Tag Archives: John Wilmot

Ray Rice, John Wilmot, & Macho Culture

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2014

Ray Rice’s fury at his fiancé, like John Wilmot’s distrust of women, shows his inability to move from the world of men to that of women.

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Armstrong, a Knave of the First Rate

By Robin Bates | Published: January 26, 2013

John Wilmot would label Lance Armstrong as a “knave of the first rate” for his doping and bullying.

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Wilmot Understands Our Gun Obsession

By Robin Bates | Published: January 25, 2013

John Wilmot would understand the obsession of America’s gun extremists.

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Obama as a Toni Morrison Character

By Robin Bates | Published: May 2, 2012

Perhaps some of the conservative antipathy to Obama is because he is seen as just taking over when he promised to work for social justice.

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The Horror of Sex without Love

By Robin Bates | Published: September 16, 2011

Sex without love, the subject of several sex comedies this past summer, was also an issue explored by poets and playwrights in the British Restoration.

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Less Sexually Liberating for Women

By Robin Bates | Published: September 24, 2009

Jean Honore Fragonard, The Bolt (1776)   Yesterday I wrote about Aphra Behn giving us images of women’s sexual liberation in her 1677 play The Rover.  But there is a dark undertone that differentiates the play from male-authored Restoration comedies.  Behn’s play may not be as polished as the plays of William Wycherley and George Etherege.  […]

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Aphra Behn, Sexual Revolutionary

By Robin Bates | Published: September 23, 2009

Aphra Behn, by Mary Beale I am having a great deal of fun teaching Aphra Behn’s play The Rover this week. Written in 1677 during the reign of Charles II, it is a rollicking sex comedy that proved to be very popular. A woman writing for the stage was in itself extraordinary. That the play […]

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Empty Sex in an Empty World

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2009

John Wilmot, by Jacob Huysmans (1675) I’m have just finished teaching Lord Rochester and, as always, it has been an adventure.   I sometimes think I get more embarrassed than the students by his explicit sexual language.   My women students (they’re all women in this class) are more tolerant of his diatribes against their gender than I […]

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