Rake (stock character)

In a historical context, a rake (short for rakehell, analogous to "hellraiser") was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process. Cad is a closely related term. Comparable terms are "libertine" and "debauchee". The Restoration rake was a carefree, witty, sexually irresistible aristocrat whose heyday was during the English Restoration period (1660–1688) at the court of King Charles II. They were typified by the "Merry Gang" of courtiers, who included as prominent members John Wilmot, George Villiers, and Charles Sackville, who combined riotous living with intellectual pursuits and patronage of the arts. At this time the rake featured as a stock character in Restoration comedy. After the reign of Charles II, and especially after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the cultural perception of the rake took a dive into squalor. The rake became the butt of moralistic tales, in which his typical fate was debtors' prison, venereal disease, or, in the case of William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, insanity in Bedlam. The defining period of the rake was at the court of Charles II in the late seventeenth century. Dubbed the "Merry Gang" by poet Andrew Marvell, their members included King Charles himself, George Villiers, John Wilmot, Charles Sedley, Charles Sackville, and playwrights William Wycherley and George Etherege. Following the tone set by the monarch himself, these men distinguished themselves in drinking, womanizing, and witty conversation, with Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, outdoing all the rest. Many of them were inveterate gamblers and brawlers. Some were also duelists, but not with the approval of King Charles, who discouraged the practice of dueling. Highlights of their careers include Sedley and Sackville preaching naked to a crowd from an alehouse balcony in Covent Garden, as they simulated sex with each other, and the lowlight was Buckingham's killing of Francis Talbot in a duel for the latter's wife.