The Misadventures
of Dr. Bendo

The self-dramatization that dogged the career of Rochester is highlighted by an escapade of Rochester's life. After satirizing Charles II, Rochester was banished from court (a common enough occurence). He set up shop in Tower Hill, as Alexander Bendo, a master of astrology and medicine. As Dr. Bendo, he published an advertisement bill, proclaiming the benefits of his medicines. In this bill, we find a curious pronouncement:

However, Gentlemen, in a world like this, where Virtue is so frequently exactly counterfeited and Hypocrisy so generally taken notice of that everyone armed with suspicion stands upon his guard against it, 'twill be very hard, for a stranger especially, to escape a censure: All I shall say for myself on this score is this, if I appear to anyone like a counterfeit, even for the sake of that chiefly ought I to be constructed like a true man, who is the counterfeit's example, his original, and that which he imploys his industry to imitate & copy. Is it, therefore, my fault if the cheat, by his wits and endeavours, makes himself so like me that consequently I cannot avoid resembling him?

With its paradoxical creation of identity, this pronouncement is worthy of the hightest postmodern theorist! If a person appears to be false, that person is the most likely to be true, since the true liar has imitated the true man's appearance and manner. The effect of this pronouncement is heightened with the reader's realization that Bendo is in fact a false man, a creation of a poet that has been banished from court.