The Cap of Honor
The play commences with a recruitment speech given by Sgt. Kite. His initial efforts are standard recruiting fare: appealing to conceit in the suggestion that he is not on the prowl for mere soldiers, but looking grenadiers. He holds in his hand a cap that is fit only for a gentlemen. Or, at least, a man over six feet. He terms this “the cap of honor.”
The Wheedler
Kite is accused of wheedling and coaxing. He denies it…just before he launches into a masterpiece of wheedling and coaxing of his strongest critic:
“I must say that never in my life have I seen a better built man: how firm and strong he treads, he steps like a castle!”
The World According to Plume
Captain Plume is the dashing title figure of the play. He is an officer whose character runs deeper than mere soldier, but who philosophical outlook is undermined by a romantic soul:
“The world is all a cheat, only I take mine which is undesign’d to be excusable than theirs, which is hypocritical.”
The Astrologer
Having failed at mere wheedling as a tactic for recruitment, Sgt. Kite gets creative. He turns to the practice of astrology to plant the suggestion that great futures lay in store for those with the wits to take advantage of serving the Queen’s army for the present. When Melinda comes to see him—not realizing he is Kite—she is overcome by the reading and leaves in terror, later asserting to her maid:
“that fellow is certainly the devil, or one of his bosom-favourites”
The Motivation of Fools
The philosophical Plume dismisses the very notion of trying to figure out what drives fools to do the things they do. Instead, he boils such things down to an essential motivation: whim. And of that motivation, he observes:
“whim, unaccountable whim, hurries them on, like a man drunk with brandy before ten o’clock in the morning”
