Lothario is a male given name that came to suggest an unscrupulous seducer of women, based upon a character in ''

The Fair Penitent ''The Fair Penitent'' is Nicholas Rowe's stage adaptation of the tragedy ''The Fatal Dowry,'' the Philip Massinger and Nathan Field collaboration first published in 1632. Rowe's adaptation, premiered onstage in 1702 and first published in 1703, ...

'', a 1703 tragedy by Nicholas Rowe.Lothario
Dictionary by Merriam-WebsterLothario
Collins Online Dictionary In Rowe's play, Lothario is a

libertine A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour o ...

who seduces and betrays Calista; and his success is the source for the proverbial nature of the name in the subsequent English culture. It was first mentioned in this sense in 1756 in ''

The World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

'', the 18th century London weekly newspaper, No. 202 ("The gay eaning ''joyful, merry''Lothario dresses for the fight").Lothario. Oxford English Dictionary

Samuel Richardson Samuel Richardson (baptised 19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an English writer and printer known for three epistolary novels: ''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' (1740), '' Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady'' (1748) and ''The History of ...

used “haughty, gallant, gay Lothario” as the model for the self-indulgent Robert Lovelace in his novel

Clarissa ''Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage'' is an epist ...

(1748), and Calista suggested the character of Clarissa Harlowe.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC (25 May 180318 January 1873) was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secre ...

used the name allusively in his 1849 novel ''

The Caxtons ''The Caxtons: A Family Picture'' is an 1849 Victorian novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that was popular in its time.Sutherland, JohnThe Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction p. 111 (1989) The book was first serialized anonymously in ''Blackwo ...

'' ("And no woman could have been more flattered and courted by Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been.").

Anthony Trollope Anthony Trollope (; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the '' Chronicles of Barsetshire'', which revolves ar ...

in ''

Barchester Towers ''Barchester Towers'' is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published by Longmans in 1857. It is the second book in the ''Chronicles of Barsetshire'' series, preceded by '' The Warden'' and followed by '' Doctor Thorne''. Among other thi ...

'' (1857) wrote of "the elegant fluency of a practised Lothario".R. Gilmour ed., Anthony Trollope, ''Barchester Towers'' (2003), p. 286 and 520 ''The Fair Penitent'' itself is an adaptation of ''

The Fatal Dowry ''The Fatal Dowry'' is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger and Nathan Field, and first published in 1632. It represents a significant aspect of Field's very limited dramatic output. Though hard evidence is la ...

'' (1632), a play by

Philip Massinger Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including '' A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', ''The City Madam'', and ''The Roman Actor'', are noted for their satire and realism, and their polit ...

and

Nathan Field Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor. Life His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brother ...

. The name Lothario was previously used for a somewhat similar character in ''The Cruel Brother'' (1630) by

William Davenant Sir William Davenant (baptised 3 March 1606 – 7 April 1668), also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned b ...

. A character with the same name also appears in ''The Ill-Advised Curiosity'', a

story within a story A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes ...

Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best kno ...

' 1605 novel, ''

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of West ...

'', Part One, but Lothario there is most unwilling to seduce his friend's wife and does so only being urged by the former, who recklessly wants to test her fidelity. Because of the allusive use the name sometimes is not capitalized.

Notes

Sources

''The World'', No. 157-209.
The British Essayists in Forty-Five Volumes. Vol. XXIX. London: 1823. Includes a reprint of the No. 202 issue of ''The World'', November 11, 1756. {{wikisource, The Fair Penitent Male characters in literature Male characters in theatre Characters in plays Pejorative terms for men Seduction

See also

Notes

Sources