The Man of Mode

Sir Car Scroope, Baronet, delivers a Prologue explaining the plight of “poor poets” (1.Prologue.1). He claims that poets often struggle and die young, though they never want to leave their work unfinished. The audience prefers violent plays and “gaudy nonsense” (1.Prologue.16), but it is the audience’s own actions that provide the plots and scenarios for the writers. With each passing year, the scandals and absurdities of the real world give writers new and increasingly bawdy topics to write about. Scroope finishes his address by warning the audience not to be too critical of the play, as such subject matters may soon be found in their own homes.

The protagonist of The Man of Mode is Dorimant. He is a notorious womanizer and man-about-town. With his clothes prepared for him in his dressing room, he reads a romantic message from Mrs. Loveit. Dorimant mocks the “dull, insipid” (1.1.2) note, dismissing any such message as useless once the act of making love has finished. When a woman begins to suspect that a man’s passion for her is fading, Dorimant believes, she is usually correct.

Handy, Dorimant’s valet de chambre, enters the dressing room and Dorimant tells him to summon a footman, to which Handy responds that there are no footmen available.