not always liberating, and by his own
account he seems to have become impotent:
The dramatis personae of this superb
Restoration drama itself reads like a bawdy lyric:
The curtain rises on Act V, revealing a grove of cypress trees cut like
topiary in the shape of penises. Like over-reaching Satan, Bolloxinion
plans to bugger the gods out of heaven and to drain their immortalizing
ambrosia. The King's physician rushes in to report an epidemic of
venereal disease, the rotting away of the nation's private parts, and
prophesies the end of procreation. Queen Cuntigratia has died; Pricket
has the clap; and Swivia has gone insane (somewhat like Ophelia). But
Bolloxinion perseveres in his madness. Demons rise from the front of
the stage, singing their song of doom:
Of course it is only a play, and three actors reappear on stage to
deliver the moral of the tale. Cunticula argues that the male members
of the audience should heed the dire warning and therefore renounce
masturbation and buggery. Fuckadilla comes on to praise only the
longest penises. And Swivia sings a lovely ditty, "In the Praise
of Her Cunt." None of the arguments are particularly convincing.
The play was not generally available in unexpurgated editions until the 1990s, though it
is rather more fun than the comparatively dull Restoration comedies we
are taught in the classroom. It is a brilliant play, and stands up well
to even the most severe literary criticism, and it is a superb example
of serious political satire. It should be noted that this play is not
a defence of bisexuality or libertinage in general, but of
homosexuality in particular: clearly the author and his audience had a
concept of "the homosexual" in mind long before that category
was supposedly "invented" in the late nineteenth century.
For the full text of the play, see Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery.
Copyright © 1974, 1998 Rictor Norton. All rights reserved. Reproduction for sale or profit prohibited. This essay may not be
reprinted or redistributed without the permission of the author.
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation:
Born in 1647 in Ditchley, Oxfordshire, Rochester grew up accustomed to
Cavalier bravado, and though he read his Seneca, he also studied his
Ovid and Petronius at Oxford. At the age of seventeen he was already
the center of the circle of Court Wits, including such men as Sedley,
Suckling, the Earl of Dorset, Etheredge, Buckingham, and others, some
of whom were bisexual in order to give wider reign to their pleasures.
In 1665 Rochester abducted the pretty heiress Mistress Malet, spiriting
her away in a coach-and-six from Charing Cross, only to be apprehended
at Uxbridge and confined for several weeks to the Tower.
The Bawdy "Ballers"
Rochester also consorted with a number of minor wenches of the evening,
and had two regular mistresses: Jane Roberts, whom he shared with the
King, and the great actress Elizabeth Barry. And he was the confidant
and trustee of the King's infamous mistress Nell Gwyn. In tribute to
her, he composed the dirtiest heterosexual limerick ever written:
Rochester was wont to frequently engage in fisticuffs and sword-play,
to write naughty invective, and to attend the theater and urinate over
the balcony upon the crowd below. He admitted to a friend that
"for five years together I was continually drunk," though he
did not mention that his bottles were improved with opium. There were
rumors that he and his friends, a group which called themselves
"The Ballers," liked to cavort stark naked in Woodstock Park.
She was so exquisite a whore
That in the belly of her mother,
Her cunt was placed so well before,
Her father fucked them both together.
Trembling, confused, despairing, limber, dry,
A wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie.
This dart of love, whose piercing point, oft tried,
With virgin blood ten thousand maids have dyed;
Which nature still directed with such art
That it through every cunt reached every heart —
Stiffly resolved, 'twould carelessly invade
Woman or man, nor ought its fury stayed
Where'er it pierced, a cunt it found or made.
The Trick Worth Forty Wenches
A superficial reading of Rochester's work might suggest that he was an
indiscriminate bisexual. The following lines are often quoted to
support this view:
(A linkboy lights the street lamps at night with his "link,"
or torch.) But on a more careful reading we discover that he may have
been both an antifeminist and predominantly gay:
Nor shall our love-fits, Chloris, be forgot,
When each the well-look'd linkboy strove t'enjoy,
And the best kiss was the deciding lot
Whether the boy fucked you, or I the boy.
These lines explicitly declare a preference 40-to-1 in favour in gay
sex — way off the Kinsey scale, and hardly evidence of
"bisexuality"! This last stanza is brilliant, and prompts me
to forgive Rochester's anti-feminism, but it should also be pointed out
that this is an artificial anti-feminism designed to shock the
conventional-minded (in real life he seems to have done no great harm
to women), and it is not the usual sort of anti-sexual misogyny typical
of heterosexual puritanical writers. I also forgive him out of pity,
for he died a syphilitic lecher at the early age of thirty-three.
The Quintessence of Debauchery
And I forgive him, lastly, because he wrote the finest erotic satire of
any age, which happens to be a paean to the joys of buggery, and
happens to be the very first literary work ever to be censored in
England on the grounds of obscenity: Sodom; or, The
Quintessence of Debauchery (1684). The work was published
anonymously, and some critics still claim that Rochester was not the
author; but no alternative author has been suggested, and it seems to
me to have the hallmarks of Rochester's wit. Inconceivable as it may
appear, the play is said to have been actually performed on a single
occasion, before a private audience at the Court.
The curtain rises on Act I, and we behold an antechamber hung with
tapestries depicting all the possible positions for copulation. King
Bolloxinion delivers a royal proclamation setting his nation free:
But, a tyrant in his own way, he goes on to declare that sodomy shall
be the rule of the realm, and that heterosexuality shall be regarded as
the abnormal perversity:
My Pintle [penis] only shall my scepter be;
My laws shall act more pleasure than command
And with my Prick, I'll govern all the land.
Borastus, seeing how things go, persuades the king to abandon Queen
Cuntigratia for Pockenello or Pine:
Let conscience have its force of Liberty.
I do proclaim, that Buggery may be us'd
Thro all the land. . . .
To Buggeranthos, let this charge be given
And let him bugger all things under heaven.
(I must say that these remarkable heroic couplets are as finely turned
as any by Alexander Pope or John Dryden, which is one reason I would
ascribe the work to Rochester.) Bolloxinion chooses Pockenello to be
his mate:
It could advise you, Sir, to make a pass
Once more at loyal Pockenello's arse.
Besides, Sir, Pine has such a gentle skin,
'T would tempt a Saint to thrust his Pintle in.
And Pockenello accepts the kind offer:
His arse shall for a moment be my spouse.
Act II opens upon a pleasant pastoral garden with naked men and women
posing as classical statues. In the middle of the group is "a
woman representing a fountain, standing upon her head and pissing
upright." The women, like those in Aristophanes'
Lysistrata — though for quite the
opposite reason — have gathered together to lament their case and
to make plans for revenge. Their "unhappy cunts" have been
abandoned by this new "proselyte to Pagan-fuck." (The same
charge was levelled against gay men from the 1890s through the 1990s.)
They find some release in mutual masturbation, the use of dildoes, and
even bestiality. The statues come to life, and this Act, too dirty to
sully this page with its description at greater length, ends in a
heterosexual orgy.
That spouse shall, mighty Sir, tho it be blind,
Prove to my Lord, both dutiful and kind,
'Tis all I wish, that Pockenello's Arse
May still find favour from your Royal Tarse.[penis]
What tho the Letchery be Dry . . .
Act III is taken up with Prince Pricket and Princess Swivia comparing
their genital anatomies and engaging in the forbidden games our mothers
feared. Pricket's comment upon Swivia's vagina is a gem of poor taste:
Bolloxinion and Cuntigratia confront one another in Act IV, but the
King is obdurate:
It has a beard too, and the mouth's all raw.
The strangest Creature that I ever saw.
Bolloxinion's brother King Tarsehole, ruler of nearly Gomorrah, sends
him a present of forty young striplings to celebrate the national
peace. The curtain falls as he leads one offstage:
Since I have bugger'd human arse, I find
Pintle to Cunt is not so much inclin'd.
What tho the letchery be dry, 'tis smart;
A Turkish arse I love with all my heart.
. . . the brawny muscles of its side
Tickling the nerve, their rowling Eyes do glance,
And all mankind with vast delight intrance.
May as the Gods his name immortal be
That first receiv'd the gift of Buggery!
Meanwhile the women, grown tired of their dildos, begin to quarrel
amongst themselves, and begin to plot rebellion while Bolloxinion
sports.
Come my soft flesh of Sodom's dear delight,
To honoured lust thou art betray'd this night.
Lust with thy beauty cannot brook delay —
Between thy pretty haunches I will play.
The ghost of Queen Cuntigratia slips in from the wings, and promises to
torment Bolloxinion in hell. And finally the curtain falls for the last
time, on the orgasmic fire and brimstone consuming the fair cities of
the plains.
Bugger, bugger, bugger
All in hugger-mugger,
Fire doth descend;
'Tis too late to amend.
Rictor Norton, "England's First Pornographer", A History of Homoerotica, 1974, 1998; updated 19 January 2007 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/wilmot.htm>.
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