ABSTRACT
To whet the audience’s appetite for displays of wit and ingenuity yet to come, Betty the chambermaid takes the stage to herself at the finish of the first act of The Beau Defeated. She is knowing, cheerfully and very engagingly knowing. Outside the entertainment industry, however, servitude and knowledge were not at all aligned in Restoration England. Records show the legal system heard and weighed evidence from servants at best with caginess and scruples and with little readiness to rely on the observations or understanding of a subaltern class.2 In his influential writings on education, the progressive philosopher John Locke gave blunt and emphatic warnings, singling out as ‘most dangerous of all’ any exposure of a developing child to ‘the examples of the servants’.3 To focus on servants in Restoration culture is to encounter a line separating actuality and fiction.
