Everything about Fop totally explained
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For the meanings of the acronym FOP, see FOP (disambiguation).
The
fop (also known as a
fribble,
popinjay,
fashion-monger, or
clotheshorse) is a
stock character who appears from time to time in
fiction. He is a person who makes a habit of fastidiously overdressing and putting on airs, aspiring to be viewed as an
aristocrat (if he isn't already one). A fop is also referred to as a 'beau', as in the
Restoration comedies The Beaux' Stratagem (1707) by
George Farquhar,
The Beau Defeated (1700) by
Mary Pix, or the (real-life and subsequently fictionalized)
Regency character of
Beau Brummell. In
English, the word
fop is older, but the meaning of an overdressed, frivolously fastidious man may not be;
Shakespeare's King Lear contains the word, in the general sense of a
fool, and before him,
Thomas Nashe, in
Summer's Last Will and Testament (1592, printed 1600): "the Idiot, our Playmaker. He, like a Fop & an Ass must be making himself a public laughing-stock." Osric in
Hamlet has a great deal of the fop's affected manner, and much of the plot of
Twelfth Night revolves around tricking the
puritan Malvolio into dressing as a fop.
One of the first full-blown appearances of the
stereotype on the stage is
Molière's well known
play from
1671,
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. This play takes for granted the social structure of France at the time. Its central premise concerns M. Jourdain, a
bourgeois, a member of the
middle class, attempting to remake himself as an
aristocrat and a "
gentleman". The play's
comedy comes from the title character's ridiculous overdressing, and clueless statements. One famous passage has
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme expressing surprise that he's been speaking
prose all his life, unawares.
Characterizations of the fop also appear in many
Restoration comedies, including
The Relapse (1696) by
John Vanbrugh and
George Etherege's
The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676). Vanbrugh planned
The Relapse around particular actors at
Drury Lane, writing their stage habits, public reputations, and personal relationships into the text. One such actor was
Colley Cibber himself, who played the luxuriant fop Lord Foppington in
The Relapse.
"Fop" was widely used as a derogatory epithet to
tar a broad range of persons by the early years of the eighteenth century; many of these might not have been considered showy
lightweights at the time, and it's possible that its meaning had been blunted by this time.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, fictional
heroes began to pose as fops in order to conceal their true activities. Sir Percy Blakeney of
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a well known example of this tendency; Sir Percy cultivates the image of being an overdressed and ineffectual social butterfly, the last person anyone would imagine being capable of dashing heroism. A similar image is cultivated by
Zorro's secret identity, Don Diego de la Vega. This continued with the pulp fiction and radio heroes of the 1920s and 30s and expanded with the coming of
comic books. The fashion and socializing aspects of being a fop are present in some interpretations of
Batman's second identity
Bruce Wayne. These became clichéd.
A more recent and minor trend is "fop-rock," in which the performers don eighteenth century
wigs,
lace cravats, and similar costumes to perform, a minor movement that would appear to owe something to
glam rock,
visual kei, and the
New Romantic movement.
Adam Ant of
Adam and the Ants would seem to be a forerunner of the trend, who occasionally performed in elaborate
highwayman outfits. Other notable examples would be
Falco's performance as
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the song "
Rock Me Amadeus," a #1 hit in the U.S. and the UK in
1986, and
Boston-based band
The Upper Crust.
On BBC Radio 2's
Wake Up With Wogan Breakfast show host Sir Terry Wogan often refers to Newsreader John Marsh as a Fop and a Dandy, especially whilst reading the popular 'Janet and John' stories.
"Fop" also appears in a song from Stephen Sondheim's musical
Sweeney Todd. In
A Little Priest, Mrs. Lovett sings, " It's fop, finest in the shop".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Fop'.
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