Each Moment of a Happy Lover's Hour is Worth an Age of Dull and Common Life

Dear Diary:

You know I have a thing for Restoration and Eighteenth-Century drama. The Rover, The Man of Mode, She Stoops to Conquer, Polly Honeycomb - just to name a few. The genre of libertine is so fascinatingly delicious and painfully realistic that I can't resist relating myself to the tragic heroines in these plays.

In The Rover by Alphr Behn, the highest-class town beauty and female prostitude, Angelica, has never loved a man before, but she falls for a cheap, soon-to-be-married playboy, Willmore, and agrees to sleep with him for free. When Willmore is about to take another woman as his lawfully wedded wife, Angelica points a pistol at him with unspeakable rage and uttermost disappointment. Willmore, the man who roves from bed to bed, surprisingly offers to pay her for her services, yet Angelica refuses. No amount of money could mend her broken heart and erase her deepest regrets.

In She Stoops to Conquer by Olive Goldsmith, the main female character, Kate, is a well-mannered, intelligent woman. Her father arranges her to marry Charles, who suffers from shyness around women of decent classes. However, he transforms into a charming, lecherous rogue when he is around women of low classes. Kate then masquerades as a bar maid in order to get to know him. Charles falls in love with her and plans to live happily ever after with her. He cannot love the real Kate. He can only love the Kate in disguise. In order to win the man's affection, Kate cannot be who she is and must degrade herself.

There is no sinner like a young saint.