Aristocratic men and women ‘performed’ for and were in competition with each other when it came to seeking to enhance their popularity and their sexual prospects.
Being beautiful helped enormously, but good looks were only one element of a successful ‘beautiful performance’. Courtiers were required to display impeccable manners, eloquent conversation and refined dancing skills, and it all had to look natural and untutored.
The 'quest' for true beauty
The decadent pursuit of the beautiful life was defended as a principled quest for spiritual truth. The libertarians argued that, by experiencing the extremes of life, you discovered beauty and truth in unexpected places, in entangled locks of hair and in moments of dramatic intensity …
_Large_3.jpg)
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-80) was the most notorious of the rakehells of the Restoration Court. He led a rich life, full of sex, violence, alcohol and scandal. His merry gang, courtiers like Charles Sackville (1638-1706), were professional seducers of the innocent new arrivals at Court and satirical commentators on the self-righteous behaviour of the virtuous poetasters that eulogised beauty as an untouchable ideal.
