"Old Sodom" and "Dear Dad": Vanbrugh's celebration of the sodomitical subject in The Relapse.
Although the sodomitical discourse of the early-eighteenth century was fraught with competing ideologies and significations, this did not preclude the formation and expression of a sodomitical identity founded upon male same-sex desire. Orvis takes the case of Coupler, the sodomite staged in Sir John Vanbrugh's play The Relapse; or, Virtue in Danger (perf. 1696; pub. 1697). Vanbrugh's portrayal of this unabashed, unapologetic sodomite-a sodomite, moreover, who is accepted by the dramatis personae of the play he inhabits-suggests not only that the possibility of a sodomitical desiring subject was widely acknowledged by the theatergoing public of early-eighteenth-century England, but also, and perhaps more importantly, that sodomites were not always understood as monstrous Others against which normative identities were constructed.
Orvis
David L
DL
Department of English, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina 28608, USA. orvisdl@appstate.edu
D004324:Drama / Q000266:history; D049670:History, 17th Century; D018451:Homosexuality, Male / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male