SOURCE: Righter, Anne. “John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.” Proceedings of the Royal British Academy 53 (1967): 42-69.

In this essay, Righter interprets Rochester's poetry in terms of the roles he played in real life, nothing that Rochester mythologized himself, used a variety of voices in his poems, and freely imitated other literary styles.

In the second act of Jonson's Volpone, the Fox disguised as a mountebank harangues a crowd of Venetians beneath Celia's window. His aim is quite straightforward. By pretending to be Scoto of Mantua, the possessor of a marvellous elixir, he hopes to obtain a glimpse of Corvino's young and jealously guarded wife. Volpone's long speech of self-advertisement, cluttered though it is with medieval jargon and false learning, is basically simple. He recognizes that other mountebanks, the charlatans of the profession, may parade accomplishments superficially like his own.

Indeed, very many have assay'd, like apes, in imitation of...