“Franglais Fops” and mocking the French in English Restoration Theatre

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, France was the dominant cultural force and England lay under its influence in terms of art and fashion. However, Restoration comedy found a means of turning the power structure on its head by overtly mocking those subjugated by all things French. The stock character commonly known as the “Frenchified fop”, but which I prefer to label a “Franglais fop” for reasons that shall become apparent, is one of Restoration comedy’s greatest comic inventions. In this essay, I wish to examine one case study of this type of fop: Monsieur de Paris in William Wycherley’s The Gentleman Dancing-Master (1671). De Paris, like his more famous counterpart Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege’s Man of Mode (1676), is English by birth but enamoured with French culture following a brief sojourn in France. Analysis of de Paris’s case will reveal how the Franglais fop provides the means to critique both gallants and to mock the French.