That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Abstract

Nicholas Fisher (ed.) That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000, xiv + 233 pp., £45.00 hardback, ISBN 0-7190-56837.That Second Bottle is a particularly pleasing volume because, whilst it exhibits high standards of academic probity and finesse, it also bears hallmarks of a labour of love. Fifteen essays make up volume, including introduction, which serves as a useful brief summary of history of Rochester scholarship, and puts case that Ernst Honigman's views of Shakespeare criticism as jeu sans frontiers and Shakespeare himself a myriad-minded should be applied to Rochester (6). Taken together, remaining fourteen essays are a convincing testimony to validity of Fisher's case, and contributors comprise an impressive array of scholars and enthusiasts, including two of editors.As one might expect from an edited collection, material is by no means uniform. Indeed, approach of editor, Nicholas Fisher, seems somewhat at odds with bulk of essays, accepting as he does that there is an aesthetic standard against which work can be judged objectively, that we can access true Rochester through his poetry, that Shakespeare's exceptional understanding of humanity (6) was not matched by Rochester, and that the judgement of 'that Great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson' (65) is flawed only in his negative assessment of Rochester. Most of other contributors overtly or implicitly accept complexity of historical subject Rochester, difficulty of judging his work against a fixed aesthetic standard, and multiple interpretations that his oeuvre may elicit. That said, Fisher's own essay Love in ayre: songs and their music (pp. 63-80), ultimately makes a convincing case for influence existing as much in setting and performance of his songs as in circulation of his manuscripts and published material.Amongst remaining essays, three struck me as particularly fine contributions: Rochester's Homoeroticsim (Paul Hammond); Lord Monkey (again) (Keith Walker); and Artemiza to Chloe: 'female' epistle (Gillian Manning). Hammond's is a highly informative and cogently argued piece which concludes with surprising yet, in light of his essay, entirely convincing point that way of conceptualising sex between men ... would surely have satisfied most censorious Restoration divine (62). Walker's essay, hi contrast to ennui implicit in his title, entertainingly leads reader to a new interpretation of infamous portrait, in which Rochester is seen holding a crown of laurels over head of a monkey (representing Dryden). In contrast to conventional reading of this as a coronation ceremony, Walker reads it as a delaureation ceremony (87) that symbolically reminded Dryden of his place. Manning's essay cautions us to temper reputation as a misogynistic rake with his positive relationships with Anne Wharton and Aphra Behn, both of whom he encouraged to write. …

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